When the Littlest Patients Teach Us the Biggest Lessons

Medical emergencies can be scary for anyone -- but what about when you’re a kid? In this episode, Jimmy sits down with his two nieces, Kendall and McKenzie, and his two kids, Jameson and Jorja, to talk about their personal experiences with broken bones, concussions, allergic reactions, and more. From butterfly stitches to snapped bones, the kids open up and share their perspective about how it felt to be a patient.

Jimmy also shares practical tips for responders on treating children during emergencies -- because calming a children during a medical emergency takes more than just medical know-how. Whether you’re a parent, teacher, or first responder, this episode is packed with insights on what kids need most in a crisis - shared from their perspective.

Life Safety Associates specializes in emergency response training for corporate ERT Teams. We help businesses create competent and confident first responders who are ready to handle unexpected emergencies. For more information you find us @lifesafetyassoc or email@lifesafety.com.

Chapters

• 0:00 Kids as Patients
• 13:53 Medical Emergencies With Kids
• 22:30 Pediatric Allergic Reactions and EpiPens

Transcript

Jimmy: 0:23

What's happening? It's another life and safety podcast with your boy, jimmy, and instead of mags, I replaced her with two of my favorite little human beings in the world. Tell us your names.

Kendall: 0:36

Kendall

McKenzie: 0:37

Mackenzie

Kendall: 0:37

.

Jimmy: 0:38

Yep, I got Kendall and Mackenzie with me, the two little you might have heard me talk about in some of the other podcasts. So today we're going to talk about little kid patients and what it feels like to be a patient as a little kid and then as a responder, how to treat little kids. So today we're at home, we're at the Rios residence. So today we're at home, we're at the Rios residence. We got Jameson Jorja in in the background. We got Jorja's cooking, we got some empanadas, it looks like. So if you hear some noises, it's going to be my big girl and the big guys walking around. You've heard him before. So just kind of a precursor of what's happening today. So, mackenzie, start with you, since you're the oldest. Okay, I can't remember of a time of you ever being hurt. Can you tell me of a time being hurt? I?

McKenzie: 1:43

I know I've been hurt really bad. When I was younger I was in my papa's yard, my mom's parents and I was about maybe one or two and I was walking around and my parents have a small little ditch with a tree growing out of it and there was a twig and being a small toddler and I'm kind of wobbling around and being a small toddler and I'm kind of wobbling around, so I tripped and fell into the thing and on my eyebrow I um sliced myself and so I had to go to the emergency room and I had to get a butterfly stitch. I from the pictures I've seen it doesn't look like I was in that bad of a mood about doing it, but then again I remember very little because I was very young.

Jimmy: 2:29

So yeah yeah all right, were you scared? You remember being scared?

McKenzie: 2:35

a little bit. I was a little bit scared. I was definitely scared when they tried to flush the some of the debris out. I was terrified of the needle yeah, for sure, for sure.

Jimmy: 2:48

Now, when you went to the doctor to get your butterfly stitch, did your mom and dad take you, or did the ambulance take you?

McKenzie: 2:54

my mom and dad took me because they were there. We were all visiting, so they took me in.

Jimmy: 3:02

So to get myright stitch nice, nice so obviously with kids and adults, anytime we gotta stop the bleeding. It's pressure, pressure, pressure. Um, and the big thing we remember with kids, especially the first time they're seeing blood, things are going to start swelling and things like that. They're still I don't know what's going on. So they're going to feed off of your actions. So if you're freaking out and you're running around like a chicken with your head cut off, they're going to feed off of your actions. So if you're freaking out and you're running around like a chicken with your head cut off, they're going to freak out too. And knowing my little brother, he probably freaked out. He was probably all like he did when he let the, you know, fell on fire. So pressure, pressure, pressure. And now let's go over to Kindle Boo. I know she's had a couple of things that have happened, and which one do you want to talk about first? Which one do you remember the most?

Kendall: 4:00

My arm.

Jimmy: 4:01

Your arm. Yeah, and what happened with your arm?

Kendall: 4:05

I was coloring and I dropped my, and I was really little, I was two. So I went to, I bent down on my kitchen bench, I went to grab my marker and I fell off and my bones actually snapped, snapped. So I remember my some of my dad's friends came over to watch my sister and so then my parents rushed me to the emergency room and I had to have an IV and do all of that and they had to like readjust my bones. So it was really scary because I remember, and I was so little, I did not listen to my sister when she said wait, don't let me grab it for you, but I, but I was way too I was little and I did not listen to my sister yeah, see you, you didn't listen to your sister yeah, and you fell.

Jimmy: 5:23

Did you try to catch yourself when you fell? I?

