I had not worked a city shift in nearly three years since I took my second job as an EMS coordinator. I forgot how much I loved it. I feel like I am back to my roots.
Splinting
Perhaps if I had done what as a new EMT so many years ago I had done, the patient would have been more comfortable. Now, I am not saying take away my morphine and Fentanyl and just give me a pile of splints and cravats, but I am saying I recognize a clear area for improvement.
The Bridge
Please don’t let me slip and fall — I am already halfway across — please I do not wish to plummet to my icy death or to land on the jagged rocks at the river’s edge. If the bridge is to give out, let it break first at the far side and go one board at a time like in the cartoons and let me run fast, one board ahead of disaster. Please no Wyle Coyote falls for me.
Memory
The man has dementia to the point he forgets that he called us. He forgets that he went to the hospital yesterday for the same complaint, forgets that they saw him and sent him home, forgets what they told him about it. “You were the one who called them,” his wife says, after he demands…
Old Paramedics
I have been getting in and out of ambulances for over 20 years now. That means just what it does. Twenty years ago my knees and back and all my bones and joints were twenty years younger than they are today. I’m in good shape, but still, I find now when I get out of…
Paramedics and EMTs
Back in 1995 when I started working fulltime as a paramedic in the city, paramedics got to choose their own partners. This was great for the paramedics and could also be great for the EMT partners. You worked three twelve hour shifts together and you always knew what to expect. You picked someone you were…
My Hollywood Adventure
In 2006, I was asked to be a advisor/possible writer on the TNT show SAVED when the show was green-lighted for 13 episodes. Unfortunately, the money they offered me was less than I was making in 40 hours much less the 80 hours I was working. Had I been younger and less attached, I likely…
Kevin Andrews
In EMS, we cannot help but be shaped by our earliest partners. They are the ones who show us the way. I was lucky in that regard. Kevin Andrews was one of my first partners. This was back in 1989. I was a spanking new EMT — so fresh I didn’t even have my certification…
Second District
It is interesting seeing the streets you spent so many years working on the subject of film. Hartford is a small city, but like its sister cities New Haven and Bridgeport, it has always had one of the highest murder and poverty rates in the nation.
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…
Called In Sick
If I feel like death, like I will never be well again, but I am well hydrated and my pulse is only 72, and my sat is 99%, and my fever barely a 100, what must it feel like to be really sick?
Drug Seeker
So this man is, based on my experience, a drug seeker. This is not a first impression or an instinct. I say this based on seven or eight years of transporting this patient (our service transports the patient anywhere from one to four or five times a month) to multiple hospitals. The calls are not…
STEMI
“What’s a STEMI?” My partner is a retired police officer, who works once a week. He asks because just the day before, his neighbor was whisked off the cardiac cath table just before he was to have a scheduled procedure when the doctor said they had an emergency STEMI coming in. Little does my partner…
Had This Call Before
Obese septic patient from SNF 29 diagnoses including dementialabored breathing, gurgley rhonchi throughoutDiaphoretic, temp of 104.1Doesn’t fit on stretcher, keeps falling to the sideYankeur suctioning thick brown sputumGloves ripElectrodes won’t stay stuckCan’t get an IV.Can’t read the writing on the W10CMED radio on fritz“We didn’t copy your patch, you keep cutting out.”Not regular partner hitting…
The Years
If I ever had a call – a double shooting or a status seizure — where I could look back and say here is where it all came together, then I have forgotten it. What I remember from my earlier years as a medic is not so much one specific call, but rather gradual realizations…
Cold Justice
Australian author and former paramedic Katherine Howell has written her third EMS-related crime thriller, Cold Justice. Like her first two thrillers, Frantic and the Darkest Hour, it is a great read. The books have a constant character in police detective Ella Marconi, who teams with a different paramedic in each book to solve the crime….
Paramedic Awareness
I recieved email this week from a Denver paramedic working to promote paramedic awareness and recruitment, asking me to post a Youtube link. On it there are a number of excellent videos.
Community
Last week I had the privilege of attending a ceremony in which a town received a Heart Safe Community designation, which goes to towns who meet certain criteria in terms of their EMS systems and availability of training, education and public access defibrillators and other factors affecting the Chain of Survival. At this particular ceremony there were…
Youth
The mat outside the apartment door says “Coors Country.” Inside the door there are two empty cases of beer; Bud Light and Heinekin. There are two plastic garbage bags tied up and ready to be taken down to the parking lot dumpster. Straight ahead there is an open kitchen with a bar counter. Lined up…
Up the Stairs
Saturday night. 9:30. A half an hour before I get off after a 16 hour shift. It’s the worst time to get a call. Another fifteen minutes later and my relief would be in and he’d take it, but at 9:30, no such luck. I am definitely getting off late. The call is for a…