Last night I went to a going away party for an old partner of mine. I was glad there was a good turnout. In EMS people work at a place for years. They come in to work everyday, work long hours, and give it their best. They become a part of the life, of the…
Escaped Mental Patient
A guy escapes from a mental hospital, hitchhikes to his friend’s house, then sits on the porch waiting for the friend to get home. Suddenly, he starts to feel his neck tighten up, and his face and arms. he can’t move them. Panicking, he staggers out into the road, lurching in and out of traffic,…
Don't Quit the Day Job
Guy goes to the paint store, buys some white paint. Driving back to his mother’s house in the north end of the city he is driving through a green light when bam. He gets slammed by a car being chased by the police. The other car rolls. A fire hydrant is hit. Water sprays everywhere….
My Sunshine/Little Daddy
A three year-old hits his head. The cops are questioning the mother when we get there. It looks like an accident. The kid just banged his head. He didn’t lose conciousness — he just hurts when he moves his head. His mother has to be six two and well over four hundred pounds — she…
Modern Medicine
“Did you hear what happened to Art?” “No?” Art is my old partner. I am a little concerned by the urgency of the question. “He had an MI.” “What?” “He had an MI.” “Is he okay? What happened?” “He wasn’t feeling well. He and his partner were at the hospital. They’d just dropped a patient…
Anthropophagi
an•thro•poph•a•gi — Pronunciation: (an”thru-pof’u-jī”, -gī”). She has beautiful blue eyes, a slender woman with long blonde hair who looks like at one time she was very pretty, but she has been sleeping on a mattress in a house that smells like urine. She says she has back pain and has been hurting too much to…
An Encounter
It’s been snowing all day — a blizzard. Eight or nine inches on the ground already. Now it’s night and I’m hungry, so we drive out through the snow to get a hot pizza. At the pizza shop, I notice a grey faced woman say hello to me as I go in the door, then…
Compressions
Last night one of our long-time members came in at ten to relieve the on duty crew. He has been an EMT for over twenty years and helps teach the EMT class here in the suburbs. He heard about the code we did yesterday and talked to the new kid about it. “I wanted to…
49 Years
The man is breathing like a fish cast up on land. He is quiet, then with all the effort of his chest, he gasps. He’s quiet, then he gasps again. His wife says he started losing conciousness an hour ago. He has terminal lung cancer. It has all been very quick. It started with back…
Credit
I’m precepting a nice young man who is very on the ball. He knows his protocols better than I do. I ask him the dose for Cardizem. He rattles it out. .25mg/kg first dose. .35mg/kg second dose after fifteen minutes if the first dose didn’t work. Once the rate slows, you run a drip at…
Ruby
We’re called for a fall at a private home. When we pull up my partner says he’s been here before. He gets on the radio and cancels the district car. “What if she’s a big lady and we need a lift?” “She’s a little thing,” he says. We go to the front door. It’s locked….
Assault
We’re called for a domestic in an apartment complex. Minor injuries. The police are already there. They lead a man out of the front door. He is a big muscled man, six three at least with linebacker shoulders. Except he walks with a cane and I see a brace of his left foot. “What happened?”…
Cath Lab
A lot of EMS is bullshit. People using 911 for runny noses, sprained wrists, and stomach aches from eating too much greasy chicken. Then there are the legitimate calls like strokes and traumas, but too often in those calls there is really not much we can do to fix them. They are dead from getting…
David
I got an email titled “Sad news.” It is from my friend Tom. “Hate to break this to you in an e-mail, but David died yesterday. He was found in his home when he did not report to work, dead of an apparent heart attack. I will forward funeral information in case you can attend….
Precepting
I’m assigned a paramedic student. And while I love students, I’m not too happy to be precepting this one. She is as close to clueless as you can get and still be allowed to ride. I precepted her a couple weeks ago. She talked a good game so I figured it would be an easy…
In the Dark
We’re called for a stabbing. Its dark and when we pull up on scene, we can see officers with guns drawn. We stage and wait the word to go in. It’s hard to tell what’s going on, then another cop comes running out into the street right for us. We step out. “You’re going to…
Codes
“Wife says patient stopped breathing.” I know this one is going to be a code. Just yesterday we were dispatched to a “Cardiac arrest,” but it wasn’t a code. It rarely is when it comes in like that. People don’t know their terminology. Every time we get dispatched for a cardiac arrest and it turns…
Behind Every Door
I’m standing in triage with my patient when I find myself looking at a man standing unsteadily by the entrance to the ER. A security guard has his hand on the man’s upper arm, both holding him up and keeping him from walking away. The guard tells the nurse. “I found him outside. What room…
The Stink
About Tuesday I noticed a foul smell in the ambulance — a smell like someone had left a meat sandwich under the seat or a mouse had died somewhere in the woodwork. We left the ambulance outside with the doors open for two hours, but it didn’t help. It was a nasty smell, sometimes it…
Daily Special
We get called for a fall at the local fast food chicken restaurant. Back in the kitchen, the woman is laying on the ground between the fryers and the food prep table. She’s maybe twenty-two, but a big woman — looks like she’s been dining on the fast food fare most of her life. I’m…