Ma

Ma is back on the Thursday crew. I don't normally write too much about my partners because of confidentiality and the newsness of the internet, but I will write a little about her today.

She is seventy-eight years old and is back after her second hip replacement. She has been working with me on Thursdays for probably five years or so. She has been with the volunteer service maybe twenty-five. At one point my Thursday crew was a quarter of a milleneum in age. We had Ma, a new male EMT who was a spry 76, a 50 year old woman and me. Total age 250 years.

Ma can't do everything she used to do, but she does a fine job of handling the clipboard, getting the information such as patient demographics and medications, then while I treat the patient in the back of the ambulance, she holds their hand and talks to them. She grew up in the city on what now is one of the biggest drug streets. One afternoon we had a patient, a young man who lived on the same street that she grew up on. This young black kid and old Italian lady talked all the way to the hospital about their street. The kid was riveted by her stories of walking to school and playing in the nearbye park after dark. An interesting ride in the ambulance.

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Do three calls. The morning is slow, then we do a two patient MVA. At about four we get sent to a car into a tree up in a wooded section of town. A seventy-four year old man hit a deer, then went off the road into a tree. Major impact. Fortunately he had an air bag. he was responsive to repeated shouting only, had a gaping wound in the back of his head, chest tenderness, and back pain as well as a deep lac on his leg. I had the young man, who fainted last week, with us and he did a great job of helping me get the guy out of the car, and then carry him along with police and fire up the hill back to the road. Our scene time was only 9 minutes, and while MA tried to talk to the patient and get any responses out of him she could, the kid did everything I asked on the way in. I gave him sissors and told him to cut off all the guys clothes. I had him do a blood pressure, and then hand me blood tubes and then tape to tape down my IVs. Then he was Mr. Clean with the gloves, cleaning solution and towels, giving the back of the rig which was quite bloodied from the guy's head wound a good scrub down.

On the way back ten minutes before crew change, we were sent to a chest pain where fortunately my relief met me as we were about to transport to a distant hospital. I was glad to get home at a reasonable hour.