Kendall: 5:26

tried to catch myself with my right wrist, but then I like, fell on my back and with me trying to catch myself with my right arm. That made my wrist snap and go into the wrong places.

Jimmy: 5:44

Yeah, was it your wrist or your arm bones, do you remember? It was like my wrist point on my Right there in your wrist, yeah, I remember it being on her wrist and then seeing a small little fracture In her bone right here, oh yeah, and then.

Kendall: 6:09

and then it also broke right here, oh yeah, and it kind of broke off. And then this one kind of went it was broken right here, and then it also broke right here, yeah, like the two bones snapped.

Jimmy: 6:14

and then right here it also snapped and it snaps right there. So, since it's a podcast and not a webcast, the girls are showing me their forearms and just, I guess, proximal of the wrist, so just just closer a little bit to the elbow of the wrist, so, or just if you're extending your arm out, it's closest to the body side of the wrist, on the outside bone. Was it the outside bone or the inside bone, the thumb side or the pinky side? Do you remember?

Kendall: 6:47

um, I don't remember, you don't remember that's okay, that's okay.

Jimmy: 6:54

I think, if uncle remembers, it was the pinky side of your bone. It was this long bone, if I remember right. So they both broke. Oh, mom in the background miming to us that both bones broke, nice, nice. Now what did your mom and dad do? Did they just pick you straight up and run you around?

Kendall: 7:24

Well, my mom and dad called my dad's friend and then they also called my grandparents to come and watch them, but Mackenzie, while they were in the emergency room with me. But my dad's friends had to come first because my grandparents lived a few minutes away, so then they had to come over. So my dad's friends watched McKenzie's while they were coming over.

Jimmy: 7:54

Yup, yup, I remember that. So did they hold your arm in any special way? Did they take a magazine and make a taco out of it or a piece of cardboard? They just hold it. I'm pretty sure I was like just dangling it right here yeah because I couldn't move it.

Kendall: 8:14

So then I went and so then my mom like I think my mom, either my mom or my dad was carrying me and rushed me to the car. But we were in the apartment at the time, so we had to. There was different sidewalks and the parking lot was full, really full, so we had to make sure there was no cars, so we had to. Um, well, I am, I think when we got to the hospital, they like rushed me into a room right away and I think they like got me like situated, but I was too little, so I had to sit on my dad's lap because I was way too little yeah to sit on the big hospital bed yeah, I was like half the size of the bed yeah, they want you to crawl off yeah, so my dad had to hold me.

Kendall: 9:19

And then they like you, just put these things and like the breathing thing. Oh, they put oxygen on you. Yeah, and like the breathing thing.

Jimmy: 9:25

Oh, they put oxygen on you.

Kendall: 9:27

Yeah, and they like put the heart monitoring thing on my chest and um but.

Jimmy: 9:35

Oh, your broken arm, mm-hmm, wow, mm-hmm.

Kendall: 9:40

Well, I was like already in my nightgown.

Jameson: 9:42

Mm-hmm.

Kendall: 9:43

Like my sleeping wear. So yeah, already in my nightgown, Like my sleeping wear.

Jimmy: 9:46

So you're sure you're not confusing this with when you had your allergic reaction. They put oxygen on you and they put a heart monitor on you when you broke your arm.

Kendall: 9:56

Because they gave her medicine to put her under oh. I got an IV. It was.

Jimmy: 10:02

PrEP, they had to put you under to set your arm. That makes more sense. You're doing a good job. I got an IV. It was prep. Now you're on IV and all that stuff because they had to put you under to set your arm. That's okay. That makes more sense. You're doing a good job. Remembering all this, though.

Kendall: 10:12

I've heard this story many times.

Jimmy: 10:14

And you've heard this story many times. You've asked yeah, yeah. So you know, for our listeners, the big takeaway to you know, when we respond, respond to breaks if it's an obvious break. I remember, you know getting the phone calls and stuff like that and asking questions, and I remember there was definitely deformity there which means it didn't look right right. So they knew it was a break right away. So anytime you see that we're gonna, you know, splint it.

Jimmy: 10:39

Like I said, a taco magazine, a taco box, um, anything like that's going to hold it over. You know, just make that C to hold it there and keep it close to their body. It's more comfortable for them. You know you guys can see this out in podcast land, but Kendall was holding her arm really close to her body, which is super, you know, common with anybody that hurts their arm or anything like that that hurts their shoulder. It's just more comfortable, it's a position of comfort. So keep them there. And again, it's the mental status, not just the physical bone thing with kids, with kids. So definitely. You know you got to treat everything. And then, don't forget, mom and dad are patients too. They're freaked out, they're scared. Got to take care of them also as responders. Now I know we're at kindle boo has one more story to tell us, but I'm gonna ask my littlest big kid to come over here real quick. Georgia, and all right, georgie, we want to hear your cheer concussion story, not your frisbee concussion story.

