I used to get upset when the call was for an old fall or fall yesterday or fall last night. The same when I’d get called for abdominal pain and a person says they have been having the pain for two weeks or three months. I got upset because the nature of the call was…
Drones
I am one of my own favorite comedians. Perhaps you have seen me on the Johnny Carson show? No, perhaps not then. Sometimes I really crack myself up. I am easily entertained. I don’t perform publicly, other than in small bit roles for my partner and patient while on the job. My latest gag has…
Maps
When I was a boy my father used to bring home maps for my sister and me. We would spread them out on the floor and he would pay us a nickel for every river we found or every mountain range or sea. As a result of this practice, I always did well in geography…
Straight Blade
We are called for the violent psych and told to stage for police. Years ago we would have just been called for the violent psych. Once we got there, if we needed the police we would call for them, or depending on how the call came in, they might already be there. This morning the…
A Younger Man
The snow started in the afternoon earlier and harder than expected. I got the kids inside with some DVD’s and pizza. I cracked the thermostats up to give us some heat in the event we lost power that evening, which was the worry with the autumn trees still being so full of leaves and the…
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…
Moment of Truth
Your patient is unresponsive. They are also cool, and diaphoretic. You are thinking they are diabetic. You have pricked their finger to get a capillary blood glucose. This is the moment of truth. You are actually hoping for the reading to come back LO or at least less than 50. If it does, you relax,…
Storm Watch
A month ago, I swapped out of my Sunday shift for Saturday. Of course I had no idea then that a hurricane would be forecast to strike our state on Sunday. (My reason for swapping was so I could enter a mile open water swim in Boston Harbor called “Sharkfest.”) I will admit like most…
Doctor’s Offices
Doing calls in doctor’s offices can be tricky. “Do you start working the patient in the office or wait till you get out to the ambulance?” Here are the assumptions. You are a transport medic so you have the stretcher with you. The patient is not in cardiac arrest or so sick that they will…
Working Man
I’ve been fighting a respiratory infection for the last week. Every now and then I have a coughing fit that brings up lingering mucus from my chest. I have some medicine I can take to keep the cough under control if it gets too bad — when my cough is so rough patients offer me…
Come on, People
The young woman says her knee has given out. She thinks it is dislocated, but you can’t tell because you can’t even see the knee. She says she is five hundred pounds. She can’t get up on her own. One ambulance crew can’t do it. Try pulling her up by the arms and you will…
Your First Day
It’s your first day here. You might be a new volunteer, a paramedic student, or a fresh hire. This may be your first time in an ambulance or maybe you worked ten years for a service in another state. You might be nervous or you could have so much confidence you had trouble fitting your…
Astray
I read a recent article in the New York Times that disturbed me. A Crash. A Call for Help. Then, a Bill tells the story of a 70-year old man in Chicago who was in a minor motor vehicle accident, not his fault, who was nevertheless forced to pay the local fire department $200 for their response. The…
Jesus Took the Bullet
The call is for a GSW. The address is familiar. I did another gun shot there many years ago. When we pulled in that night, everyone was running out the doors, while we ran in. The D.J. was on the ground, shot in the chest. He’d spun his last disc. But this time it’s different….
A Lift
I worked with one of my old partners last week. Jerry and I used to do the dedicated Hartford car. Jerry is just a few years younger than me, although he doesn’t use Grecian formula like I do so he has had a mane of silver hair for almost as long as I have known…
Change
They wrote everyone up for not doing the new ambulance maintenance checklist. A couple weeks ago, they started handing out the checklist. Lights, motor oil, mileage, cleanliness, tire pressure. Scratches, dents. You name it, it is on there. I did it the first couple days and then stopped doing it because they stopped passing it…
The Grand Tour
You drive the streets of the city or towns where you work and you go by houses, intersections, businesses where you have done calls. The longer you are at it, the more memory pins are dropped on your street map. Over here on our left was the great lumber yard fire. I sat on that…
City Life
Two months back in the city and I have already given more Narcan and Haldol than in the last two years in the suburbs. I like the morning routine of punching in, getting the narc keys and computer, grabbing the ALS gear, checking it out fully, and then walking out to the ambulance and going…
Last Supper
85-year-old drives his Plymouth to the diner out by the highway every night at seven where he eats his dinner, then walks back out the door and gets in his car to head home. I stand by the open driver’s door and look at the man, who stares at me vacantly. His skin is cool…
The Heart of Health Care
You have these moments in life. Sometimes you see something for the first time. Other times you are just reminded of basic truths. This was such a moment for me when you see the world very clearly.