Of Course

Old lady with Alzheimer's fell and sliced the back of her head on a door. She denied she had fallen. Her husband told her she had to go to the hospital. You're not coming with me? she asked. No, I think I'll go to a tag sale by myself, he said. What? And leave me? No, he said, of course I'm going. He smiled at me and shook his head.

We went to the health center and I ran down to the library there to see if I could find a research article. I swear librarians are the nicest people in the world. You can't find a more helpful person. The health center is near my house and I think I will just drive there whenever I want to read any research articles. They have everything. If not in the stacks, then they have it online. It only costs 7 cents a page to print out. Sometimes I've paid up to $30 for an article I desperately wanted to read.

Last call was for an eight-year old girl who ran out in front of a car and got hit. She was sitting up by the side of the road when we got there. Her sister said there was no loss of conciousness, but the girl didn't remember what happened. She had road rash on her right side and looked like a broken arm. We took her in on a priority.

We had a cookout afterwork with about fifty members, including family coming. Good food. Pork tenderloin, beef tenderloin, barbecued chicken and hamburgers and hot dogs for the kids. Then the police chief talked about how they planned to fill the EMS chief for the town position. I have mixed feelings about the job. On one hand I would love to be the EMS chief for this town. I get along with everyone well. I have lots of ideas I would like to try out, it would be a big challenge. Plus there is the town pension. But it would mean less to no time on the road as a medic. And much less money, as while the salary may be more than I make in 40 hours, it would mean no overtime pay, and there have been years when I make more in overtime than I do in straight time. Everyone got in a big discussion then about pagers, and the discussion went on and on about the right kind of pagers to get and all the problems with each kind. I guess I would rather spend my time learning about capnography than pagers. I don't know. I love being a field medic.