Insulin in an ambulance?

[Alpo]

TV show. Good guys are running from the bad guys, and one of the good guys is diabetic and needs insulin. Can't go home, because the bad guys are watching his place.

 

So they dial 911 and call in a medical emergency. Ambulance shows up, EMTs rush into the building, and while they are inside the good guys just casually go into the ambulance and steal a couple of vials of insulin.

 

Would they carry insulin in an ambulance?

 

Later they are doing an inventory of the drugs in the ambulance and discover the missing vials. The box with the vials in it just appeared to be sitting on a shelf. But insulin needs to be refrigerated. Would they have a refrigerated section in the ambulance? I'm sure that insulin is not the only drug that needs to be refrigerated, so it would make sense.

 

Wouldn't they lock the doors, well they are going into a building? Never seen them lock the door on an ambulance on the boob tube, going all the way back to Rescue 8. But if they could just walk in the back door to get the insulin, seems like they could also just walk in the back door to get the morphine. Not a real good plan.

 

Would they have narcotics in an ambulance?

[Irish Pat]

Hollywood, I be the actor knows nothing but his lines 

[Badlands Bob #61228]

I occasionally worked car wrecks involving people who had diabetic hypoglycemia reactions.  Low blood sugar. The ambulance could check their blood sugar and give them insulin if needed.  It's amazing how fast they recover when given insulin.  They appear drunk as a skunk and 5 minutes later, they are normal.  

[bgavin]

Giving insulin to a diabetic in hypoglycemia will kill them. because it drives low blood sugar even lower.

I believe you meant to say "hyperglycemic" which is when the blood has too much glucose.
Humalog is the fastest acting insulin in my scope of experience, and takes 2+ hours to be effective.

I am a labile (read: brittle) diabetic, and intimately familiar with OD'ing on insulin and winding up hypoglycemic.
The fastest possible method of reversing this and raising blood sugar is chewing sugar tabs and keeping the saliva under the tongue.
This is the same entry point for nitro with those having severe angina.

A sugar crash feels like 20 cups of Starbux full strength coffee.
You shake, sweat, feel highly over caffeinated.
When it gets too low, you pass out, then you die.

If you have a vehicle incident, and the EMTs or cops test and find you are hypoglycemic at the time, you will most likely lose your license.
 

[Cypress Sun]

I was sitting at a red light (6 lane, divided roadway/45mph limit) on my way to an electrical estimate...I was kind of late, the cusp of being on time but one thing goes wrong and I'm late. Anyway, just as the light turned green for me, a '74 or '75 Ford Country Squire (?) station wagon, the big blue one with the fake wood paneling, ran the red light on his side and tried to make a left turn. Made the turn but went up and over the curb, straightened it out and proceeded down the road weaving between lanes. I thought...boy, this guy's wasted for it being 11 am in the morning.

 

I followed him while attempting to dial 911 on the little work flip phone, not that it would have done any good. Followed him for about a mile and he decided to make a right hand turn at a red light. Just at the time that he decided to make a turn, a Rolls Royce pulled up to the light on the road that he decided to turn at. Well, I guess that it's hard to make a 90 degree turn at 50mph without braking. You guess it, front end pushed out and directly into the Rolls he went. 

 

I pulled over into a restaurant parking lot, by now I had 911 on the phone. The Largo cops showed within a minute with EMS a few minutes later. The Rolls driver was able to pull over into the parking lot also although the left front quarter and door were pretty well damaged. The cop was checking on the Ford driver and I talked to the Rolls drive, told him that the guy was drunker than a skunk from what I'd seen. I gave the Rolls driver and the cop my card, give me a call...but I had to go.

 

The estimate did not take long and was nearby so I went back by the accident scene on the way back. The Rolls, Rolls driver and officer were still there so I stopped to see what had happened. The Ford driver was having a "diabetic episode" and wasn't drunk after all. He'd forgot to take his insulin shot that morning.

 

I'd never even considered that he was in that condition even though my ex-wife had been diabetic. She'd never had an episode like that. Just goes to show that things are not always what they appear to be.

[Buckshot Sheridan]

When I worked on the ambulance we didn’t carry insulin. If we got called for a diabetic it was far more likely to be due to low blood sugar, and then we used either a tube of glucose gel that tastes nasty, or if bad enough it was 50% dextrose by IV and that was like pushing corn syrup through a syringe. To answer the other question yeah we carried a far bit of narcotics on board. 

[Badlands Bob #61228]

12 hours ago, bgavin said:

Giving insulin to a diabetic in hypoglycemia will kill them. because it drives low blood sugar even lower.
 

You're absolutely right.  I got it backwards.  It's low blood sugar that makes them act like a drunk.  They just don't have the alcoholic beverage smell.

[bgavin]

There is a sweet smell the LEOs look for.