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Medical Tattoo Alert
BY: Susan Church CCPC, CPDA
When a medical crisis arises, how do the people around you and the paramedics handle the emergency? 
When you are in a state of disaster, time is of the essence when rapid medical help is required.
Picture this scenario:
A woman had major surgery and complications arose from the incision sites. She was on her second round of antibiotics that did not stop the infection.
The woman needs to get out of the house for some fresh air and is a passenger in a car that takes her on a trek to a construction site, in a strange city and ends up having a seizure. No one knows quite what to do first. The man shoves the woman into the car….. No GPS. No hospital signs. No communication.
Now what? Two blocks from the construction site the man sees a cop stopping a speeding car…..the man jumps out of his car and grabs the cop in desperation. The cop thinks the man is irrational / drunk / on drugs until…….. he sees the woman in the car having a seizure. Being trained in this type of situation, the cop calls in for backup. Two fire trucks show up along with the paramedics and an ambulance. The paramedics rush into action! Thank God they have arrived….. only to pick up latex gloves and their IV line to jam into the woman’s vein to get a head start for the ER team. The man is frantically waving his arms in the air like a crazy person and the paramedics are screaming at him to stop it and to shut up. He still screams at the paramedics not to touch the woman or they will kill her ( if the seizure doesn’t first). “Don’t touch her with latex!! She will go into anaphylaxis!” he yells. They stop in mid progress and look dumbfounded at each other….by this time the woman is somewhat coherent and she tells them to just start the damn IV. As they blow out the vein in her arm (they were not looking at what they were doing) she softly says…”Excuse me but my arm is on fire and looks like a balloon that is about to burst’.
They take out the IV line as the vein is infiltrated. They finally get her stabilized and to the hospital. The ER is absolutely packed but the woman has priority over the people with the flu and broken bones. The attending physician also comes at her with latex…. What is wrong with this picture?? The paramedics tell them not to touch her with latex. Finally an RN with some common sense comes to the rescue. (God love the nurses!) Now they are trying to give the woman Benadryl as she is swelling from coming into contact with the latex. Ah…………… you guessed it……. She is allergic to Benadryl….. come on people get with the program!
Oh yes……. you must be thinking ……why didn’t the woman have a Medical Alert tag on? This is the best part of the story. She had a bracelet on with the allergies listed on it. Did anyone stop to check the bracelet? ….Why NO!…. That would make the story to easy. When she was stabilized she showed the paramedics, the ER Doc and the RN her bracelet with all of the allergies listed and yes…. Latex was the first thing listed! The point of this story is…. Don’t rely on a medical alert bracelet in the case of an emergency! Now… this not only happened once……. but twice to this woman!….. What are the chances of that? And yes……. She had the bracelet on both times.
She decided to take the allergy importance a step further…. Lest this would happen again. She put the Medical alert tags around her neck, and had her wrist tattooed. She discuss all of the medications and foods she was allergic to with tattoo artist Melissa at Forever Ink in Canton, Ohio. They would have had to start at the shoulder and work down to the wrist to list all of the allergies. So they settled on the verbiage and the RED CROSS.
Months later, the woman was scheduled for surgery. When the anesthesiologist came into the holding room and asked her about her allergies. The woman has now wizened up and carries a sheet of paper with all of her allergies listed on it. All 12 medications and foods she is allergic to. She gives the paper to the Doc and she shows him her wrist. He was excited that she had a tattoo on her wrist that said “allergies See Tag” with a RED CROSS next to it. He asked all of the nurses and anyone else that would come into the woman’s room to look at the tattoo. He said it was one of the best things he had ever seen. He did offer one suggestion….. Make the RED CROSS bigger.
The woman had the RED CROSS made bigger….. and yes……. She had a reaction to the red ink……. No matter…… because she did not have a choice. 6 months later the area is still raised but it is visible and you would have to be blind not to see it.
Everyone thinks the tattoo is cool and she suggests everyone with an allergy get a medical tattoo as well as wear a medical alert tag.
So………….. How was your day? 
