Repairman

My relief didn't show up last night at ten, and they were unable to get anyone out to cover me until eleven-thirty. I ended up spending the night in the bunkroom because I had to be back at six this morning. How sweet was it to get in bed, hear the tones go off, and not have to respond for the elderly patient with a high fever.

***

Got up at eight with a decent night's sleep under my belt -- I didn't sleep perfectly with the radio traffic -- but at least it was rest.

Got a call before I had even put my boots on. A seven year old who had a seizure for the first time. It was a little odd. He seemed like he had a slight fever, he had been having headaches for two days, his mother described him as shaking and stiff with eyes rolling back into his head lasting one minute, but there was no postictal period, no biting on the tongue, no incontinence. The only off finding was he had a fairly irregular heart rate. I know kids are prone to sinus arrythmia, but he was like two short beats, a long beat, two short beats, a long beat. Odd. The fever is possible, but I haven't heard of many febrile seizures starting at age seven. The shaking and stiffness certainly are indicitive of a seizure. I don't know. Headache, fever, irregular heart rate. Tumor? febrile seizure? syncope? We took him to the kid's hospital.

***

Driving back to town the sun finally broke through after eight days of rain. I could see a rainbow.

***

Continued to work on cleaning the supply closet and then setting up one of the ambulances that was trashed from a recent trip to Texas. The ambulance sent a crew to Texas to help out with Rita, they loaded it with supplies, drove all the way down there to do one transport -- a four hour trip evacuating two nursing home patients. One of the crew ended up in the hospital with dehydration. Anyway, the ambulance never got put back together properly so I worked on that.

***

We got a call for a 38 year old female having chest pain and difficulty breathing. I thought it was going to be BS, but when we got there there was an obese woman very diaphoretic, holding her chest complaining of tightness. I couldn't feel a pulse, although she was mentating okay. She said it had happened twice before where she had gotten this feeling and it had passed, but those times it had never been this bad. I put her on the monitor.

220.

6 of Adenocard took care of it and we had her back down to the 90's in a nice sinus. She was very appreciative. I love this type of call. I feel like a repairman. They call me in an emergency, I come right away bringing all my equipment. I diagnose the problem and fix it on the spot. She was surprised when I said now we still had to take her to the hospital.

***

In the hospital, she asked if chicken wings caused it.

***

There was one other funny moment on scene. She was a big woman and with all the rain her front yard was a muddy mess. We had brought the stretcher across the grass on the way in, but now with her weighing it down, we face a serious problem. Niether of my partners were very strong so the officer helped me lift the stretcher up, but as we looked across the muddy yard toward the ambulance, you could help but imagine the stretcher sinking deep into the mud, and having to get a wreacker to pull us out. The cop looked at the driveway next to the house which is blocked by his cruiser. He looks at the young man on my crew -- a nice, goofy kid -- and says, "Hey, pull my cruiser up a few feet so we can get by." The kid looks over his right shoulder, then over his left shoulder, and when he sees no one there and the cop still looking right at him,he points to his chest and says. "Me?"

"That's right, just pull it up a few feet so we can get by."

With a big grin, he gets in the cruiser and fumbles a moment trying to find the gear.

"Light'em up!" I call, "Hit the siren!" but he is too caught up to hear me.

He sets the car in gear and pulls up. I wish I have a camera to catch the picture.

"I didn't do it, I swear," I say, when he comes back, all smiles. "Got any tickets to the ball?"

***

On the way back from the hospital, we do a minor motor vehicle.

***

Tonight is the union negotiations. I'm tired, but feel I should be there.