No Way

Working the overnight in the suburbs -- always a calculated risk -- will I be able to sleep or will I do calls and be sleep-deprived for a week after? I've done three calls on the first leg -- a medical alarm, a man having cluster headaches, and an apparent miscarriage. The miscarriage came in as vaginal bleeding a couple days before the woman's period is due, no possibility that she is pregnant. We get there there is blood all over the floor, and a clotty sack that looks like it might be the beginnings of a fetus. She claims she has been having regular periods and that she isn't pregnant. I explain to her in the ambulance that from everything I have seen she is having a miscarriage. She nodds and seems to understand. At the hospital, her mother is there and the nurse tells me she keeps claiming there is no way she is pregnant.

The eleven o'clock crew comes in and not two minutes later we get called for a fall with hip pain. Its in the alzheimer's unit of a retirement community. The leg appears slightly shortened and rotated, but the man has no pain when I palpate his hips. We lift him up and gently and give him an easy ride in.

I get back just before midnight.

Now if only I can sleep the rest of the shift.