My Craziest Call: GSW

People often ask me, as an EMT, what was my craziest call? As of now, it is my first Gun Shot Wound (GSW). My partner and I awoke at 2am to a GSW call in Inglewood. We threw our uniform on, kicked on the lights and sirens, and hauled to the call. We arrived to a chaotic seen of flashing red and blue police lights, caution tape, bystanders, and fire department rigs. The body, a male in his early twenties (could have been a teen) was lying on the front lawn of a home. I looked him over but couldn’t see a gunshot wound, but I did see blood pouring out onto the lawn. This meant the gunshot was to the back of the head.

We rolled him over to check the trauma on his backside. As we did, blood shot out the back of his head, almost spraying my partner. I checked for ID, but he had nothing on him other than pepper spray. With the utmost urgency, we put him on a backboard (gunshots can cause spinal trauma) and put him on the gurney while trying to stop the bleeding.

As soon as we got him into the back of the ambulance, he went into full cardiac arrest, meaning his heart stopped beating and he stopped breathing. At this point he is considered clinically dead. We take off for UCLA. With these calls you have to go to a trauma center, and this part of Inglewood is the furthest you can be from a trauma center in West LA. With a long way to go, I started doing chest compressions as the fire department paramedic but a bag valve mask over the patient and forced air into his lungs.

As I was pumping this guy’s heart, it caused the blood from the back of his head to go spewing out and for blood to start pooling on the floor of the ambulance. We threw down towels as to not slip on the blood. Doing CPR is much more rigorous that it would seem and after five minutes, you’re sweating. I looked through the window, and we were only at the 405 and the 10. There was not much hope.

Finally we made it to the UCLA ER. We pulled him out the back and I continued to do compressions while stuffing towels under his head to curb the bleeding all the way to the trauma room. In my field, having a full arrest is rare and so is a gunshot wound, but having both at the same time is near unheard of. We got him into the trauma room, threw him on the bed and a team of 12 trauma ER doctors went to work. They pumped epinephrine into his system, and he regained his heartbeat and started breathing. The guy made it. It was a good night,… except for cleaning the ambulance.