Rehab-bound passenger's heroin overdose forces plane back to JFK

MikeD said:
Has nothing to do with empathy. Doesn't change the bad choices people make and the consequences that go with those choices. Like I said, there's exceptions. Like it or not, in EMS, your emergency isn't my emergency. That's not a lack of empathy, that's safety and survival in many ways.

Know how many guys I've known who have killed themselves in a plane doing something stupid or due to a poor choice they made that could've been avoided? They were great guys, and still considered to be. But that doesn't change the fact that they made poor choices that ended up morting themselves, and we don't butter that up or try to cover that up. We live and learn, and try to not go down those same roads.
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And given the chance to save them (with no risk to your own life such as in this case) would you not, regardless of their choices? Or would that be a waste of resources?
 
NovemberEcho said:
And given the chance to save them (with no risk to your own life such as in this case) would you not, regardless of their choices? Or would that be a waste of resources?
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If there's no risk to me or my crew, I have no issue with it. The problem comes, where we become an enabler to the problem rather than a solver for it. The whole idea of equipping even some LE agencies and their officers now with narcan, isn't helping solve a problem, it's often making it worse. Wasn't just a month or so ago with a med assist on the Rez, one of the heroin ODers acquaintences even commented to us on how (paraphrasing) "....he (the ODer) didn't think it was any big thing, cuz y'all would be here with the stuff to pull him out if he screwed it up...". Yeah well, it was heroin cut with fentanyl, so he was a mort long before any of us or the local EMS could do anything for him.

We can't save people from choices they make, often. Sometimes, Darwin does just his thing, and the people Darwin goes and gets, often help him do his job. It's a sucky, but true, reality.
 
MikeD said:
If there's no risk to me or my crew, I have no issue with it. The problem comes, where we become an enabler to the problem rather than a solver for it. The whole idea of equipping even some LE agencies and their officers now with narcan, isn't helping solve a problem, it's often making it worse. Wasn't just a month or so ago with a med assist on the Rez, one of the heroin ODers acquaintences even commented to us on how (paraphrasing) "....he (the ODer) didn't think it was any big thing, cuz y'all would be here with the stuff to pull him out if he screwed it up...". Yeah well, it was heroin cut with fentanyl, so he was a mort long before any of us or the local EMS could do anything for him.

We can't save people from choices they make, often. Sometimes, Darwin does just his thing, and the people Darwin goes and gets, often help him do his job. It's a sucky, but true, reality.
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And I can see where you're coming from, and yet in this case it's known dude was on his way to rehab and help. The fact you still said what you did is what bothers me. But I guess you see OD's like I see TCAS RA's for VFR guys 500' underneath you and it's just meh at this point.
 
MikeD said:
Yes and no. Gets tiring working EMS and seeing the number of case of ODers who think the ambulance is their personal pharmacy, or that we'll always be there to bail them out of their choices that go bad. Of course there are exceptions, but those are few and far between. Choices have consequences, and they're not always good ones.
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Yeah, I get that. I used to work EMS too. It's very easy to get burnt out. But when you do get burnt out, sometimes you don't recognize the fact and make the bad choice of continuing to work in EMS without a break. That's a lack of awareness that can lead to secondary bad choices and consequences including the bad choice of drug use with its attendant tertiary bad choices and consequences. And it all started with a lack of self-awareness about one's mental fatigue (and/or physical fatigue in the case of EMS). It didn't start because one was or decided to be a bad person and make bad choices.
 
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"Heroin is getting out of Hand" You replied:
MikeD said:
Just Darwin making his rounds, is all
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"Naloxone?" You replied:
MikeD said:
Meh. Why waste the stuff?
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MikeD said:
Has nothing to do with empathy. Doesn't change the bad choices people make and the consequences that go with those choices. Like I said, there's exceptions. Like it or not, in EMS, your emergency isn't my emergency.
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I'd say those replies, if not humorous, have everything to do with empathy, or a lack thereof.
I'd further suggest that, inasmuch as it is your duty as an EMT to respond to others' emergencies and to do your best to save those people, that YES, it is your emergency. When you are flying a plane for someone else, is it not your responsibility to fly that plane???
Should you put yourself at risk to rescue others? Every time you respond you do so, but you try to limit it. Undue risk? No. But that's hardly germane in this instance except as a distraction to the point. The guy was ODing. Give him the appropriate treatment, expeditiously!
 
