He is naked in the nursing home hallway, rolling over and over. We manage to get a sheet under him and lift him up onto our stretcher. His room air pulse saturation is 74–severely hypoxic. The nurse, who told us he was COVID positive, said he walks around the wing and can hold a normal…
Easter
I worked the city today, and after a slow start, banged out 5 calls, and then they sent us in. Volume is down, plus today, as a holiday, we get double time and a half. I could have stayed at the base and clocked the last three hours, but I wanted to get home to…
See-Saw
The see-saw emotions of this epidemic are unrelenting. The data is looking better. While Hartford continues to increase its hospitalizations, the numbers are slowing and both statewide and downstate, the numbers are going down. While there were another 41 deaths, this number is also starting to slow and be less that what was once feared. …
Rest Day
For the first time, net hospitalizations fell in Connecticut. Still 1,938 people remain hospitalized. Another 50 died. As I’ve mentioned I follow the patients EMS has brought into our hospital who test positive so I can alert EMS for them to check if they had any exposures. For the most part now, it seems they…
Tiger
It’s 12:59 A.M. I have given up on sleep. Fortunately tomorrow is my one day off (I will still go into the office to make my COVID EMS notifications) but I will go in at whatever time I feel like and will only stay for a couple hours. It’s not like I have to get…
A Different Day
I worked twelve hours in the city today. My partner and I lucked out as far as the COVID calls went. I heard a ton of them go out, including a couple of cardiac arrests that sounded like they fit the bill of a person not feeling well for a couple of days with a…
Turn for the Worse
Not the best news today. First off, I learned a friend of mine has been admitted to the hospital after taking a turn for the worst at home. My friend is not on a vent, but requires 100% 02 by nonrebreather mask. It is a reminder that behind each of these case numbers there is…
Aliens
A busy day in the city yesterday. I was in the fly car, which means I listen to the fire radio and dispatch myself to priority one calls. Because the fire department get the calls before our ambulance dispatchers do, a self-dispatched fly car medic helps considerably with the response times. Since I am already…
Hypoxia
Pouring rain and violent wind today in Connecticut. It almost blew our hospital tent off the mountain. I am home now and just finishing up making notifications to EMS services about COVID-positive patients. Curiously, for the first time, one of the notifications was for a patient I was involved with as a paramedic. Normally when…
Easter
I worked the city today, and after a slow start, banged out 5 calls, and then they sent us in. Volume is down, plus today, as a holiday, we get double time and a half. I could have stayed at the base and clocked the last three hours, but I wanted to get home to…
Me and Sponge Bob
SpongeBob torments me in the night. My daughter bursts into my room . “Daddy what are you shouting? What’s wrong?” “Nothing, I’m fine,” I say. “Go back to bed.” With my wife on isolation is another room, only half the bed should be disturbed, but I have torn off the covers, upended the sheets and…
Radio Traffic
“We’re going to need Decon.” “Main Street, use full precautions.” “We have an isolation patient.” “Shortness of breath, fever, just moved here from New York.” “4th Floor apartment, vomiting, fever, use precautions.” “We need resupply, out of gowns.” “Positive screen. Take all precautions.” Patient on corner, just left hospital who wouldn’t test him because they…
Closed Down
A couple weeks ago, they cancelled my daughter’s basketball championships. Her team was in the state semi-finals and had a good shot at winning it all. The championships were going to be in a high school gym where maybe fifty people would come to watch her sixth grade Catholic league team play. The NBA was…
The 5 Second Rule
You know the five second rule. You drop food on the floor and as long as you pick it up before five seconds have passed, you can still eat it without worry of getting sick from the bacteria that was on the floor. That is because the bacteria as a fellow living species gives us…
Twenty-Five Years
I hit my twenty-fifth anniversary at work last month. Twenty-five years full time as a paramedic. I am sixty-one years old now and feeling the wear and tear, particularly in these last two years. I don’t sleep well at night. My hearing is shot. I need a stronger prescription for my reading glasses (which I…
A Ravine in Winter
There is a picture in the Hartford Courant of Mark Jenkins talking with police officers looking as forlorn as I have ever seen him. They stand next to yellow tape sectioning off an area of woods just off Park Terrace where down a small ravine a man has been found dead. The paper describes the crime scene…
Missing
She frequented a neighborhood park near the hospital. I’d see her times smoking a cigarette while she sat on the playground swings. Many nights, she slept on cardboard by the fence, sometimes she tied a tarp from the fence down to the grass to provide shelter on rainy nights. She was tall and gawky with…
Two Man Dead Lift
This was sent to me by an old medic. This is how stretchers were when I started in 1989. In the days of the dead lift, careers in EMS were much shorter than they are now. I remember each new stretcher innovation as they arrived, and fought against them all, but within days was sold…
Sunrise on Albany Avenue
Judge Rules for Safe Injection Site
A federal judge ruled yesterday that a nonprofit group in Philadelphia’s effort to open a safe injection site where people can use drugs under medical supervision does not violate the federal crackhouse statutes prohibiting the operation of a space “for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing or using controlled substances.” U.S. District Judge Gerald McHugh wrote: “The ultimate…