So the real post starts about 3 or 4 lines down. I have decided I am just too tired at the end of each shift to post before going to bed... Who knows, maybe this will change but for my first week I took my laptop and wrote my account as I was living it and here is....
Day 1
Friday, September 10, 2010
And the Basic stands alone…
So today was my first day on the truck. My medic’s name is Candace… I was really worried about having a female medic because they can be as Emily says ‘Really yotchy’. Which resulted in many nerves and a semi-hysterical phone call to my brother in law, Chris who happens to be a paramedic. He tried his best to calm my nerves and lift my self esteem, which was lingering down in the 7th circle of hell. Haha. He lifted them and made me feel better… Then we got off the phone. : / I finished getting dressed and making my lunch and headed out with Moa (the Tongan, who looks intimidating, but is about as dangerous as a piece of paper.) For some reason he convinced me we needed to be leave at 10:30, which put us at Post 41 about an hour before his shift. So we stood around talking to the guys who work in materials. They were really nice and made me feel a lot better about the whole experience. So I went out into the garage area where you find your cot, bags and truck… All of which are not all kept together. It was really interesting to see how everything flowed. I met a Basic who was going through her bags and she was really nice and explained how getting your stuff checked out and all put together worked. After she and her Medic took off I read the bulletin board about changes in protocols and materials on the truck… Apparently there is a nation-wide shortage of Epi 1:10,000 this summer. Hmmm… Who knew??
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| This is what the Truck looks like. We were on Truck 93, though. |
So my medic walks in and I know she is mine right off the bat. She is really nice. And has a really cute really short hair cut, which I am thinking of adopting. I probably wouldn’t be able to pull that off though. She has really dark hair and it fits her. So I introduce myself and she takes me over to the trucks and our gear and our Basic… He is special. According to a couple other Basics we ran into through the day, he isn’t good for much except being nice and getting your run sheet. Haha. So Candace showed me where things went in the truck and we went through the bags together. Our Basic, Paul showed me how to work the A/C in the back of the rig and find bottled water at Post 41. Both very important… Some more useful than others. So we go to get the narcs and our box isn’t there. So we meet up with the rig that took our box and give them their’s. Paul goes to ‘help’ and puts the wrong code in the lock box and we get locked out for 15 minutes. So we have to sit and wait.
After everything got taken care of we went and posted for maybe an hour and then we got our first call. Goes out as swollen legs. Joy. Turns out to be the nastiest smelling guy I have ever encountered. 52 y/o homeless Native American male. Hx of HTN, CHF, and type 2 Diabetes. Hasn’t taken his meds in over 2 months. When we get there he actually has CP and left leg pain. So we load him in the back of the rig. It didn’t matter how hard I squeezed his hands… I couldn’t displace enough of that water to feel his bones. And I was given the job of getting the 12-lead and the IV started. He was so dirty Candace and I had to hold the electrodes in place to get the 12-lead. No ST elevation, but he did have a RBBB and frequent PAC’s. So 324 of baby ASA and then an IV before we give nitro. I can’t feel a thing… ANY WHERE!!!! Not even in his AC. Well I see a faint shadow of what I think is a vein so I got for it… and BAM! On my first stick I got it with a 20G. For how long it had been since I had poked somebody I thought I was gonna screw it up for sure, but alas, I STILL GOT IT!!!!! So we give him a H/A with 3 doses of nitro which gets rid of the chest pain. He is now wanting pain meds for the H/A and the HARD-CORE cellulitis he has in left leg… It was DISGUSTING!!!! He had a temp of about 103 as well. So we hand him off to the unhappy nurse who as she put it ‘got stuck with that filthy man’ and went on our way.
