Category: patients

• How do you say Goodbye?

  

  Two weeks ago, during what I thought would be a routine telepsychiatry appointment, Monalisa told me something I wasn’t prepared to hear. Our next appointment would be our last. We were reviewing how the medications were doing. A recent increase in Effexor had helped resolve a brief resurgence of depressive symptoms that had begun to…

  Dave

  January 16, 2026

  Compassion, Family, Mental Health, Outside Life, patients, Random Thoughts

  Family, memories, mental health, remember, sad, thinking

• McClain, Paramedics, Qualified Immunity, Other Thoughts

  Elijah McClain, Paramedics, Qualified Immunity, and Other Thoughts on Professionalism

  Dave

  December 24, 2023

  cardiac arrest, Compassion, EMS, overdoses, patients, Police, Professional Pride, provider safety, Public Safety, safety

  deputy, EMS, firefighter, ketamine, law enforcement, mental health, news, patients, Police, provider safety, Public Safety, qualified immunity

• My New “Worst Call Ever” Has Arrived

  Ask any EMS or other public safety professional what stereotypical trope in conversation they hate the most, and they’ll probably tell you not to ask “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen on a call?” – and for good reason. We don’t like revisiting those calls. We don’t need to trudge them back up into…

  Dave

  April 11, 2023

  Death and Dying, EMS, mental health, patients, trauma

• Lifesaver? Hardly.

  This lifesaver pin was presented to me to celebrate my first CPR “Save” – when, early in my EMS career, I worked as part of a team of EMS professionals to apply CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) to a Sudden Cardiac Arrest victim, and this resulted in the patient having their pulse restored long enough to be…

  Dave

  January 17, 2021

  cardiac arrest, Compassion, Death and Dying, EMS, patients, Professional Pride

• The People Who Make Up My Life

  I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how people move in and out of my life. Quickly. Slowly. Suddenly and abruptly. Gradually or almost without noticing. The amount of time they spend in my life, in my physical presence seems completely unrelated to the amount of time they remain in my conscious and subconscious mind…

  Dave

  October 12, 2020

  childbirth, Compassion, Death and Dying, elderly, EMS, Family, mental health, Outside Life, overdoses, patients, pediatric, Random Thoughts

• Connecting with a Drug Overdose Patient

  She’s only 20 years old*. 15 years younger than me. Laid out on the ground in front of the house. It’s 40 degrees outside at 1am here in Texas. Her boyfriend woke up and found her not breathing and did CPR on her while waiting for us to show up. The police showed up first…

  Dave

  December 19, 2019

  Compassion, EMS, overdoses, patients, Professional Pride

• Bringing New Life Into the World

  I don’t often share much about my personal life through this blog, but I am elated to share with you, my readers, that my wife and I are expecting our first child, a boy, due in January 2018! Admittedly, this is a very happy, hectic, exciting time in our lives, and I can’t help but…

  Dave

  August 22, 2017

  childbirth, EMS, Family, Outside Life, patients, pediatric

• How We Used to Die

  An excellent piece I read a while ago and then lost the link before I had saved it. How do you handle elderly patients in cardiac arrest? Are these calls difficult for you? I often wonder if anyone has spoken about quality of life vs. quantity to the family members crying out for help for…

  Dave

  November 1, 2016

  Death and Dying, elderly, EMS, patients

• Like my own Gramma

  We  were dispatched for trouble breathing. It had been a busy night, back-to-back calls, all kinds of patients. The day had felt rather hurried and frantic. My partner and I were both a few PCRs behind. We arrived on scene at a single family home and a woman waiting out front for us. “It’s my…

  Dave

  August 24, 2016

  Compassion, elderly, EMS, Family, patients, Professional Pride