Jorja: 11:53

I didn't get a concussion from the frisbee, it just hit me in the head. I was fine, that was not a concussion, um, my cheer concussion story. So I was just at cheer practice and we were going over our pyramid, which is like um a big stunt, with basically everybody on the team kind of all at once. There's a lot of moving parts, a lot of people really close to each other and I had to walk sideways at one point and I tripped over my feet and I fell and my head just smacked on the mat and I like got up and I was fine for a little while and my head just like kind of hurt and I was a little bit dizzy and but I was like I'm fine, I'll tough it out for practice. I sit when I get home, no big deal.

Jorja: 12:39

And then we go to warm up our tumbling and I tumble and I actually tumble and I don't like do the skill and I just got really dizzy and disoriented and I like just end up on the floor and I look at my coaches and they look back at me and they're like what are you doing? Why are you on the floor? Because I didn't really mention them and to them that like I hit my head that hard or like that it hurt. And so I kind of get up. I'm like that was just weird, it's fine.

Jorja: 13:11

And I go and I try it again and the same thing happens. And so I go up and I tell them like hey, I hit my head earlier during pyramid when I fell and I'm so dizzy and I like I can't tumble, I feel like I'm gonna like faint or something. And so they got kind of upset because it was a stressful practice already. But they weren't mad at me, which was good, and so I sat out for the rest of practice, came home and then dad checked me for concussion and I had a concussion. It went away in about a week, so it wasn't that bad.

Jimmy: 13:42

But no tumbling for a week.

Jorja: 13:45

Yeah, that was not good, it was comp week.

Jimmy: 13:51

Yeah, definitely a situation Now with that right. So I'm trying to give a couple different examples. We have, you know, obviously a bleeding situation with McKenzie, a broken arm with Kendall Boo, a fall not necessarily from height, because Georgia was not as tall as she is now. When she fell, that was like February. Was it February? Yeah, that was a long time ago. That was almost a year ago. It was just like I feel like you've grown since then.

Jorja: 14:16

I haven't grown since then. Okay, not that one.

Jimmy: 14:18

Well, she's still a shorty I'm not short.

Jorja: 14:26

She's a shorty for our house. She's only 5'9", 5'10", only 5'9". It's a crazy statement, dad.

Jimmy: 14:29

I know, I know. So, as coaches, as responders, we got to look at that and you know we always assume it's a soft, it's a mat, it's grass, it's things like that. But it still hurts, things are still in there and your brain still sloshes around. You know it's floating in the water and if it hits the cranium it's a concussion, it's a bruise, right, it doesn't matter how small it is or how big it is. We've got to evaluate all those head injuries and head smacks. Now, with that being said, I'm going to put the biggest kid in the room, jameson, on the call. You've heard him before. He's the one with the one word answers from the dad podcast yup, uh huh, I was there, sounds right. So I'm going to make him if he remembers this flag football story of getting hit in the face and having your retina scratched from the cleats. Yep, dude, so good.

Jameson: 15:30

You gotta get a little closer, and then let's see if you can tell the story I don't know exactly what happened, but I know it's towards the end of our flight football practice and somehow I ended up on the floor and there were a lot of people around me and I got kicked in the face somehow and we were wearing cleats and somebody's cleat hit me in the eye. That's really all I remember. I remember going to the hospital and then some kind of orange thing going on in my face, but that's about it.

Jimmy: 15:57

Let me see if I can put in some of those, fill in some of those blanks, because those 10 words were probably the most we've heard on the podcast from Jameson, because those 10 words were probably the most we've heard on the podcast from Jameson. So in a flag football practice we're running around. I'm cleaning up the practice, per usual, no help. The kids are running around being silly, which is awesome, and the boys end up in a pileup and Jameson ends up on the back of the pileup, falling into the other kids. And one of the other kids' cleats was up and Jameson's face actually ran into the bottom of the cleat and ended up scratching his retina and his eye.

Jimmy: 16:42

But the part that got me is when he rolled over. He got up and he couldn't remember where he was at. I said what's your name? And he goes. I said where are you? And he went uh, and I said who am I? And he goes dad. And I was like okay, that's not a good sign.

