Chatting

Started off the day with a minor motor vehicle accident. No real injuries. One patient wanted to go to one hospital, the other wanted to go to another hospital. Persuasion was completely uneffective. To top it off it was extremely cold out with the bitter wind and the accident was in an open space near tobacco fields so the wind had some serious momentum before it hit us. Pulling the stretcher the ambulance door slammed into my back. I gave my partner the choice, he could tech the call or wait with the other patient until the second ambulance arrived from the city. He chose to wait with the other patient. Bad move for him. He was freezing when they finally arrived. There is the EMS rule that once an EMT is on scene, the first ambulance can't leave until the next ambulance arrives, but it seems silly in many cases. This was one of them. We waited nearly thirty minutes. It wasn't a bad accident so the other ambulance wasn't using lights and sirens.

Next call was at a day care center where a two hundred and fifty pound twenty year old aide lay prone on the ground with back spasms unable to move. She got morphine.

We went to a doctor's office for dsypnea and found the patient on her cell phone chatting away, telling her friends she was going to the hospital. She hadn't been feeling well for a couple weeks and had been treated for pnemonia and she had a COPD/CHF history, her lungs were decreased, but to listen to her chat away while I was trying to assess her made it seem sort of silly that we were summoned lights and sirens.

We had a man with a syncopal episdoe in Dilbertville. He was sitting in his vcubilcle when he passed out, head into the keyboard. No history, a benign exam, he was just under stress, he said. This is a big company, who is all the time showing up at people's desks and telling them their services are no longer needed, even at times after thirty or more years of work. He was fifty and had been there only a year. "A guy has to work," he said, after telling me about the pressure to produce.

Last call was for a guy who dislocated his shoulder. He was in some serious pain. We could not get him to sit still nor could we find any way to splin the arm to ease the pain. I ended up giving him 12.5 of morphine. I gave 8.5 in increments on standing orders, then called for an additional 4. Big strong 23 year old guy. The morphine got the pain down to a 4 from a 10.

We got back to the base in time to watch American Idol. Amazingly, this was the fifth week in a row, we didn't have a call to interrupt our viewing. I like Mandisa, but thought they were all pretty lousy last night.