Mid-Columbia Fire & Rescue (MCFR) saw a steady 20 to 21 overdoses a year for the past three years, but has already recorded 20 overdoses just through September of this year.
“We’re definitely going to go above 20-21 overdose responses this year,” said Fred Coleman, division chief of training for MCFR.
Another new trend he’s noticed with treating overdoses: Medics are having to use more doses of Narcan — medicine that reverses the effects of opioids — to pull people out of an overdose. In fact, the 44 doses of Narcan used so far this year is double that of last year.
“What’s changed is the amount of Narcan we administer, due to the strength of the drugs being used today,” Coleman said. The main drug being encountered now is fentanyl, and it’s a harder opioid to override, he said.
“Some of these patients that we’re giving double doses to are actually getting triples because either a bystander or law enforcement officer administered a dose before we arrived. So we’re giving 2-3 doses pretty consistently,” Coleman said.
Narcan (also known as naloxone) is a fairly inexpensive drug compared to other ones, Coleman said. Fentanyl has had a longtime legitimate medical use as a pain medication and is 80 times stronger than morphine. “So I can give a very little dose and get your pain taken away, and it doesn’t drop your blood pressure, so it’s got some benefits when used in a controlled environment,” Coleman said.
That’s in contrast to morphine, he said. “You have to use a lot of morphine and it drops your blood pressure.”
Coleman said MCFR has seen an increase in overdoses over the last two months. Each MCFR shift works a day on, a day off, over a period of five days. During one week in September, one of the shifts responded to an overdose each day during their five day rotation, Coleman said.
As for what an overdose looks like, he said, “Most people who come across some who has overdosed will think the patient is deceased because they’re not breathing enough, or their breathing is super low because the opioid knocks out the patients respiratory drive. So a lot of times their lips will be blue, the patient will start turning blue in the face, and the pupils are pinpoint.”
Street fentanyl can be taken as a pill, and is often smoked, he said.
A local Overdose Prevention Task Force working to prevent overdoses has signed up to an overdose tracking system called ODMAP. MCFR has recently begun entering data into ODMAP, which will give a more accurate picture of overdoses in Wasco County.
The Dalles Police Department and the Wasco County Sheriff’s Office are entering OD data, with the vast majority occurring in the city limits. However, when Coleman entered overdoses for a recent three-month period, it became clear that many overdoses are not seen by law enforcement, and MCFR has by far the most encounters.
Of the five overdoses MCFR entered for September, just one had already been entered by city police.
“I think that by having the task force coming together with all the parties, that is giving us a big insight into what is happening,” Coleman said. He said each local entity had their own data records internally, “but now that we’re all working together and have the ODMap, which allows us to have a better view of how much is occurring, where it’s happening and what is taking place.”
He added, “It allows us as a task force to figure out how we can better serve our community to keep it safer.”
Task force members are: Wasco County Prevention Program (YouthThink), North Central Public Health District, The Dalles Police Department, Wasco County Sheriff’s Office, Wasco County Parole & Probation, MCFR, Sherman County Emergency Services, Mid-Columbia Center for Living, One Community Health, Oregon State Police, Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission, Bridges to Change, Mid-Columbia Medical Center, and Pacific Source.
Coleman said medics are also noticing more people are willing to be transported to the hospital now as opposed to in previous years. Typically, when an overdose is reversed with Narcan, people often react angrily. They don’t know where they are, and they took the drug for a reason, and now their high is ruined.
“Imagine waking up to four to six uniformed personnel standing around looking at you, which would even scare me.”
But other people, he said, are also recognizing that fentanyl “is actually dangerous and they’re OK with us actually transporting them. They realize how close they came to dying and they’re real glad to see us."
Coleman said opioid overdoses can be accidental, such as, “I took my wife’s pain pills and I didn’t know.” He added, “there’s a reason it’s prescribed by a doctor. Don’t take medication prescribed to someone else, especially if it’s a medication like this.”
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.