EMS NEWS

This is pushing the limits on a bloggable experience, but I’m perplexed.

Ever since the weather has been warm enough for it, we’ve been opening the windows. Every window and window blinds was fairly clean except for the one facing north in our 2nd bedroom. I kind of ignored it until about 5 minutes ago because I thought it was just dusty. Turns out it was caked in about a half centimeter (I’m proving my intelligence by using metric) of MUD. It was like someone was digging a hold and threw a chunk up to the 2nd story and it landed inside my window sill. Of course, it could also be 10 years of rotting spider eggs for all I know.

Something to think about.

I am notorious for carrying nothing on my person except for a pen when I go to work. So many people at my job feel it’s necessary to carry trauma shears, tape, bandage scissors, a pager, a cell phone, a wallet, a stethoscope, and other garbage on calls. I can only attribute it to a lack of confidence. If your “jump bag” or whatever you want to call it doesn’t have what you need inside of it, why even bother having one?

I go through my bag each morning, so if I ever need a piece of equipment, I can reach for it, without having to carry it on me for 24 hours. I have never been in a situation where I’ve needed something that I didn’t have with me on a call an couldn’t find an alternative.

Pens seem to materialze out of nowhere when I need one. The only thing I really can’t forget on a call is my glasses, because I can’t read house numbers at all without them anymore. And I can’t afford Lasik on an EMS budget.

Last shift we were called 911 to a large park for a child having an asthma attack at the soccer field.

PD arrived before us and advised someone would direct us to the patient. The officer on scene didn’t sound too worked up.

We arrive on scene and are met by the coach, who didn’t seem worked up either. The kid was waaaay on the other side of the field, probably 4-500 feet from the street, with no easy way to get the ambulance back there. So we parked and grabbed our bag and headed over with the coach. As we’re passing the sidelines with the parents, some lady starts yelling at us to “run, or something!”

We both kind of looked at her, and ignored it. Then she starts rattling on about how this is an EMERGENCY! and they are BREATHING FOR HIM! which they clearly are not since I can see the kid sitting on the ground across the field. She gets the idea that we aren’t going to run across the goddamn field just because she said so, and shuts up.

We get to the kid, and he’s having a moderate asthma attack. No big deal. We throw him on a neb and talk to the family. I tell my partner to keep an eye on things because I think I can get the rig over to the kid instead of carrying him.

I start walking back to the truck at a decent pace. Not running, but not wasting any time either.

I cross the sideline on the other side of the field again, and now some other doughboy-in-socks-and-sandals-parent wants to be a tough guy.

“Do you guys always move this slow?”

I ignore him, and keep walking.

“Oh, I guess you’re just too cool to care about anything!”

Well, I take a lot of shit from people as private EMS, but I’ll be Goddamned if I’m gonna let some untrained layman asshole tell me how to do my job.

So, never breaking stride, I said something to the effect of “If you’re so concerned, why didn’t you run over there and carry him to us?”

The guy said something I didn’t understand about doing my job.

I drive the ambulance over to the kid, who is now doing much better, and the family thanks us profusely (not having heard the handwringers on the other side of the field)

I just don’t understand. Do people expect their doctors to run into the room when they have an appoinment? Aside from ER, have people EVER witnessed a person in the medical field run? I don’t run unless there is some critical piece of equipment in the truck and my patient can’t wait to get out there. (Suction or something.)

What made it even more infuriating was that every one of these pudgy american soccer parents were sitting their fat asses in lawn chairs not lifting a goddamn finger to improve what was a catatrophe in their minds and expecting 2 strangers to sprint across a muddy soccer field to save the day.

Also, our total time on scene was 12 minutes.

I don’t know if it was the Venti Frap or the medium cookie dough blizzard that made me realize that I need to lose some weight today. Oh, and the pizza for breakfast and lunch.

I would really like to get some phentermine and start exercising at work and on my off days, but it’s just so daunting, knowing that I’ll have to do it for months to see any appreciable results. I guess at it’s core it is a willpower problem.

I’m a big believer in popping pills though, even if they are natural weight loss pills and not the glorius phentermine.

Like it or not, the parent-child relationship will (and should) be give and take, with the child being the taker and the parent being the giver. I don’t make the rules.

So it’s a bit off-putting that my mother has been dropping not-so-subtle hints and wanting some of her furniture back that she gave me several years ago. It’s not like it is teak furniture or anything. It’s part of a bedroom set that doesn’t even have all the pieces anymore, and it’s not particularly nice. On top of that, she has no room for it.

She also made a comment to my wife about taking our leather sofas if we don’t want them. I’m not down with that. Should I feel this way?

We’ve been leeching free cable from the apartment complex because they never shut it off from the previous tenant.  Last week they “upgraded” the system, which knocked us from 60 channels down to about 40.  Among the casualties was my favorite channel.  The Dicovery Channel.  No more Cash Cab, Deadliest Catch, How It’s Made, and Dirty Jobs. 