While enroute to our next post, we get a call for trouble breathing. We get there and a little old black lady is just about beating her grandson with her purse yelling, ‘I ain’t got no trouble breathing boy… why you call these people to come bother me!!!!’ So we got her to sign a refusal and were off to a 46 y/o male with ALOC. This pt was in a nursing home for a traumatic brain injury due to a MVC a while back, and his LOC was always altered, but today was worse I guess. He had fluid on his lungs and a fever. According to nursing home staff he had been vomiting and had very loose stools (use your imaginations on that one folks). So we get him in the rig, I am looking some place to start a line and nothing can be found by me or my preceptor, so we take a BGL. Which is when I notice that homeboy’s hands are NASTY!!!! So the poor guy was basically a vegetable and couldn’t walk, talk, or do anything for himself and obviously no one else was doing anything for him either. I assume his hands hadn’t been washed or touched in a very, VERY long time, because the skin was so dead and new skin was trying to come through so he was flaking off about 3 mm thick chunks of skin. My stomach turned over. So we take him to the same hospital we took homeless guy, who was still there and according to the nurse wasn’t being very compliant with the staff. Haha. I laugh in their general direction!!!! Then run around for a little while, Paul gets us locked out of the computer so we have to go unavailable for a while until we can get back in the system. His driving was making me and Candace car sick. Slam on the brakes, slam on the gas then on the brakes… ugh, just thinking about it makes me nauseous.
So then we are called to an animal attack. Turns out to be a 2 y/o M has 5 punctures about 1 to maybe 2 mm wide from grandma’s Lab mix. Grandma wasn’t there, mom was making dinner when he walked in covered in blood screaming. She called us because she thought the dog had attacked his neck. There were 2 punctures near his left temple one on his left cheek and 2 more near the corner of his left mouth. So since we were there mom had us transport. Cutest little boy and we brought along his 4 ½ month old little sister, who I was put in charge of. Didn’t bother me at all. XD Dang cute kids!!!! After we left him and his family at the ER with a pissed dad yelling at a grandma who didn’t think she needed to have the dog who just attacked her grandson put down, we respond to a vehicle vs pole in a Wal-mart parking lot. I am of course sitting in the back of the rig and have no clue really where we are going so I am not really learning the city very well. So I don’t know what Wal-Mart we were at. Well he was fine. Vitals were WNL and refused transport.
So I start to get hungry for things that aren’t in my lunch kit around the time we stop posting and aren’t able to get food… just my luck. Then called to a very, VERY well-to-do gated community. 87 y/o F with a Hx of HTN and her BP is high and she has a headache. So her son called us. Well low and behold, good thing he did. Her BP was 210/96. : O So we are in the back and our genius Basic hears her name and asks if she is of this ‘famous’ very rich local family. Candace looks at him and gives him a dirty look and he kinda laughs it off and gets out of the ambulance and gets in the driver seat. Which according to personal experience, is NOT where he belongs when driving code is needed. Deliver her to Oklahoma Heart Hospital without incident. Then we ran across the street to an empty field to pick up a flight crew and PT. She was on about 7 different drips and was taken straight back to the cath lab. She was flown in from South of Norman.
Then…Back on the streets!!!! Where I am trying to sleep in the back of a moving ambulance with what I would feel comfortable calling the ‘World’s Nicest BAD Ambulance Driver’. Well we get our last call of the evening… 77 y/o M fall. This man was probably 6 foot 7 inches tall. I mean a BIG man!!! Had lost his balance and fell on his side and hit the top of his bald head on the side table in the living room. Now these were my kinda people. Picture of John Wayne and President Reagan were on the wall and more 24 packs of Diet Dr. Pepper (aka The Nectar of the Gods) than anyone should ever be allowed to consume in a life time. Poor man had a kyphosis and mild scoliosis and those evil firefighters slapped a C-collar on him and strapped him to a back board… for a fall from a hunched over height. He was not a problem at all. Felt bad for his poor back though. After that, we were at post for about 20 minutes then told to fill up the truck and return to Post 41!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!! That means I got to go home.
Got off about 15 minutes early, found Moa and we headed home. Found a What-a-Burger on the way and stopped to introduce him to the wonder that is a Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit at midnight!!! Gotta love how the 24-hour service and breakfast from 2300 to 1100. Went home, got ready for bed and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.
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