Skip to content
Streetwatch: Notes of a Paramedic
Menu
  • Home
  • Killing Season
  • Diamond in the Rough
  • Mortal Men
  • Rescue 471
  • Paramedic
Menu

Bleach

Posted on April 29, 2007August 22, 2021 by medicscribe

The house is dim and smells like a dead person. Dusty, unmopped wooden floors, filthy curtains, overflowing garbage in the kitchen. The patient is down the hall in a bedroom. Old man living with his two sons, or rather two sons living with their old man because what the old man is doing really isn’t living. Under a dirty blanket, he is naked with a distended abdomen, and green yellow fungus on his body. He is short of breath with periods of apnea. He moans when you touch him. No distinguishable words. His pressure is 88/48. HR-124. Blood sugar is 500. Sat – 90%.

The son, who says he works in a nursing home has been spoon feeding him for the last week. He called today because he noticed the old man would stop breathing for a period of time and then start again. He repeats again that he works in a nursing home so he notices these things. He says his father hasn’t been to a doctor for forty years.

We carry the old man in a stair chair because we can’t fit the stretcher in the door. In the back of the ambulance I have to open the window on the side door in order to breath. I give him oxygen and a fluid bolus on the way to the hospital. Everytime he goes apneic, I nudge him and he moans.

We tell the story at the hospital and the nurse just says, poor dear, as she looks at the old man.

I wash my hands a couple times, but sitting here now, two hours later, I can still smell him. I feel like I need to take a shower, wash my clothes, shampoo my nose hairs or maybe just rip them all out. The smell won’t go away. I had a mustache years ago, but I shaved it because I got tired of shampooing it after every smelly call. I know now it isn’t just the mustache that holds the smell, the smell just gets on you and it won’t go away. Your nose, your brain remembers it. It just lingers. It gets in your skin.

And this wasn’t even that bad as smelly calls go. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t had one for awhile or that that smell just recalls all the times I’ve smelled it in the past.

My partner and I were talking on the way back. What’s up with letting your old man live like that? There wasn’t even a TV in the room. And how could you live with that smell? Did it just creep up on you that you didn’t notice it?

Tonight when I get off work, I’m going to put my running shoes on, and I’m going to run. On this grey day, I’m going to run from that smell, run from inevitable decrepitude, run from dim rooms where fate may put us. When I get home, I’m going to take a long hot shower and then have a strip steak with a little dab of butter on it. I’m going to have some fresh vegetables, and some long grain rice. And I’m going to have at least one cold 7 ounce beer. Maybe two. And then I’m going to do the dishes and clean the kitchen with bleach. I’m going to do some serious scrubbing. I’m going to scrub until my elbow throbs. The kitchen’s going to be sparkling clean and white when I’m done. I hope to have a restful, dreamless night.

Categories

  • Blogging
  • COVID
  • EMS in City
  • ems-topics
  • Fiction
  • hazmat
  • Humor
  • Lights and Sirens
  • My LIfe
  • obituaries
  • Opioid Crisis
  • Pain Managment
  • Precepting
  • STEMI
  • Street Lessons
  • Trauma
  • Uncategorized
Tweets by medicscribe

Recent Posts

  • Killer Angels
  • An EMT
  • Paramedic! Paramedic!
  • Manifesto
  • TV Interviews
Log in

Archives

  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • May 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • August 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • August 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • June 2006
  • May 2006
  • March 2006
  • February 2006
  • January 2006
  • December 2005
  • November 2005
  • October 2005
  • September 2005
  • August 2005
  • July 2005
  • June 2005
  • May 2005
  • April 2005
  • March 2005
  • February 2005
  • January 2005
  • December 2004
  • November 2004
  • October 2004
  • September 2004
  • August 2004
© 2022 Streetwatch: Notes of a Paramedic | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme