Down and Out in The Man Cave.

Lights and sirens to the scene for the engine and rescue who are dispatched to an unconscious male found in the shop behind his house. We arrive and are directed by police officers down a long driveway that leads to the two bay shop behind the house. The engine company parks out on the street and makes hast to the shop. While the rescue pulls down the driveway, grabs their medical bags and goes inside to the patient. As I enter the shop I see a pickup truck in the first bay, it's hood is raised and the front wheel is off. I smell exhaust from an engine. There is an empty beer can on the grill of the engine compartment and tools on the floor. I notice a 50 gallon barrel off to the side with crushed beer cans in it, it's completely full with a few cans on the floor next to it that did not stay on top of the heep. I walk through the doorway into the other bay where the rest of the team is gathered around a man laying on the cold concrete floor between snow mobiles. The man has fallen down and has a laceration on the back of his head, there is blood and vomited on his face. He is very slow to answer questions and is disoriented, cold and lethargic. I asked the crew what I hear beeping near one of the medics. He tells me it's the alarm on the airway bag. I asked what is was reading and he told me it was at 360. That's the CO alarm we clip to the airway bag for just such an occasion. I directed one of the firefighters to open the roll up doors and I told the rest of the team "we needed to expedite this excitation we are being exposed to high levels of carbon monoxide". We placed a c-collar on the patient and rapidly rolled him onto a back board. He was strapped down and moved to the cot just outside the door. The patent was then moved into the rescue ambulance where oxygen was administered by mask, an IV was established and the heart monitor was applied. During transport the man was passively warmed with blankets and by turning up the heat in the back of the ambulance. We arrived at the hospital and gave report to the emergency room nurse. Meanwhile, the engine crew monitored the air in the shop until is was ventilated and safe again.
Indeed, we were being exposed to high levels of carbon monoxide. The patient was found to have blood levels of carbon monoxide of 35 and was flown by medical helicopter to a hospital with a hyperbaric chamber for treatment.
Carbon monoxide binds to hemoglobin, which is the principal oxygen-carrying compound in blood, this decreases the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood and inhibits the transport, delivery, and utilization of oxygen by the body. The affinity between hemoglobin and carbon monoxide is approximately 230 times stronger than the affinity between hemoglobin and oxygen so carbon monoxide binds to hemoglobin in preference to oxygen. Treatment in the hyperbaric chamber changes that and the carbon monoxide is released so the blood can return to it's normal function of transporting oxygen and releasing it to the cells.