I am coming off of a 3-day work stretch tonight. I spent Monday, Tuesday and today, Wednesday, on a rig. I had a fabulous time! ...for the most part. A few rough calls but I made it through (and all of my patients got to the hospital alive). The Sundays that I am home, I volunteer my medical expertise at church and provide on-site care to anyone who may fall ill or get hurt (the first is usually the adults and the latter is usually the kids). I enjoy what I do there. And, people think I'm crazy because I have voices in my head while I am "working there" (an ear piece to the radio). The funniest part is that sometimes, if you are close to me, you will hear the voices too. So, I can confidently say that it is NOT all in my head.
Well, as the story goes, I was on-duty this past Sunday at church. Usually there is a doctor and a nurse on-call as well, but for the past two weeks, these people have not been there. Our head of the safety and security team decided to skip out on the day (to move his daughter into school) so we had a thought that we would have some trouble. Without fail, if he is not there, trouble starts to happen.
I got in about 8:45 that morning, grabbed my radio and walked around until service at 9:30. No trouble then. Smooth sailing through the hour. The second "hour" started at 11 am and had no problems at the beginning of that hour. I went to my class and about 11:30, I was alerted to the fact that a child had fallen on the playground and I needed to come make sure he was okay. He was. He just took a little tumble as he tried to jump off of the equipment and be adventurous, like little boys are. Crisis averted. I returned to class. Around 12:00, I received another message that an older lady was unconscious. I made my way over to her and found her conscious, alert and oriented. From what the people said around her, it sounded like she had had a mini-stroke (also called a TIA). She had some facial drooping on the left side but she had equal on both sides of her body with a clear speech pattern. After sitting with her for a few minutes (while doing all of my paramedic-y things), she had a 15 second episode of slurred speech and then it was right back to normal. EMS (the real paramedics with an ambulance) was called to come and take care of this sweet older lady. When they arrived, I was very familiar with the paramedic on the truck as I have worked with him in the past. He looked at me with a puzzled look and then looked over at his preceptee and told her "you can get report from [me]". So, she was transported but I do not know exactly what happened with her and how she is now.
That was the morning. I know that trouble comes in 3's (or more). For example, if there is a code in the county, there will be at least 2 more in a short amount of time following the first. The same goes for car accidents, shootings and stabbings (the last two are usually grouped together). So, thinking ahead, I came back to the evening service in the event something was going to happen. I knew it would happen Sunday night or Monday morning at work. Sunday evening was quiet. Monday morning started out with a bang.
On the first call of the morning, there was a 93 year old gentleman (and his only medical history is high cholesterol and dementia -- pretty amazing for someone that old) who went to his doctor's office to get a hearing aide. As he was leaving, he passed out completely and met the floor. This is where we find him. The staff state his blood pressure was 70-something over 50-something (that is not really what they said, but I cannot recall the exact numbers). Low. Got it. We move him to the stretcher and after putting him on there, he began vomiting. Everywhere. We decided to make it a quick one and get in the truck. As we are rolling him out to the truck, he has the look of death on him. His eyes glassed over (a scary thing to see -- every time that I have seen it, cardiac arrest is imminent). We never saw that he lost his pulse but it was a frightening moment. We got him in the truck and called for the fire department so that we could have a rider in the back so that we have an extra set of hands on the way in to the hospital in the event that this call and patient went south.
It never happened, thankfully. But that was definitely trouble #3.
The week got even better. This morning (first thing, of course), I smelled the worst thing I have ever smelled and saw the worst thing I had ever seen. I know that I tweeted earlier last week that I had smelled the worst thing ever...but that does not even touch what I smelled and saw today. I am still debating about sharing that story, but it will be for another post if I do.
Alas, one more day of work for the week. Tomorrow is Haz-Mat training. I am more than excited about doing this in the hot August weather. Hopefully I won't need to call for a paramedic...
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