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#Post#: 1088--------------------------------------------------
Social Decay and Death From Drug Overdose
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: June 7, 2023, 5:50 pm
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[center]
HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-300322170024-4342024.png[/center]
June 7, 2023 by EDWIN LEAP
[center]Face to Face with ☠️
[glow=red,2,300]Fentanyl[/glow][/center]
[center]A Narcan kind of weekend[/center]
SNIPPET:
We gave a lot of Narcan last weekend. Some from overuse of
prescription drugs. It’s still an issue as men and women take
pills, pills and more pills. As they forget that they took pills
and take extra pills. As they slump in their chairs…or in the
driver’s seat of their vehicles, thousands of pounds of
potential murder hurtling down the highway, driven by someone
insisting that they can handle their medications just fine.
Most of what we gave was probably for [glow=red,2,300]fentanyl
overdoses[/glow].
[glow=red,2,300]Fentanyl.[/glow] The potent synthetic opioid
that brings death in its wake. It is ubiquitous, it seems; taken
on its own or mixed with other drugs by illegal manufacturers.
That word fentanyl is in the press so often. According to the
CDC, 150 people in the US ☠️
[glow=red,2,300]die[/glow] every single day from
[glow=maroon,2,300]fentanyl[/glow] overdose.
HTML https://www.cdc.gov/stopoverdose/fentanyl/index.html
[glow=maroon,2,300]Fentanyl[/glow], likely the leading cause of
[glow=red,2,300]unintentional ☠️ death[/glow] among
Americans 18-45 years old.
HTML https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/oct/03/fact-check-fentanyl-leading-cause-death-among-amer/
It’s easy to shake our heads and scroll to the next page in the
news. I don’t get that luxury; neither do my co-workers.
For those of us working in emergency departments it goes like
this: the triage nurse shouts for a stretcher. ‘I need help!
Overdose! He’s not breathing!’
Or someone pounding on the ambulance bay door. ‘She was shootin’
up.’ She’s slumped halfway out of the car, unaware of anything.
Sometimes the driver doesn’t do the courtesy of staying.
🤦‍♂️
They’re limp and they’re dusky. Their pupils are tiny. Often
their arms, hands, legs and feet are scarred from injections. If
they breathe at all it is shallow. The breath of a sleeping
kitten in an adult human. Or it is like the guppy; the gasp and
pause.
Sometimes it is impeded by their last meal; often the midnight
burger and fries, the taco, that seemed to pair well with their
drug use. All of it coming up, gurgling around the epiglottis,
slipping into the lungs, or spewing onto the staff who scramble
for suction and airway equipment as someone else grabs the
precious naloxone (Narcan is one trade name.)
If an IV isn’t possible, and sometimes there’s just no time, the
Narcan goes into their nostrils. Other times into an IO or
Intraosseus line. A battery powered drill bores through tibia or
humerus. Thick blood and marrow are aspirated back through the
syringe to confirm placement. Then the Narcan is pushed into the
lavish plexus of blood vessels in bone, on its way to wake them.
[glow=teal,2,300]Narcan[/glow], the alarm clock that says ‘wakey
wakey, time to stop dying!’
[center][img
width=340]
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A few do not respond well. There may be other drugs on board. Or
they may be too far gone. Some are intubated, a tube placed
through the mouth and into the trachea and they are placed on a
mechanical ventilator.
Most wake up, confused, surrounded by bright lights and
strangers. ‘Where am I? What happend?’ They flail and try to
climb out of the bed. Their euphoria interrupted to save their
lives.
Some are grateful and contrite. Some furious; so furious, so
frantic that they walk out of the ER, pulling off monitor leads
and ripping out IVs as a trail of blood drips behind to the door
and out into the parking lot and beyond.
HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422145533-5671050.gif
This crisis is [glow=red,2,300]terrible[/glow]. My heart breaks
for the addicted. Nobody sets out to become an addict. I try to
be kind and to offer options. I try to consider what I would
think if it were my child, my wife.
And yet, my heart breaks for
HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422182057.gif<br
/>others besides the patient. It breaks for the children
orphaned,
in fact or in essence, by addicted parents. My heart breaks for
grandparents who have to raise them with limited health and
resources and with their own grief at losing a child into the
labyrinth of addiction.
I also find myself concerned about other consequences.
We see [glow=red,2,300]terrible[/glow]
[glow=maroon,2,300]infections of the skin, the limbs, the heart
valves, the spinal cord. We see hepatitis. [/glow]All of this
from injecting unclean substances with unclean, often shared,
needles. We are going to have so many people permanently
disabled, or in need of complicated heart valve surgeries, liver
transplants for hepatits. People who can no longer walk or work
because infection killed their spinal cords. The cost is going
to be [glow=marroon,2,300]staggering[/glow]; in
[glow=red,2,300]lost[/glow] lives, in
[glow=red,2,300]lost[/glow] productivity, in
[glow=red,2,300]lost[/glow] families…
Read more:
HTML https://edwinleap.substack.com/p/face-to-face-with-fentanyl/
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