Bart Simpson is in his parent’s Subaru parked to the side of a gas station in Hartford, Ct near the highway ramps. The car is running, in drive, his foot is on the brake. He is slumped forward against the wheel. This has aroused the attention of passerbys who have called 911. An ambulance arrives…
I have been writing much lately about sorrow and despair in Hartford, so I thought I would take a break, and lifting my eyes up from the heroin bags on the ground, look at some of the beauty of Hartford as seen on the city’s murals.
A 10-year-old girl was shot in the face in Hartford yesterday. She wasn’t walking down the street or riding a school bus, she was in her own home when the bullets raked through the front door. She doesn’t live on a busy street like Park Street or Albany Avenue where criminal activity can be going…
Hartford Cops: Rash of Heroin Overdoses Part of Upward Trend After a lull of a few weeks, the overdoses started going out again this week. An hour after I left work Tuesday night, there was a triple OD that is widely being reported in the news, along with two other overdoses not long after. The…
Some heroin dealers in Hartford have switched up their drug stamps to celebrate Halloween. Drug Users are being treated to brands such as Killer Clowns, Freddy vs. Jason and Casper (the Friendly Ghost). The question for the users on Halloween (and one every day they buy): is their special envelope a trick or treat?Are they…
In the Looney tunes cartoon, Ralf E. Wolf and Sam the Sheepdog go to work each morning, exchanging greetings while punching the clock. “Morning, Ralph,” the dog says. “Morning, Sam,” the wolf replies. Then it is down to business. The wolf spends his hours trying to steal the sheep and the sheepdog spends his hours…
I have been writing much lately about heroin with the backdrop of Hartford’s Park Street which is one of many epicenters of the current heroin epidemic. Today, I am going to briefly change the backgrounds. Instead of Park Street with its back drop of bakeries, bodegas, Spanish restaurants, and young tattooed men, with crooked baseball…
I mentioned that we had a patient this week who said she stayed away from the white powdered heroin because of her fear of Fentanyl. Powdered Fentanyl is white and very hard to distinguish visually from white powdered heroin. A number of years ago drug dealers started enhancing their heroin with Fentanyl. Fentanyl is stronger…
I only went to one heroin overdose this week and one PCP overdose. The heroin overdose was on Park Street in the South end and the PCP was on Capen in the north end. You get get called for an overdose on Park Street and it is pretty much always heroin. You get called for…
I have been injured seriously enough to miss work twice in the last two decades. Â Neither time was I injured on the job. Â The first injury was playing softball on our ambulance team (back when we had one). IÂ went from first to third on a single, and as the third base coach signaled me to…
Two weeks ago, it was Black Jack. This week it is OMG. Oh, My G**. The woman lays on a parking lot sidewalk behind the school. Her face is blue and she is only breathing one or two times a minute. She is wearing tight spandex and bright pink tank top. She has tattoos on…
I did three heroin ODs on one shift last week. Another medic did four in a shift the day before. Lots of OD calls going out. All three of these ODs used the same brand. Black Jack. For years, dealers in the Northeast have been branding their supply, stamping or printing it on the glassine…
The heroin epidemic continues unabated in Hartford. I called the time on two fatal overdoses in a recent week. Both men were in their 40’s. One was in a low-rate motel. He sat by the window in his breeze-less room, the curtains pulled just enough so he could see the cars rolling past on the…
One of my greatest joys on the job is the opportunity to play cat burglar. By this I do not mean the opportunity to break into homes to steal jewelry and works of art. I am talking about the chance to break into homes to rescue people (with police permission). The person has fallen and…
As each of us will ultimately find ourselves before our god, many will find themselves before their paramedic. But unlike their god, their paramedic does not sit in judgement. We treat all of our patients the same. That is the creed. The man in the Mercedes Benz gets the same care as the man pushing…
Conrad Castonguay died this week at 81. In 1992-93, he helped teach my paramedic class. Pharmacology was his specialty. He wasn’t a paramedic, but he knew what he was talking about and we paid him mind. He was a challenging instructor, and took his work seriously. It became an honor for paramedics to say they…
When I started in EMS, the term “EMS Sports Pages” referred to the Obituaries. It was where we turned to see how our critical patients did. Get pulses back on a cardiac arrest or bring in an unresponsive patient with multiple trauma from an MVA or a seizing patient with left sided paralysis, you checked…
A new article* published in Prehospital Emergency Care (on-line April 8, 2016), concludes that Basic EMTs can safely give subcutaneous Fentanyl for acute pain in the prehospital setting. *Subcutaneous Fentanyl: A Novel Approach for Pain Management in a Rural and Suburban Prehospital Setting BLS EMTs in Canada received a four hour training course, and then…
I wrote this a couple months ago when I was feeling really burned out. The burnout passed, as I knew it would, and I am back to myself, so I can post it now. (1) I have been responding to 911 calls for twenty-six years, 21 as a full time paramedic with a busy urban commercial…
This past year has been a banner year for new EMS books, memoirs and fiction. Each book that reaches an audience outside of the EMS world increases the public’s understanding of what we do and hopefully, increases their respect for us. Here is a roundup of recent books. Lights and Sirens: The Education of a…