Month: January 2006

I walk through the ER. There are beds in the hallway. I step aside as a tech pushes a portable X-Ray machine past. I call a greeting to a nurse who steps out of a room carrying an IV tray. In another room a doctor intubates an extremely large patient. The intercom pages a cleaning…

It’s pouring rain and we get called for anxiety. 40 year old female sits in her kitchen holding her chest saying it feels heavy. We ask if she has been under stress and she says, “You don’t want to know.” But she has never felt a pressure like this before and she says it feels…

A number of years ago, one of our ambulances was involved in an MVA. The EMT in the back went flying forward and banged his head against the cabinets and sliced his ear against a sharp edge. When he regained conciousness, his ear was just hanging there. Shortly after, he recieved (I believe) a prosthetic…

An old woman in a group home slips and hits her knee. She mutters “I broke my leg, I broke my leg” so her aides call us. We find her sitting on the floor. I ask her how she is. She mutters, “broke my leg, broke my leg.” But she didn’t break her leg. There…

Ruby has been taking care of old Mrs. Johnson for seven years. This afternoon she finds Mrs. Johnson has been a little too quiet, even for a 93-year old. And she just won’t wake up. Her skin is cool, and she doesn’t respond to the throat rub that the doctor taught Ruby to do whenever…

A year ago I started another EMS blog, called Paramedic Journal: A Year on the Streets.It was my intention to only record “a year” of being a medic, so anyone interested in knowing what the day to day life of a medic was like could have a reference. In Paramedic Journal the entries are rougher…