Critical Delay for Covid

Email 02/28/2021

Mr. ______,

Still no covid out here in the wonderful world of EMS, but I want to share yet another unbelievable "covid" experience. Earlier this week I had a middle aged male patient having an obvious heart attack. He had the classic symptoms and it was confirmed with an EKG. As we pulled into the ER ambulance bay my patient went into cardiac arrest (ventricular fibrillation). An immediate defibrillation restarted his heart and we went into the emergency room. Time is quite literally of the essence in these situations, and in the past I've even been told to bypass the ER and go directly to the Cath-lab where heart catheterization takes place. However, this time the patient was held in the ER until the covid rapid test was performed. I was able to follow up a couple days ago, and he's still alive but also still in ICU. No word on the covid test results 🙄, but he has a decent chance of surviving his cardiac arrest.

God Bless,
Handy

Attached is the EKG strip from the moment he was defibrillated and regained a pulse.

UPDATE: This man eventually walked out of the hospital and is still alive today.