When the rescuer becomes a patient

We had just left the station and our truck smelled really badly like exhaust. It was raining so we cracked the windows a tad and turned on the air conditioner. About 15 minutes later, I started feeling really sick to my stomach and my partner had a really bad headache. Neither of us had eaten that day so we stopped to get food and get out of the truck for a bit.

When we got back in the truck to go standby, I felt more and more sick and my partner noticed that my lips were turning white and my the skin on my face and arms was getting mottled looking. She called the supervisor and we went back to the station. I promptly ran to the bathroom and puked my guts up.

One of the supervisory people asked what was going on and we told her. She ordered me to lay down and told me to put on an oxygen mask or she would do it for me. I passed out in the truck for about 15 minutes with a NRB strapped to my face. I got up much peppier that I had been earlier, still nauseated and feeling ill, but much better.

We figured out that they had been doing maintenance on another truck and ours was running while they worked on the exhaust and changed the manifold on the other truck. All the exhaust got sucked into our unit and BAM! we wound up with carbon monoxide poisoning.

Friday night, I felt awful and sucked a few more hours of o2 down before going home. At dinner, my date said that I seemed "off" and he said my eyes rolled back in my head a few times and I skipped a few beats, but otherwise, he said I seemed ok. Yesterday, I felt like I had a hangover but I hadn't been drinking at all. I still felt a little "off" but otherwise I was OK, I guess. Today, I woke up feeling great and back to normal.

This is just a friendly reminder that we, as rescuers, are NOT invincible and are at risk for the same illness and injuries that our patients are. I was lucky. I could have gotten much sicker. Fortunately, I had an astute partner who saved my butt from a much worse fate.