Jimmy: 17:04

So I immediately got the other kids with their parents, threw them in my truck, drove straight to the hospital and called his mom and sister on the way, let them know what happened, happened and the orange thing that he had was actually, um, an orange light that they were using for uv light to see the scratches in his eye, and it was on an orange case like a strap, and they had an orange light that they were looking in there to see if there was any damage to his eye after they checked him for a concussion, or how bad his concussion was um, not such a severe thing. You remembered everything, probably about the end of the road, uh, but I wanted to get him checked out, just for you know, precautionary measures. It's his brain. He was little, he was our quarterback, um, and he's not always the fastest boat in the lake, as you can hear him talk with like only three words, so I had to worry about him I had to worry about him now we're going to end the podcast.

Jimmy: 18:07

We're going to talk about one more thing and then we'll end the podcast. Um, a medical emergency, pretty scary medical emergency that happens to lots of kids, which has made epi pens part of the good samaritan law. Now, um, you can take a course lifesafetycom email at life safety and let us know you want to take that course. We can hook you up with that course and then you can purchase an epi pan to carry it with you and use on other people. That's not prescribed for you. Okay, now, kindle boo ready.

Kendall: 18:41

All right, tell us what happened when you had your little reaction um, I was at my grandma's house, my house was house and she was making banana bread and we our family likes to add walnuts to our banana bread, so she gave, so I. So I was like, so I was really little, and so she gave me some walnuts to snack on, because I've never had them. And as soon as I ate like two, I started to have my allergic reaction. I started having really heavy spit, my tongue started to swell up my hands, my feet bit. My tongue started to swell up my hands, my feet, and so my grandma called my mom and my mom told my grandma to rush me to Kaiser because that's my doctor's office. And it turned out I'm allergic to walnuts and cashews and pecans. So whenever I eat at like a friend's house, I always have to check to make sure that there's no walnuts or cashews or pecans that are in the dishes that they made. So I was really little.

Jimmy: 20:03

Yeah.

Kendall: 20:04

And I got my allergic reaction.

Jimmy: 20:06

How scared were you, do you remember?

Kendall: 20:09

I don't remember, I just remember crying because they gave me my EpiPen. So I was really little, so I was definitely crying when they gave me my EpiPen.

Jimmy: 20:21

Who gave you your EpiPen?

Kendall: 20:23

The doctors, oh yeah.

Jimmy: 20:25

Not Avalon Papa yet, mm-mm, that was before we knew, huh yeah. Yeah, did it hurt.

Kendall: 20:30

And then after that I got an allergy test and then, a few years after that, I got another one.

Jimmy: 20:37

And another, what DJ Kelly?

Kendall: 20:43

I've gotten two allergies, yeah.

Jimmy: 20:45

Do they do the ones with the bubbles or the ones with the dots?

Kendall: 20:49

The dots.

Jimmy: 20:50

Yeah, and you're still allergic to those same things, anything else?

Kendall: 20:55

The nuts that are related in that family. Some of the nuts that are related in the family.

Jimmy: 21:01

What baby? What did you say? Mckenzie's helping Big sister.

McKenzie: 21:04

I was saying I remember dad coming home from taking Kendall to one of the things that she's also allergic to, a type of grass, like if she rolls in it it kind of irritates her skin and makes her really itchy.

Jimmy: 21:15

Yeah, super common, super common. Now, are you allergic to anything, mackenzie?

McKenzie: 21:25

Not that I'm aware of. I've never been really allergic to anything, but I never know because I'm a very picky eater, so I don't know.

Jimmy: 21:34

Yeah. So a while back you two told me you got to do something really cool with an old EpiPen and I think it's always a cool thing and I actually talk about it in my class really cool with an old EpiPen, and I think it's always a cool thing and I actually talk about it in my class what to do with old EpiPens.

Kendall: 21:47

So if you can tell our listeners what you do, Okay, so we take oranges, limes or lemons old ones that we have in our fridge, and we take our EpiPen and we practice opening them and using them to inject them into the orange. So we can practice in the scenario that I need my EpiPen or somebody else needs an EpiPen.

Jimmy: 22:18

That's awesome and very good language pattern there. Sweetheart, that was a good sentence. That was a more intelligent sentence than I think uncles made in all year. So that was awesome. So one thing to remember as responders with kids everything happens faster. They're smaller humans, so the epi pins needed quicker and, you know, with less signs and symptoms they're gonna have. You know, I always say it's, it's an allergic reaction if it's one sign or symptom, it's anaphylactic if it's two and the person can't breathe or starts to not be able to breathe. So, with littles, as soon as they're having an issue, jab them and get them to the 911 as fast as possible. On that note, thanks for hanging out with us on our Life and Safety podcast. Everybody say bye.

McKenzie: 23:09

Later Bye, bye.

Jimmy: 23:12

Peace.