Towel Rolls

Got to work this morning, switched into my rig, checked my gear, and then got into bed. Normally one of the best things ever is to wake up in the morning, wonder for a moment, then look around and realize, "Hey! I'm at work already! How cool is that!"

But this morning I had weird dreams that unsettled me.

My TV was on, but the picture was just this scene of winter. Nothing was going on, but winter. You could climb into the scene -- it was three dimensional, but still there wasn't anything there, except snow and fields and a barn, but nothing else. The barn wasn't even real. And it was cold.

And I dreamed I was in an ambulance, picking at some tarter between my teeth, when I scrapped off a big hunk, and then realized I had just pulled out one of my teeth.

And I dreamed I got an email from a fellow blogger who offered to split the cost of editor with me because I made so many small spelling and grammar mistakes and I really ought to proof read better before posting.

And I dreamed my ambulance was gone and I was wondering around in a building and my radio wasn't working, and I was worried somewhere there was a call, but I couldn't get to the ambulance because I was lost in this big building that was somehow connected to my base.

I dreamed some other unsettling stuff too that I have forgotten, but I know it was unpleasant.

Then as I actually lay in bed sleeping, in the background I heard the tones that they ring us with, and I woke up and picked up my radio, but it was off even though it was one. It just wasn't working. So I wandered up to the front of the building, and answered the phone which was the dispatcher calling us to tell us we had a call for severe abdominal pain.

I put on a hat because I had bad hair and we got in the ambulance, and had to walk across the cold snow drifts to a house where the man said his wife had bad abdominal pain and couldn't walk. We found her in the living room, and she was talking to a relative and seemed in no distress. Then she grabbed her side and let out a cry of pain that I wasn't buying. Because of the narrow hallways, we helped out to walk out to the back where I set the stretcher up. We drove it in BLS. Her vitals were fine. She was forty years old, and it turned out she had a UTI.

I bought a diet coke and some hot oatmeal at the hospital cafeteria.

***

Later we were sent for a fractured neck. A man fell a couple days ago. It was a low fall onto a carpet, but he had neck pain. After living with it for two days, he went to the doctor, who gave him an x-ray, which showed a fracture. He told him to get a CAT scan the next day. That’s where we picked him up. We found him sitting in the waiting room, clutching his x-rays. He said his neck hurt when he moved. As I was c-spining him very carefully, a nurse came out and said, "The doctor says no movement."

I looked at her blankly, then said, "That's why we are c-spining him." The doctor was too busy to come out and give me a report. I looked in the x-ray envelope for a written description, but there was nothing.

Once we got in the ambulance, I looked at the way we had c-spined him. We use these commercial head beds, composed of a long rectangular Styrofoam head base that sticks to the board and then two lightweight blocks that stick with Velcro on the rectangular base, then we apply first a Velcro tape over the forehead, then a heavy sticky duct-type tape over the forehead. They work fine when you are c-spining someone just to c-spine them, but when you are dealing with a broken neck, they seem pretty lame. Right then I took out some bath blankets and made up two towel rolls like we used to in the old days, and used them instead of the commercial head bed. He looked much more secure and I felt much better about the ride in. I think I will start using them again.

At triage the nurse took out the x-rays and held them up to the light. He had a partial fracture of C1. He was lucky to be alive.

***

Later we did a nursing home patient who was hypotensive, but had warm hand with good capillary refill, and was mentating fine.

Cold today with a storm coming tonight.