A Work in Progress

This year was totally weird. Not only because it was my first year away from home, but I worked Christmas eve and Christmas day also. It didn’t really feel like Christmas yesterday, especially as we had a surprising amount of calls. Also it’s been unseasonably warm here. I’m learning that there is no such thing as a traditional Christmas anymore, and I’m okay with that. Santa came to our house on Christmas eve morning as Andy and I both had to work Christmas day. And by ‘Santa’ I mean Santa, the big man, the real deal. He has an amazing network, and is always on top of things. He’s unpredictable, and always has a trick up his sleeve. He brought me a crock pot and a sleeping bag, and some salt and pepper shakers. I’m going to be trying out the sleeping bag at work tonight, I can’t wait. Speaking of not being able to wait…it’s only about 20 more hours now until I’m back in the old line state! And 14 of that will be taken up by work! After work on Christmas eve, I went to chu...

In less than five days I’ll be back in Maryland for a week. I have never been so excited to be going home! It’s really impossible to explain, so I won’t try. Maybe in the upcoming week I will. Sorry that was really uninformative. So, I’m working the next four days straight, I’m pretty excited. Why? Merely because the time at work will mark the passing of days, and might give me something to do. Oh, and the double time on Christmas day. Work was pretty much uneventful this week. One of my colleagues had a patient with a dissecting abdominal aortic aneurysm last night. The patient coded when they walked in the hospital door, they were all freaked/excited. By the way, a dissecting AAA is where your aorta splits, and blood fills the cavity the dissection forms, and its basically really, really bad. Ooh, also, my roommates saw not one but two moose in the back yard! We were all very excited and there was much rejoicing. Hopefully they’ll make some more appearances throughout...

On Wednesday I had two interesting overriding thoughts in my day. After our first two calls which were kind of fun. I said “I can’t believe we get paid for this.” It’s just amazing, I can poke people with needles, chat with interesting patients, cheer people up, occasional save a life, or at least try, and they pay me. But, by the end of the day, I said “They’re not paying us enough!” I’ll spare the details of the most disgusting call I’ve ever been on. I pretty much hope that I never have a more revolting, horrid call. That’s all really. It’ll be a hard call to trump. I worked a whole 911 shift with Andy, it was totally weird, and totally cool. It’s hard to believe they’d let two UMBC graduates run an ALS truck. A scary day for the local citizens. We only had three calls which is fine by me for the night shift, one was an overdose. I almost said: “I’m sorry that you just want to sleep, but I’m afraid you’ll sleep, like, forever.” Other than that, I actually hung out with...

It’s amazing how familiar I’ve become with the city I work in. My partner and I were both from out of town when we started, and we have found our way to every call without assistance. Well, on Wednesday a call went out to Apple Ave. I looked it up in our map book, and there was no apple avenue, only apple street. “Oh, apple street, we know where that is!” So we headed on over to there, and couldn't find the correct address. We called our dispatch to inquire. They say, you know apple ave, near the airport. My partner and I looked at each other. We were nowhere near the airport. What the heck! I didn't even know where to look in the map book now. I called up dispatch again, and got the cross streets, which luckily were in the map book. We ended up with a 15+ minute response time, but at least we know where apple ave is now (other than not in the map book.) Luckily the patient wasn’t critical. On Thursday we were called for a car into a house. Whatever this call w...

Last week I worked six days in a row. The most interesting calls are already posted, I’m afraid. In three days, I did 38 hours in interfacility work. That yielded one call worth remembering. Have I mentioned recently I’m not a fan of transfers? Oh well. This patient had stepped on a low shelf in the grocery store and reached up to the top shelf to grab something. You know this story can’t end well! As she stepped down from the low shelf, she caught her ring in the lip of the top shelf. As her body kept going, her finger was stuck and her ring degloved, snapped, and twisted her finger nearly off. At the ER she was told they would amputate. Well, because that is a very frightening word, she wanted a second opinion. That’s how we got involved to take her to another hospital. It was good times as I got to a. give narcotics and b. see the x-ray. I must say it was probably the coolest x-ray I have ever seen. The rest of the weekend was the usual fare, none too exciting. Google...

I worked a shift on Tuesday to make up for having last Sunday off. It was interfacility transfers and we were pretty busy, but I got to work with my roommate which was good fun. I think that’s the most time we’ve spent together since I moved here. We have completely opposite schedules. On Wednesday we were pretty busy and had a few interesting things. We started with a woman who had a TIA (transient ischemic attack = mini stroke). I’ll admit she had me a little worried, but as soon as we got her in the bus, her symptoms began to subside. It was a relief for me, but I’m so glad she called us. Shortly after we had a lady with nothing wrong with her except for an overly concerned daughter. We did our old standby call and took yet another older lady to the hospital who thought we were all commies. I would call the seizure in the dentists' office the most entertaining of the day. The patient on the chair had a seizure, the dentist called and we spent 10-15 minutes convincing the patient...

I would give this thanksgiving weekend a rating of about 22.6 on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the best thanksgiving ever, 1 being no thanksgiving at all. Surprises, turkey, double time at work, Christmas presents, planning, frivolity, love, and general good times abounded. Not much really exciting or overly holiday related happened when I worked Thanksgiving night. Basically I was able to hang out with my baby for awhile at work, and I was woken up about every 3 hours after he left. We had a fall, 2 non cardiac chest pains, quasi choking, and some other stuff that I can’t even remember. The choking was real, but resolved by the time we arrived, it was also marginally holiday related. I guess the rest of the city was in a post thanksgiving stupor of some sort. We also had a guy who’s finger got twisted into a pneumatic drill. It pulled the skin a bit, but nothing horrible. Controlled bleeding and such. I patched it in to the hospital as I saw it (nothing to get excited about) an...