Someone you care about is graduating from paramedic school. What is the best gift you buy them? Only two choices in this exercise. 1. A high quality stethoscope with their name etched on it. 2. A good pair of boots. When I graduated from paramedic school, I bought myself a Littmann cardiology 2. It was…
I’m recerting PALS (Pediatric Advanced Life Support), ACLS (Advanced Life Support) and CPR today in one all-day session. After this, I’ll be good for another two years. If you are in EMS, you can measure your career by how many American Heart Association recerts you have taken. For me this is the 15th time for…
Overdose on the avenue — a woman in a tattered hoodie and black winter coat lays on the sidewalk next to a streetlight, with bystanders surrounding her. The woman, who looks to be in her forties, was talking to them and then she slowly collapsed against the pole and then to the ground. If I…
For the last year I have worked primarily in a rapid response vehicle or “fly car.” There are many benefits to such a position. I do almost exclusively 911 calls. I self dispatch based on calls I hear over the fire and EMS radios. I am often the first on scene. My day is never…
“You’re covering the city,” dispatch says to us, when we clear Saint Francis after an early morning cardiac arrest. We park on Albany Avenue. The sun isn’t up yet, but the black birds are stirring. We’re on for another ten hours. By midday, we’ll have twenty ambulances on, but right now it is only us. …
When I started as a paramedic in Hartford, many of my coworkers referred to the city as a shit hole. They said this as they put on or took off their bullet proof vests at our base and swapped stories about the populace they encountered in the inner city, drunks and deadbeats, and addicts and…
A firefighter has already bandaged the patient’s head by the time I arrive in the fly car. The man sits on the front stoop looking like the fifer in the revolutionary war painting of the three marching wounded soldiers the way his head is wrapped. The firefighter points out the puddle of blood in the…
For many of us in EMS, our origin story began with watching the TV show Emergency. The decent paramedics Johnny and Roy, the wise Drs. Brackett and Early, and the beautiful unflappable nurse, Dixie McCall. Together they stood for all that was good in the world. They were role models for us in showing us…
No one ever said being a medic was easy. Do the best you can. Know your protocols. Use sedation with caution. Act on your patient’s behalf.
Tim was working for the company when I started. As tall as me and twice as broad, he was a strong EMT — a good lifter, quiet sense of humor, hard worker, gentle with patients. And if he was standing behind you, no one would think of causing trouble. One night fifteen years ago, he…
We used to (25 years ago) pick Darryl up every night around 10:00 PM. He’d call from the pay phone on Barbour Street. He was drunk and cold and wanted a ride to the hospital where they would put him in the waiting room and he would fall asleep in one of the chairs. He…
I was a new paramedic. The senior medic briefed me. They took two guys out of a basement apartment with high carbon monoxide readings after a dryer caught on fire. Ones already on the way to the hospital for evaluation. Your patient is the guy over by the building door arguing with the police officer. …
As I approach the house with my medic pack over my shoulder and my monitor and isolation bag in my hands, two boys, maybe fifteen or sixteen, stand on the sidewalk out front of the building, and look at me expectantly. “He’s not alive? Is he? Is he still alive?” the shorter one asks. I…
These are two old Christmas posts I wrote years ago, reposted now. *** Fifteen on the Scale It’s Christmas eve. We get called to one of the local nursing homes for rib pain. The room number sounds familiar. As we wheel our stretcher through the lobby, “Good King Wencelous” plays through the speakers. Gently shone…
I wrote this post on Thanksgiving 2005. *** It’s Thanksgiving morning. I awake at 5:10, shower and dress, then open up the garage door to see a couple inches of snow on the ground. It’s beautiful, but I hate winter, hate the cold weather, hate driving in snow. When I get to the base, I can see…
Twenty-seven years ago, in a retaliatory shooting, a man in Hartford’s north end opened fire with an automatic weapon, killing his target. He was sentenced to fifty years in prison. He left at home a baby daughter, *** I get called for the unconscious. I arrive first and climb windy wooden stairs to the third…
The Hartford Courant this week noticed what most everyone else around here has– panhandlers are on nearly every corner of big intersections these days. Many carry the standard signs drawn on ripped cardboard “Homeless and Hungry.” Some wear masks, others don’t. Some make eye contact, others look down at their feet. They almost universally say…
In 2013, I wrote a post called Get Another Job. Here’s how it went: We were dropping off a regular patient at one of the hospitals the other day. A chronic PCP user. The “crusty” old nurse in the psych ward threw a fit complaining that she had just dealt with him two nights before. The…
From 2012-2014, I kept up a blog called A Paramedic’s Guide to Take out in Hartford. I haven’t updated it since then, but am considering doing so. In the meantime, I came across this old entry called Bizarre Foods Hartford, and since all five restaurants are still operating (open for carryout), I thought I’d post…
Last week, (due to medic vacations) the company put me into a volunteer town as the paid paramedic (on an ambulance staffed with volunteers) for my shifts. Many years ago, I worked three days a week in the same town in addition to three days of overtime in the city back in the days when…