Weekend

One of my weekends in EMS

 

Weekend

 

The way we spend weekends changes throughout our lives. The only purpose for weekends used to be an escape from school, then later an escape from work. That was before I became a Paramedic and began working the standard twenty-four on; forty-eight off shift. One weekend day every weekend gone, but rather adventurous.

 

If this was my Saturday shift and I was still single, I would spend Friday catching up on household chores, getting my gear ready for my shift and then getting ready to go out to my favorite hangout, The Wrangler. I would get there about six in the evening and, if I were lucky, I would spend the next five hours dancing with a few very talented female partners. The challenge was always dance as much as possible.

 

No drinking on the night before a shift ever. That was an easy rule for me as I tried to practice total abstinence from alcohol anyway. On the way home, I would check my messages to see if my station changed and if not I would usually go out to eat with one or more of my dance partners. This meant the night would wind up around midnight.

 

On the morning of my shift, all my gear had to be double-checked, uniforms checked for rips, boots cleaned and I had to be on the road in enough time to make it to my station by six forty five. I pushed the limit and normally made it closer to seven. 

 

After checking off the ambulance, if we got to finish doing so, we tried to go eat as a crew of four. If we did not get to eat, the day seemed to go south very quickly. As if did the day I will now describe. 

 

The first call came in as I took report on my unit. They had two calls, no supplies used, and tanks full of fuel, everything on board. The usual stuff. The call was a sick call, close to the station. We arrived quickly and found a man in his late fifties complaining of chest pain, nausea, weakness, shortness of breath and he felt as if he was ready to die. He was. He was very pale, ashen and covered in sweat. His heart was suffering a major heart attack, and we did not have much time. His vital signs were poor to say the least.

 

We placed him on oxygen, connected him to our monitor, started our IV’s, gave him some nitro spray under his tongue and gave him baby aspirin. He improved drastically, but I did not feel good about the call. Paramedics have a sixth sense about the absence of presence of the Reaper on calls, and I felt the Reaper was sitting in the back of my rig with me.

 

We delivered the patient to the local hospital with normal vital signs, pink, warm, dry skin, no longer short of breath and totally pain free. Even his EKG looked very normal. The ER staff gave us kudos for taking care of the heart attack and called for rapid air transport. The patient was a candidate for a heart study and to get him to the research hospital within the accepted time frame required an air ambulance. 

 

 The patient asked to see his son, daughter and wife. He wanted to clear the air concerning some issues he had with each person. This turned out to be a red flag to everyone. He knew he was about to die, and wanted to make peace with everyone. As the helicopter landed, he died. We attempted to resuscitate him, but nothing we tried worked. We did everything according to the book, completely by protocol and the man still died.

 

After this call, we went through the rest of our shift rather numb. We took care of our patients, but I felt detached from each one of them. After a few calls, we saw the funeral home at the ER to pick up the man’s body. His son and daughter came to our station to thank us for letting them say goodbye to their father and for keeping him alive long enough to settle their differences. 

 

That did little to help the way we felt, but the next call took everything I had left in me. We answered the call to a motor vehicle accident. Suspected DUI, two teens and an adult. Both units responded to the call, about six miles from our station. The second crew had to care for the drunk driver while my partner and I took care of the two teens in the overturned convertible. The drunk added insult to injury. He had the driver’s wallet, and gave the boy’s drivers license to the police. 

 

A brother and sister returning home from a church outing were the drunk’s victims. He hit them head on with a closing speed of greater than a hundred miles an hour. The speedometer in the teens’ car stuck on twenty-five, the digital display cracked, but accurate. 

These two would not return home to their parents that night, or the night after, or ever. 

 

After delivering the two bodies to our local morgue, we still had twelve hours to go on our shift. My partner’s face told me all I needed to know about his state of mind. We needed the rest of the shift to go smoothly. We needed food, and we did not need to hear the drunk whining about a scratch on his forehead, and that was exactly what we heard when we went to the ER to finish our paperwork. We went to the family room to talk the teens parents, explained what happened in the accident, took them to the morgue to ID the bodies and take their personally items. 

 

The mother asked about her son’s wallet and we had to inform them it was being held in evidence against the other driver. As luck would have it, the drunk somehow managed to stagger into the lobby, began cursing loudly about how horrible we treated him and how awful this ER treated him.

 

Before we could stop him, the teens’ flew from the family room and decked the drunk square in the mouth as hard as he could. Blood sprayed from his mouth as his jaw collapsed inward, teeth shattered from the impact and the drunk went down face first on the tile floor.

 

As we restrained the father from doing any more damage, the security guard responded to protect the drunk. When he asked us what happened, my partner and I exchanged glances, stepped in front of the father’s injured hand mentioned something about how much the drunk had in him. Passing out from too much alcohol sure sounded better to us that assaulted by an angry parent. 

 

Those in the waiting room backed us up, and surprise! The video recording did not show anything with the drunk in the waiting room at all. The security guard just said it must have rewound itself at the end of the tape.

 

We both felt better about our shift, but now we still had eleven hours to go. Food would be nice, sleep would be wonderful and a good call with a good outcome might take some of the gloom away from this weekend. 

 

We heard our tones sound for a nature unknown call. Not a good sign. Nature unknown calls run from there is no one home to a dead body and everything in between.

 

Police beat us to the call and the first officer ran out of the house! Definitely not a good sign when the ones with guns are running OUT of a house! He changed direction and ran straight at us, yelling something about crowning and blood. Childbirth! We all but raced each other inside the house, my partner not quite fast as I as we saw the young black girl on the bed, blood and amniotic fluid flowing from the birth canal. The baby’s head was visible and as I got in position, I caught the baby boy. He cried immediately, the mother was fine and we transported both to the hospital in stable condition. 

 

Yes, that was the call we needed! A good call, great outcome and finally a bright spot in a very dark day! We still had eight hours of our shift left, but we got to eat, restocked our unit and slept the rest of the shift! 

 

Sunday, I got home at around eight in the morning, made arrangements to see my boys for the day, spend some time with them and called to see who was going to be at the Wrangler that night. Dance lesson night, and this Paramedic needed to dance!

Reviews

[Maria]

Definitely can see how your experience talks through this. Well written.