NovemberEcho said:
And I can see where you're coming from, and yet in this case it's known dude was on his way to rehab and help. The fact you still said what you did is what bothers me. But I guess you see OD's like I see TCAS RA's for VFR guys 500' underneath you and it's just meh at this point.
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It's not a personal thing, it's more so that you came to a point where, with some cases like these, you realize that you're spinning your wheels with the problem, and that causes a meh-type numb reaction. Kind of like I imagine your VFR guys example. At first, it's shocking. When it keeps happening, it becomes no longer a surprise anymore, of sorts.

Crop Duster said:
Yeah, I get that. I used to work EMS too. It's very easy to get burnt out. But when you do get burnt out, sometimes you don't recognize the fact and make the bad choice of continuing to work in EMS without a break. That's a lack of awareness that can lead to secondary bad choices and consequences including the bad choice of drug use with its attendant tertiary bad choices and consequences. And it all started with a lack of self-awareness about one's mental fatigue (and/or physical fatigue in the case of EMS). It didn't start because one was or decided to be a bad person and make bad choices.
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Sadly you're right. Some of the worst drug users, are paramedics. They normally know how to cover their use well and not OD, but it happens.

I've know a few who have gotten caught, but have never known any who ODd/died. Again, all good people from what I knew of them, but they ended up making choices that got then down a road of trouble, or worse. With no one to really blame but themselves. But to the point here on the last few posts, while I see what we're trying to do with narcan and equipping everyone with it, it appears to be creating an unintended consequence for opiate drug users in a good few cases (at least around here), with how it's being advertised as a sort of miracle-cure that will save anyone from an OD; giving the impression that an OD today is somehow "less risky" than before. When we both know it's anything but.
 
Crop Duster said:
"
I'd say those replies, if not humorous, have everything to do with empathy, or a lack thereof.
I'd further suggest that, inasmuch as it is your duty as an EMT to respond to others' emergencies and to do your best to save those people, that YES, it is your emergency. When you are flying a plane for someone else, is it not your responsibility to fly that plane???

Should you put yourself at risk to rescue others? Every time you respond you do so, but you try to limit it. Undue risk? No. But that's hardly germane in this instance except as a distraction to the point. The guy was ODing. Give him the appropriate treatment, expeditiously!
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That's what the term "patients emergency isn't my emergency" means. Not put myself at undue risk. Even emotionally. Because when people do so, is when they get killed responding lights and sirens too fast, or launching the help into questionable weather, or a host of other things that are undue risk.

Getting yourself injured or killed as a first responder and adding to the number of patients, doesn't help the situation.

The rest is discussed above already.
 
Cruise said:
Well, we can go way back to cotton lobbyists too. Hemp being the vastly superior fiber, the cotton industry was threatened by the rising hemp market and did their best to squash it. Seems as though it worked, since we're a couple hundred years into the domestic cotton industry and hemp is still struggling to gain a foothold in the textile market.
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So, umm, how's that hackey sack league going? :)
 
MikeD said:
Just Darwin making his rounds, is all



Meh. Why waste the stuff?
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Eh, opioids are kind of a different ballgame... you have to question the wisdom of someone who says one day "self, I think imma try meth". Whereas a lot of the the opioid addictions start with a legit (though maybe unnecessary) painkiller prescription.
 
Richman said:
Just remember, the core tenant of Darwin is "differential reproductive success".

Let that sink in for a bit and then the class can continue....
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The literature regarding this subject (see below) clearly shows that Differential Reproductive Success leads to Gingers. Which is weird since that's, er, a recessive trait. So, yeah, things are getting bad. ;)
SonOfSpooge2x6.jpg


index2.jpg


idiocracy.jpg
 
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