The History Channel is still around, but it’s just not the same. 

And they don’t show nearly as many WWII documentaries as they used to.

About once or twice a month we get a call asking us to locate some piece of clothing or an ID card or jewelry that a patient lost.  99.99% of the time we don’t have it.  Do you know why we don’t have it?  Because our ambulance is a very very small box and anything that is out of place in it is immediately noticed.  A gold chain is going to stand out among the blue vinyl or diamond plate flooring.  There just isn’t anywhere for these things to go because an ambulance is made to be easy to clean, so there aren’t many nooks and crevices. 

My theory on this is simple.  The hospital lost this stuff, and the nurses don’t want the patients to get nasty with them, so they blame us, because we aren’t there to defend ourselves.  (Or the patients never had it to begin with, which is also common.)  They have been in the hospital for a week, but the item just HAS to have been lost in the ambulance.

So please keep this in mind next time you are asked to locate an item from a patient you took in a week ago. 

One of the more common reasons we are called to someone’s house is old age.  Old age is not an emergency, but when you’ve got 2 old people living together and they can’t do things for one another, we have to step in and drag someone to the hospital.  These calls almost always come in first thing in the morning or late afternoon, which is fine. 

Of course, no one is going to say “my husband is old” when I ask what the problem is, so we usually hear something like he’s “going downhill”, or “I can’t get him to the bathroom”.  (at least half our calls start with someone on the toilet.)

Anyhow, last shift we got a “going downhill” call.  I looked at my Blancpain watch and saw that it was 1:00am.  Who decides at 1 in the morning that their 90 year old husband is suddenly too much to handle?  Surely he was a handful at 7, or at noon, or probably anytime in the past 30 years.

FNG’s are ever-present at my job.  If you don’t know what an FNG is, think “new guy”.  Because I’m stuck at a private service for the next few months, we get brand new EMT’s every month, usually 5 or more.  We have huge turnover because hauling around dialysis and hospital discharge patients is degrading, thankless, stressful, and torture on your body.  For a lot of people this is their first EMS job, and most of them have a really idealistic view of the job.  What we like to call an amby baby.

“I’m gonna save the world, and people are gonna love me for it!”

This attitude usually dies in the first month or two when they realize we are an abused taxi service for people on government aid.  Our company ran about 50,000 transports last year, you just can’t keep up the level of optimism when you encounter that many people.

We get a company newsletter every 2 weeks, and they include little writeups from new employees.  They are usually short blurbs.  ’I'm Joe Somebody and I’ve been an EMT for 2 days and I’m looking forward to working with you all’, or something along those lines. 

This last edition of the newsletter had an epic FNG letter.  It is a full half page of optimism and vigor which will be crushed soon, eventually leading to a failed EMS career and a story to his children about how “It just wasn’t what I thought it would be”. 

I will now transcribe it for you.  Names have been changed.

My first shift ever as a Medic began with Stacy Smith training me in Unit 920 on December 10, 2007.  As I made the 10-41 call to dispatch, Stacy assured and guided me.  throughout my OJT, Stacy did her very best for me, and I did my very best also.  Since that moment, I, like you, have been 10-76, with a helpful partner, “On Schedule”, and I know now that I am in the right place, at the right time.  Thanks, Stacy, and thanks to all of you that I have worked with (Bob, Tom, Mary) and the others who I have simply met, for welcoming me, for your guidance, and for helping to make my first month a success!

As an introduction, please let me tell you why I’m here and, at the same time, thank you for your partnership.  I’m 42 years old - and I’ve had a lot of past experiences, a lot of past successes.  I know about my own personal responsibility and that only I am responsible for taking the actions necessary for my success, my happiness - and I know that my happiness is a result of taking action on my values.  I relish this time in my life, this new phase, because I am definitely taking action on my values.  Those values include helping others - our patients, partnership, leadership, flexibility, time-off to enjoy other pursuits, opportunity for more responsibility - its all here.  I’m in the right place, at the right time.   

A few moments have been super-rewarding.  It’s been great to give our patients comfort.  Their response has been extremely rewarding!  The look in their eyes when they realize I really do care very much has been hugely, hugely rewarding!  I’ve had a couple opportunities to make good decisions under pressure during Code 3’s.  What a great rush!  I can’t wait to begin paramedic school and continue with this pursuit.

Thanks for my first month, partners.  I look forward to partnering with you next.  When we work together, we’ll share our stories and learn more about each other.  I look forward to that.  When we meet, you can ask me about my post 9/11 anti-terrorism work or about Nathan, my unbelievably beautiful 7-year-old son.  And I look forward to hearing about you, Partner.  Until then, I’ll be 10-76 or 10-8, in the right place, at the right time.  Thanks!  I’m 10-8.

