That was what I called my patient, the cocaine addict found down, when his temp hit 41.6 degrees celcius (107.0 degrees fahrenheit!). Then the next day I had a 21-year-old college kid, in the ROTC, who ran 9.5 miles in heavy gear, go down with heat stroke. He was intubated, and I got another interesting admission. HIS temp had peaked at 41.7 degrees in the ED! Hot damn!
So for the second day in a row, I threw my liters of saline into ice water buckets before infusing them, created wind tunnels with fans, and packed people on ice. In the ED, I heard that they also draped him in a cold wet sheet. There are such thing as cooling blankets, too. But that's awful high tech (and takes a long time to arrive from central stocking).
So, heat wave in the ICU this May.
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