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.
Category: EMS in City
Apparition
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…
Old Friends
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…
Men With Guns
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. …
Dead
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…
Christmas – Winter’s Fuel
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…
Thanksgiving
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…
A Simple Dream
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…
Help is Always Right
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…
Trapped
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…
Bizarre Foods Hartford
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…
The Chair
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…
Forced Sedation
Interesting article on NBC news about the use of ketamine for sedating patients in police custody. Elijah McClain was injected with ketamine while handcuffed. Some medical experts worry about its use during police calls. The reporter centers the story around the tragic case of Elijah McClain, who was apparently walking down the street, wearing a…
A Complaint
I was accused of being racist. This was about fifteen years ago. At the time my main assignment was working as a contract paramedic for a volunteer service in Bloomfield, a volunteer town to the north of Hartford that like Hartford had a predominantly black population. I was working that day with a black partner/friend…
Kevin Andrews
With all that is going on these days, I thought of Kevin Andrews, one of my first partners in EMS. I first posted this in January of 2011. *** In EMS, we cannot help but be shaped by our earliest partners. They are the ones who show us the way. I was lucky in that…
Wild
Many years ago, I watched a long video of a police scene in California, where a man who was reported to be on “angel dust” (PCP), was being held down by police officers. The officers chatted among themselves while the camera focused in on the man who was pleading for help. I watched as the…
I Can’t Breathe
I have heard many people say “I can’t breathe.” Sometimes the people are full of it, other times they are dying. I have also heard the response line, “You’re talking fine.” I’ve heard EMS say it and I’ve heard police say it. On May 25, 2020 , George Floyd said to officer Derek Chauvin, I…
Ghost
Death in a Nursing Home We’re called for a child not breathing. The address is a convalescent home. It makes no sense. Then we pull up. There is a car parked askance by the entrance, two front doors and a back door open. The engine still running. In the front lobby two nurses and a…
Water
The next drug to add to the EMS formulary should be water. That’s right. H20. How many times have you been on a call and the patient has asked for water only to be told by every EMS responder in the room, “No! You can’t drink anything!” Really? The reason we don’t let people drink…
How We Feel Versus What Dispatch Hears
It has been busy at work lately and the crews have been getting pounded. An EMT posted this video (found on the internet) on our employee Facebook page. I laugh every time I think of it. If you have never worked commercial EMS in a high volume system, you might not appreciate it. I can…