First of all, if you are 42, you are too old to start new in this line of work.  You’ll never get onto a fire department because of age limits, so you’ll be stuck in private services.  There is no chance for advancement or saving lives or being a hero.  Second, if you’re so successful, why are you working on a basic ambulance for $10 an hour at age 42? 

Third, could you be any creepier with your talking of your “partners” and wanting to partner with everyone and share stories and be all Kum-Bay-Ah?  Seriously.  Partners are an arbitrary assignment based on whose availability matches your own.  No one wants to sit in an ambulance for 12 hours and hear stories about your life and play 20 questions.  Especially not a new EMT whose stories will be as exciting as dried mud.

Also Code 3’s are not exciting.  Code 3 is any response that is lights and sirens.  If someone calls with the flu, that’s a lights and sirens response.  Wowee sockem, that’s thrilling.  All of my responses are code 3, and I can’t remember the last time I got excited about turning the lights on. 

In conclusion, this guy is either trying to get into a management position, hopelessly lost, or trying to convince himself that he didn’t just make a HUGE mistake in his career move.  I’m guessing the latter, but the whole “PARTNER!!!” talk makes me think he’s just an excited pervert who will be caught molesting a patient in the back of the ambulance on a midnight shift.

That’s not a typo in the title.  I’ve been playing Warcraft III at work.  Anyhow, speaking of work, we’ve been reorganizing things at our base somewhat.  We shuffled around the tv, moved some chairs, and moved the beds.  We’re still trying to figure out what kind of desk we need to ask the boss for, because ours is covered in some kind of dried rubber that was spilled.  (The desk was here when we moved in.)

We’re not going to ask for a high-end executive desk or anything, but considering that our company does over $15 million in revenue every year, I think he can spring for a decent desk.  He bought our recliners from a cancer treatment facility that closed, and the dye on the leather rubs off on your clothes.  The beds are 4 year old futons that have been broken for 3.5 years.  The rest of the furniture was scraped together by the employees.

I don’t think weare asking for much considering we spend 1/3 of our lives here.

Generally speaking, I always give the elderly the benefit of the doubt when it comes to wisdom and experience.  A person who has made it to 80 and still has their marbles should know a lot more about life than I do.  They have seen children and grandchildren raised to adulthood.  They have seen wars that I’ve only read about.  They’ve forgotten more than I’ve ever learned.

So tell me why I just had to explain to an 80 year old how to stop a scrape on her leg from bleeding.

I’m not talking about a deep cut, or even a small cut.  She scraped her leg getting into a tow truck, andthe best thing she could think to do was to pull her sock up over it and walk aroudn the house doing chores.

Bandaging it, laying down on her foam mattress, and elevating her leg was a fresh new concept, and I’m not sure she fully grasped it by the time we left.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I have a bad habit of washing my clothes with ink pens in the pockets.  I’m so paranoid about it anymore that I check all my pockets and yet I still manage to do it at least once every 2 months.  Has anyone invented a pen that can be washed without discharging huge amounts of ink into my good pair of jeans? 

Failing that, is there any way to get ink out of clothing? 

The strange thing is that I’m really good about always carrying a pen at work, and I feel like God is punishing me for having the proper equipment for my job.

Our uniform at work consists of a brightly colored polo with a big iron on logo on the back, combined with pants that we must purchase, and boots that we must purchase.  Oh, and a winter coat that we must purchase.  Isn’t the point of a uniform that everyone looks alike?  When everyone’s pants and boots and undershirts are different, we looks like a bunch of disorganized KFC employees.  My undershirt is from volcom clothing because I’m hardcore like that.

My polo shirt is covered in ink spots because I washed it with a pen, and it’s missing all the buttons.  I also wear a dark blue coat at night because it has reflective striping on it, and I’d rather not be hit by a car while working on the street.  

I have gained mucho weight this year, mostly my fault, but also working 24 hours shifts at a base with no refrigerator has done it’s fair share.  How am I supposed to store breakfast lunch and dinner at room temp and not have it be nasty? 

I brought Corrin’s elliptical to my apartment but Ican get into a regular routine with it right now.  I think I’m gonna try and get serious about it after our big move.

When we first moved into this base we went to a garage sale and they had 2 pieces of fitness equipment for $25 each.  One was a NordicTrack, and the other was a bike.  We opted for the bike, and it actually sees use on day we dont get slammed.

Anyhow, my plan is to shed some weight in 2008.  Who is with me?

Here in the midwest, it’s winter and that means dry skin.  I am moisturizing everyday and I still feel like sandpaper.  It’s uncomfortable when it hurts to smile. 

Of course if we moved to Florida that wouldn’t be a problem.  I was a hot mess in Florida in October, sweating my booty off and chafing in unusual places.  The humidity there is a definite no-no for me.  I would totally buy 10 dehumidifiers if I had to live there. 

That said, I still am gonna go back next year and lounge by the sand-bottom pool.