Wide

"She's not going to fit on that stretcher," the nurse says. "Where are the other two people?"

"We'll check her out first," I say, "Because this is all we have."

"Suit yourself."

As we continue down the hall, the other nurses and aides look at us -- the two of us and our meager stretcher -- and shake their heads.

"She's over 400 pounds," a nurse says.

I point to the little decal on the stretcher. "This baby's rated for 500 pounds," I say.

"It's not wide enough."

We go in the room. I recognize her. I've done her before. The retired dietician. She might be 400 pounds, but the nurse is right about her width. She's not twice as long as she is wide. No way is she fitting on our stretcher.

She looks up from her bowl of cheerios. "Can you give me a minute to finish eating," she says. (I didn't put a question mark after her statement because there was no question. She was going to finish eating.)

I explain we aren't taking her just this moment because we don't have the big stretcher.

"I must have the big stretcher," she says.

"Yes," I say.

I back out of the room, and go down to the nurse's station and ask to borrow the phone. I call dispatch and request the big stretcher. They say there was nothing in the notes about it. The nursing staff tells me they asked for it. After I hang up, I talk to the secretary who called for it. She says all they wanted to know was how much she weighed and how tall she was. They said she didn't need the big stretcher. I say next time tell them how wide. Make a point of it. Don't take no for an answer.

We wait around for the big ambulance to come, then we help load her, then follow the other ambulance to the hospital, and wait around there while she is examined on the stretcher, and then we follow them back to the nursing home, and help unload her. Total call time 4 hours.

***

We spend the next hour covering a suburban town until their ambulance returns to town.

***

End the day with a nursing home patient with a funny hand sensation for three days and person who slipped AT WORK and hurt her back and can't remember whether or not she was knocked out. We have to wait around for awhile at the hospital while they find a bed, the patient wants to know how much longer it will be. She says she hurt her foot last week at work and was in the ER so long, she just got up and walked out.

***

A number of years ago, one of our ambulances was involved in an MVA and the attendent in the back, went flying forward and banged his head and nearly had his ear cut off. Shortly after, they started putting nets in the back of the ambulance at the end of the bench seat. They are sort of a pain when you are getting in the side of the ambulance, or particuarly if you want to toss the monitor which may be on the shelf or on the floor of the side up onto the stretcher. You have to lean in farther to get around the net. Anyway, yesterday I am standing up to get over to the cmed radio. My partner slammed on the breaks and I went flying forward -- right into the net. It absorbed me like an Ozzie Smith baseball glove snaring a fastball. But instead of being out, I was safe.

***
On bit of good news from today. I saw the hospital's EMS coordinator who just came back from the state EMS Medical Committee meeting and he says they approved the Termination guidelines with my "injury incompatible with life" language added. Now if we come upon a freshly deceased patient with "injury incompatible with life" we don't have to start working them prior to calling medical control for permission to stop. "Injury incompatible with life" could include severly displaced brain matter, complete exsanguination or splat injury from 50 story fall. Previously the draft only said decapitation, body transection, incineration to go along with the old dead of rigor with lividity or decomposition.