Christmas Shopping

Person in a car not responding parked by side of country road. Sounds like a possible diabetic. It is. Blood sugar 24. Gets an amp of D50. Wakes up. She's 12 weeks pregnant. She's been dropping her sugar almost daily. Has just come from her doctor's office where they discussed the problem. She doesn't want to go to the hospital. She is adament. She's been there several times in recent weeks. Her sugar is up to 169. She eats a few glucose tablets, then signs the refusal. We give her directions back to the route she'd wandered off of. She is late to work. Again.

Visiting nurse makes a visit. The patient complains of chills. She calls the patient's doctor who wants the patient seen at the ER. We get sent lights and sirens. The patient is up walking around. SAT 98% on room air. Good vitals, but she has a cough. Her lungs are a little decreased. We take her to her doctor's hospital, which is a twenty-five minute drive.

I have hot mashed potatoes and peas at the cafeteria, then head back to town.

I spend much of the afternoon Christmas shopping on the internet.

***

Speaking of Christmas shopping, I am reading this awesome book:

People Care: Career-Friendly Practices for Professional Caregivers

Thom Dick is the author of Street Talk, a book of essays that came out about the time I was in EMT school in 1989. It was extremely influential in instructing me in what it meant to be a caregiver. It encouraged me to see the patient as a person, to respect the people I work with, to take the time to be kind, and other important lessons that helped me become a better EMT.

A few years later I heard him speak at an EMS convention and he was fantastic. He got you fired up to go out there and hold old ladies' hands. He made you feel like the work you did, even the mundane parts, was special. I read his book often over the years and it always charged me up. Now I don't pretend to have always lived up to his standards. I know I haven't. But I do try.

His new book seems to be a expansion/complilation of his prior book and the talks he gives all over the country. It is enhanced by cartoons by Steve Berry, who does the I am Not an Ambulance Driver cartoon series.

"When you kneel in front of somebody's granpa who's sitting on his couch and denying his chest pain, you need to recognize the pain he says isn't there, detect the shortness of breath he hasn't mentioned and sense the fear that's absolutely dominating his conciousness. You need to appreciate the fact that his spouse, seated right there next to him, is scared to death she's never going to sleep with him again. And somehow, you need to make everything better in just a few minutes.

These are the dynamics of even the simplest emergency response. They presuppose the presence of gifts in us that not even the greatest teacher can impart -- gifts that unfortunately, come without instructions.

This book is an examination of those gifts and a collection of the instructions that didn't come with them. It's based on the collective experience and wisdom of dozens of professional paramedics and EMTs worlwide who learned to love the lifelong pursuit of helping others.

We hope it helps you to join their number."

- from back cover of book

"People don't remember much about our medicine. But they do remember how we make them feel."
-Thom Dick

"It's not enough to be the most competent EMT you can be. You need to be nice. And it's not enough to be nice. You need to be competent and nice."
-Thom Dick