I work Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, 12-hour city shifts. I took the day off today (Tuesday) to go to the monthly regional EMS meetings for my clinical coordinator job that fall on the 2nd Tuesday of every month. I was excited for the meeting because we were going to be voting of our new spinal…
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Homemade Soup
I am conflicted. I am having doubts about some of the benefits of medicine. Let me be more specific. In our state, we are told to advise a patient at least three times to go with us to the hospital before we can accept a refusal of care against medical advice (AMA). (For legal purposes…
Sandy Hook
In the nursing home, Mrs. Brown sits in her wheelchair, two feet from the television in her darkened room. The blue hues illuminate her face. Our stretcher rolls past in the hallway. Each door is open. The story on every channel. In stillness, they watch. We are still young, the children call to them. Craddle…
Pink Sneakers
She has become a regular. She calls early Sunday morning. “923, respond for the abdominal pain.” The dispatcher gives the street and apartment number. It’s always her. We have stopped bringing the gear in. We just wheel the stretcher in and leave it in the hallway, and then walk up the three flights of the…
NTG and the Hero medic
My favorite stories are when medics talk about great medics from their past. The stories can be made up, exaggerated or true, but with telling they achieve the status of folklore and the medics in them are our Paul Bunyans and Davy Crockets, our Supermen and our Columbos (the great TV detective played by Peter…
Christian Schmeck
Christian Schmeck passed away a few days ago at 59. I saw his obituary posted in the EMS room at a local hospital. I suspect most of the newer EMTs who saw it didn’t know who he was. I first met Chris over twenty years ago when I worked at the state health department. He…
The Wheelchair
The call is for an unresponsive in a wheelchair on a street corner in front of a social services agency. A woman who works at the agency flags us down. She says she has a man in a wheelchair who is unresponsive. She does not know him. He is not a client there. She says…
What I Carry
A reader (Lucus) queried me about what I carry on my when I am on duty: I have a stethoscope around my neck. In my right shirt pocket, I have four small blank index cards. In my left pocket I have a pen, a pack of gum, and my I-phone. I have trauma shears on…
EMS Towns
Many years ago, I was a taxi cab driver. Us cabbies used to talk about cab towns. What was a good cab town and what was a bad cab town? A good cab town was always hopping. People used cabs instead of cars. There were no traffic jams. The rides were of conversation distance. You…
Happy Pill
I wish there was a happy pill I could take. Or better yet, since I am all into good health and clean living, I wish there was a happy pill I could give my partners. Let me explain. I had a great EMS day recently. I did a cardiac arrest, an SVT, a respiratory arrest…
Glimpse of the End
Let me say right from the outset that I love being a paramedic and dread that day that I can no longer do this work. That said I have had two moments in my career where I have glimpsed that day. These moments are not moments that you would expect. It was not a bloody,…
Running the Streets
I finished my half marathon on Saturday, limping across the finish line in 2:34:14. Part of the run went through streets and neighborhoods in Hartford where I have responded over the years to motor vehicles, drunks, cardiacs, asthmas, shootings, diabetics and general illness. When I started as a paramedic in Hartford, I did most of…
The Golden Hour
R. Adams Cowley, the founder of Maryland’s well-known Shock Trauma hospital in downtown Baltimore, famously said: “There is a golden hour between life and death. If you are critically injured you have less than 60 minutes to survive. You might not die right then; it may be three days or two weeks later — but…
Incredibly Nimble
We were sent today for a lady too dizzy to get out of bed. There were elaborate instructions given about where the key was in the garage. We searched for about fifteen minutes with no luck. It was dark in there and dusty and there were mouse traps everywhere. We saw two neighbors come over…
Learn Something Every Day
50-year-old woman recent heart surgery to replace a valve. Visiting nurse says the patient is bradycardic. The officer tells me the patient doesn’t look very good. I find the woman laying on the couch with a nonrebreather on. She says she doesn’t have any pain, but doesn’t feel well, and vomited a couple hours ago….
Work
I came into work yesterday morning and as I always do, switched ambulances. We have three rigs here, and each of the four regular medics are assigned their own (two share one). Every six months or so we switch assignments. Right now I have my own ambulance, but it is the oldest one. Very rough…
Till I One Day Vanish
I work in a diabetic town. There is one particular section of lower middle class homes along the avenue that runs north out of the city that seems to be diabetic central. Many of the older residents came to the United States from Jamaica, and while they continue to enjoy their home cuisine — jerk…
Beach Ball Bellies
Woman collapsed on the roadside CPR in progress. We arrive and when I get out of the ambulance, I can barely see the woman’s face her stomach is so large — it looks like a beach ball and getting bigger with each squeeze by the first responder of the bag valve mask. “I think the…
Micellaneous
A rainy day at work. I’m sitting at the computer and trying to get caught up on email, bills, scheduling, and maybe even this blog. Here’s a couple of recent tidbits. This morning a first occurred. I occasionally hit my head at work — most often on the overhanging bright lights above ER beds, and…
Paramedic Block
I have had trouble posting lately. I go through phases with the job and with the blog and am in one now. The reason I started writing about EMS in the first place was to capture the human side — the view of life and people the job provides. To a lessor extent I like…