800,000 Americans dead since 2000. No end in sight. People are dying because they use alone and their drug supply is contaminated. In the age of fentanyl, every bag or counterfeit pill bought on the street could contain a lethal dose. Stopping fentanyl at the border isn’t going to work. The War on Drugs (Interdiction…
Conditions of Employment
Many years ago, a paramedic I know who worked for another company got into a spat with a nurse at a dialysis center. I don’t know the details of the spat. It sounded like nothing more than two people in a bad mood snapping at each other. Nothing that occurred resulted in a suspension or…
Apparition
Tim was working for the company when I started. As tall as me and twice as broad, he was a strong EMT — a good lifter, quiet sense of humor, hard worker, gentle with patients. And if he was standing behind you, no one would think of causing trouble. One night fifteen years ago, he…
Street Lessons
In 2012, I wrote a series called Street Lessons, but I could just as well call it any of the following: Things They Didn’t Teach Me in Paramedic School Things They Might have Taught Me in Paramedic School, but I Was on a Bathroom Break. Oh Shit! Things I Learned The Hard Way Trial and…
Blog Under Construction
I am pleased to announce the relaunch of my blog on a new server. I began this blog almost 20 years ago on the blogger network. Quite a number of years ago, I was recruited to move my blog over to an EMS network, which I did in hopes it would increase my viewership. They…
Old Friends
We used to (25 years ago) pick Darryl up every night around 10:00 PM. He’d call from the pay phone on Barbour Street. He was drunk and cold and wanted a ride to the hospital where they would put him in the waiting room and he would fall asleep in one of the chairs. He…
Falsehood Flies
“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.”- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels *** This week, the San Diego County Sherriff’s Department posted a video purporting to be a deputy overdosing after minimal contact with fentanyl…
Men With Guns
I was a new paramedic. The senior medic briefed me. They took two guys out of a basement apartment with high carbon monoxide readings after a dryer caught on fire. Ones already on the way to the hospital for evaluation. Your patient is the guy over by the building door arguing with the police officer. …
Two Reasons
By all accounts, the opioid overdose epidemic is getting worse. A recent study published in JAMA which analyzed emergency department visits (ED) found overdoses were up 29% from March to October of 2020 versus the same period for the previous year. Opioid overdoses 29% higher in 2020 than before the pandemic: Study Fatal Unintentional Drug…
Dead
As I approach the house with my medic pack over my shoulder and my monitor and isolation bag in my hands, two boys, maybe fifteen or sixteen, stand on the sidewalk out front of the building, and look at me expectantly. “He’s not alive? Is he? Is he still alive?” the shorter one asks. I…
The Door
When I am in the rapid response paramedic fly car, I usually always arrive on scene, before the fire department, before the police, before the ambulance. (Unless, I am requested to stage for a violent psych or an assault if the assailant is still believed to be on scene). I carry with me my paramedic…
Pediatric Cardiac Arrest
I just watched a fantastic and very thoughtful lecture of pediatric cardiac arrest given by Dr. Peter Antevy as part of the Refresh2021 free national registry program, which I encourage everyone in EMS to sign up for. Register for Refresh 2021 When I precepted as a paramedic in 1995, my preceptor told me when we had a…
Thanksgiving
I wrote this post on Thanksgiving 2005. *** It’s Thanksgiving morning. I awake at 5:10, shower and dress, then open up the garage door to see a couple inches of snow on the ground. It’s beautiful, but I hate winter, hate the cold weather, hate driving in snow. When I get to the base, I can see…
Special Glass
This week I received in the mail special glasses I ordered from the back of an old comic book. They enable me to see COVID. He is a tiny little green monster with a coat of suction cups. He is not just one fellow, but an army of millions of little green monsters. I sit…
A Simple Dream
Twenty-seven years ago, in a retaliatory shooting, a man in Hartford’s north end opened fire with an automatic weapon, killing his target. He was sentenced to fifty years in prison. He left at home a baby daughter, *** I get called for the unconscious. I arrive first and climb windy wooden stairs to the third…
Mate
Welfare check. The superintendent lets us in. The apartment is a poor man’s hoarderville, open boxes and dirty clothes stacked as high as the unwashed dishes in the sink. The man is sitting at a table with his head in his hands; a chess board in front of him. For a moment, I fear he…
Passengers
Friday night in the city on a dead end street. Light beams out of the ambulance’s open back doors. Inside the EMT spreads a clean white sheet on the black stretcher mattress. He hits the exhaust button on the wall, and then exits from the side doors. My masked patient steps up into the back where…
Sunday Morning Coming Down
On the Sunday morning sidewalkWishing, Lord, that I was stoned‘Cause there’s something in a SundayMakes a body feel alone.“Sunday Morning Coming Down” – Kris Kristofferson Twenty-six people in Connecticut died of overdoses on the four Sundays of this past April. Twenty-one males. Five females. One was aged 15-24, eight were 25-34, six 35-44, four 45-54,…
Assassin
I am on my stomach intubating, staring down the throat of a still warm body, looking at the vocal chords. COVID is invisible, but I imagine him there behind the folds, taunting me, giving me double barreled middle fingers, then unleashing a dragon’s breath torrent of viral load, a hot water cannon of death and…
Narcania
There is a cartoon hero named Narcania created by the same guy who wrote Lil’Dope Fiend Overdose Prevention Guide. In the mini comix, Narcania rescues people who have overdosed and gives them new life. As one character who has been resuscitated remarks, “I don’t know if there is anything worth living for, but at least now,…