He is a young barrel-chested man in his thirties with a thick Russian accent. The cops found him asleep in his car outside his apartment building. They have ordered him to the hospital to sober up. “I love you,” he says to the burly officer. “Okay, fine, buddy,” the officer says. “Just go with them…
Category: EMS in City
No Lash Marks
A patient with Alzheimer’s and an unsteady gait falls and has a small bruise on her nose. The doctor wants her evaluated even though there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong. A 21 year old woman at a minimum wage assembly plant feels dizzy and has a headache – a common complaint at this plant….
A Life
I recently did a presumption. A sixty-eight year old man found cold and stiff in bed in his one bedroom apartment in an elderly housing complex in town. He died sometime during the night, curled on his side, his head pressed against the pillow, a quilt pulled up to his neck. I couldn’t imagine a…
Hacking
We spent the first three hours of the shift covering a suburban town while their ambulance was on a call. There were reports of gunshots in the city, but when the ambulance got there the supposed victim had fled. Nothing else was going on anywhere, so it wasn’t like we missed a lot. My preceptee…
Who Mash Me Up
I carry a small digital camera in my pocket. I’ve written about it before in New Frontier. It is great for taking mechanism of injury shots – the smashed up car, bent steering wheel, picture of the roof the patient fell off showing the height of the fall. The trauma team loves to see the pictures…
Size Up
This is a call I did a few months back. I wrote about it then, but didn’t post the story. Part of the reason I didn’t is because while I want to write honestly about being a medic, I have some restrictions. I can’t trash the company I work for or anybody who works for…
Waiting
I go back to work tomorrow morning at six. I last worked the Wednesday overnight in the suburbs, which really wasn’t like working because I slept all night in a bed, and only did one call at five-thirty in the morning, and I didn’t even have to tech that one. I was planning to work…
Patience
Preceptees come in all types, ranging from those who are so smart you have to reread your books at night just to keep up with them to those who think the excuse “well, we didn’t go over that in class” covers them from any need to improve further. I’ve had preceptees for whom, on arriving…
Living Alone
The call is for a man on the ground, not injured just needs help getting up. Been there all night. The front door should be open. The stink hits us when we go in. There he is lying on the floor in a nearly empty house, shit on the rug, shit crusted on his underwear….
Beam Away
We’re on the third floor of an apartment building whose elevator doesn’t work. In the tiny efficiency apartment, layered with dirt, an old skinny man with dreadlocks says he didn’t call us, and why are we bothering him. The man’s body reminds me of a Biafrin child’s it is so emaciated. We’re here because a…
Fair Enough
A few days ago I promised I would try to write something true about lights and sirens response in EMS. I believe I have come up with something, but first I want to outline a call this morning. The horn goes off. The call is for an unresponsive at a nursing home, history of diabetes….
American Summer
It’s been over ten years I’ve been working in the city. Driving around in the ambulance, you can see the changes. None of the book stores I used to stop at are still in business. The barbeque place in the north end where they sold cornbread muffins for twenty-five cents is gone. The Lion’s Den…
New Frontier
They said she was vomiting and nauseous and having seizures. I asked what the seizures looked like and the patient’s friend who had witnessed them, said the patient shook all over with her arms and legs out. It didn’t sound like a seizure. She said they had done all kinds of tests, but hadn’t been…
CPR
I did a code last week which ended the longest drought of my career when it comes to cardiac arrests. When I came back from the EMS Conference in Baltimore all excited to try the new CPR, I had no opportunities. Not to sound morbid, but when I walked into the basement bedroom and saw…
SAVED (TNT)
Okay. The new TNT paramedic show SAVED. So what do I think about it? First, here’s the link to My Hollywood Adventure, which details how the producers of the show had read my books in preparing the pilot for the show and how I was then asked to be a technical advisor/possible writer and how in…
You Never Know
We’re called for chest pain at the court house. We question whether it is a case of “Jailitis.” We find the patient sitting in the lobby on a bench surrounded by marshals and firefighters. It is a young man – twenty-five. My first reaction is he is a prisoner, but then I realize he is…
Suffering in the World
We are sent to a detox center for a diabetic. We find a sixty-year old Puerto Rican with a blood sugar over 600, although he has no complaint. He has come to the center to kick his heroin habit. But first now he will have to go to the ER to get his sugar under…
Nursing Home Artwork
I’m wheeling a patient down the hall in nursing home (bringing them back from a dialysis trip), looking at the paintings on the wall. Most nursing homes have really crappy art work — paintings of rich people having picnics in top hats or girls in nightgowns playing with kittens — paintings that are sold in…
EMS Errors/Dangerous Places
Interesting online article at Slate.com about ambulance errors. Ambulances Can Be Dangerous Places Here’s two excerpts: In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published its report To Err Is Human, which estimated that up to 98,000 patients may die each year because of the mistakes of doctors, nurses, and other hospital workers. But few published studies…
Cigarettes and Tasers
We get sent to a nursing home for a “violent” patient in the lobby. Cops have been notified. We arrive to find a big muscular man about fifty with no legs in a motorized wheelchair waving his fist at a nurse, who stands back about ten feet, shaking her head at him. There are three…