Just Ducky

Back at work. Twelve hours in the city. Had a rider -- the ER nurse paramedic student who has riden with me before. We didn't do anything exciting. She handled all the calls. I hoped we would get her something really challenging, but no luck. She is riding with me again next Monday for twelve hours. Maybe that will be the day. I think we did seven calls -- the only transfer was an ALS transfer -- a woman whose pacemaker had stopped functioning, and who had a temporary pacemaker inserted at a small hospital. We transportered her to one of the bigger hospitals for placement of a permanent pacemaker. The call didn't involve much more than monitoring her.

Other calls were for a two year old whose diaper seemed filled with ketchup. The mother was concerned it was blood, but it just looked like tomato paste. Very strange. The girl was fine, pain free, normal, laughing girl. The Children's hospital put her in the waiting room.

We did a seven year old who hurt his back coming off the end of a slide. There was a motor vehicle accident with no injuries. A twenty-nine year old woman who had been drinking and had cirrohsis, drank and pulled some type of medical tube out of her side because she was tired of having a tube sticking out of her. A woman in a nursing home had surgical stitches removed and a day later felt pain.

***

I didn't mention it two weeks ago, but one of the long-time triage nurses retired at one of the hospitals. She gave me her address and I promised to stay in touch. It will be very strange not seeing her. On one hand life always goes on. Everyone is replaceable in EMS so much so that people might go out on disability and no one notice that they are gone. Still it is hard to imagine not seeing her. You'd ask her how she was and she'd always reply sarcastically "Just ducky."

I hope she enjoys her retirement. I told her her I thought she'd get bored and come back, but she said never.