White Out

Spent the night at the ambulance barn so I wouldn't have to drive through the snow coming to work this morning, and a good thing. There was a foot already on the ground when I woke up this morning. We took the ambulance out to get breakfast and encountered a woman who nearly rolled her SUV because she simply lost the road. She ended up in a ditch on the railroad tracks.

Coming back from the hospital after bringing in a woman with the flu, we lost the road ourselves briefly. Suddenly the snowbank was kicking up snow completely obliterating our windshield. It was white out conditions, snow fall at two feet and still piling.

We did an unresponsive diabetic and had to wade through four foot drifts to get to her house. She was a Jamaican woman in her eighties who lived with her sister. Her sugar was less than 20. We gave her an amp and a half of D50. She woke up slowly. We tried to tell her her sugar was low. "No, my sugar is high," she said, "I write it right down dere in de book."

"No, it was less than twenty."

"No, it isn't low. Me write it down in de book."

Finally her sister said, "Dis is anothder day now dear."

We finally got her straightened out and had her sitting at the kitchen table eating a big Jamaican meal of stew chicken and rice and peas.

She was amazed when we opened the door and showed her all the snow.

**

Two late calls -- a nursing home difficulty breathing and a thirty-nine year old with abdominal pain after shoveling. She checked out fine other than having abdominal pain when she made a shoveling motion. The call came in right at crew change when we were coming back from the hospital and it initially came in for some reason as not breathing. The patient wasn't done with the shoveling so we had to wade through deep snow drifts to get to the house. The patient was laying on the couch with her eyes closed moaning. We worked her up, but everything came back normal -- vitals, 12 lead, appearance, only the pain on the shoveling motion. She insisted on going to the most distant hospital so I got off late.

When I got home I couldn't pull into my driveway. The drifts were up to my waist. My driveway is thankfully short, but because it has high railroad ties on each side, it tends to collect the snow drifts. I was out there for about an hour and only got two-thirds of the driveway done. While I was shoveling, I thought about complaining about pain from the shoveling motion, but there was no one else home to shovel, and
I didn't think the local responders would appreciate it if I called 911.