Dodging the White Cloud
It has been a busy week. I am celebrating my fourth shift at new work and am enjoying it quite a bit. I managed to trick the white cloud for a few days, but today, it found me. With only three hours left in this shift, I have gone 10 hours today without a call. Yes, I am hoping that writing this will jinx us.
Up until last night I have had a large number of calls, including some career firsts. Well, one first that will be getting its own post once I figure out what to say about it.
I decided to stay for a late call yesterday that was canceled, and then two others right after that, also cancellations. That's one of the funny things about chase cars, you don't always actually get to the call. And sometimes, even when you do get to the call, you don't do anything but watch the EMT take a blood pressure and then cancel you. If you get too involved with an obvious BLS call (say, if you were first on scene) you have to release it to BLS when the ambulance gets there so that you don't have to 'ride it in'. This is more trouble than it is worth in my opinion because in this fine area of the country, you need to call a doctor to ask permission. (Don't get me started on the absurd hand holding that goes on here in terms of medical direction. What is a paramedic, if not an independent thinker and decision maker?)
I digress. So far, I have visited many houses, of course, most of the local nursing homes, a school, the floor of a pretzel factory (which was awesome), and a rubber recycling plant (which was also awesome.) I am easily distracted by interesting settings such as industrial plants and I'd like to have a tour of the complicated machinery before we leave.
In the recycling plant we had a guy having 11 out of 10 chest pain, whom we found writhing on the ambulance cot, sweating, crying, clearly in a panic, clutching his chest, while yelling about how much his chest hurt. The pain increased with deep breaths, was tender upon palpation, and he had no 12 lead changes. All signs pointing to a chest pain unrelated to his actual heart. We went through the chest pain protocol anyway and brought him in. Afterwards we speculated to each other that it was probably muscular and some social stuff making him panic a little. A couple hours later I found out that his cardiac enzymes were elevated and he was having the 'big one'. They ended up flying him to an interventional cath lab, reiterating to never ignore that atypical chest pain patient.
Other than that we had a litany of shortness of breaths, fainting, and generally ill people. Tis the season. Every hospital within 40 miles was on divert, which basically means they were all open. Today even, our hospital was toying with the idea of going on mini disaster. They must be quiet happy that we haven't gone out today.
I do have pictures of our PIMP trucks that are just about ready for publishing, (but they are currently waiting in my home computer).
Up until last night I have had a large number of calls, including some career firsts. Well, one first that will be getting its own post once I figure out what to say about it.
I decided to stay for a late call yesterday that was canceled, and then two others right after that, also cancellations. That's one of the funny things about chase cars, you don't always actually get to the call. And sometimes, even when you do get to the call, you don't do anything but watch the EMT take a blood pressure and then cancel you. If you get too involved with an obvious BLS call (say, if you were first on scene) you have to release it to BLS when the ambulance gets there so that you don't have to 'ride it in'. This is more trouble than it is worth in my opinion because in this fine area of the country, you need to call a doctor to ask permission. (Don't get me started on the absurd hand holding that goes on here in terms of medical direction. What is a paramedic, if not an independent thinker and decision maker?)
I digress. So far, I have visited many houses, of course, most of the local nursing homes, a school, the floor of a pretzel factory (which was awesome), and a rubber recycling plant (which was also awesome.) I am easily distracted by interesting settings such as industrial plants and I'd like to have a tour of the complicated machinery before we leave.
In the recycling plant we had a guy having 11 out of 10 chest pain, whom we found writhing on the ambulance cot, sweating, crying, clearly in a panic, clutching his chest, while yelling about how much his chest hurt. The pain increased with deep breaths, was tender upon palpation, and he had no 12 lead changes. All signs pointing to a chest pain unrelated to his actual heart. We went through the chest pain protocol anyway and brought him in. Afterwards we speculated to each other that it was probably muscular and some social stuff making him panic a little. A couple hours later I found out that his cardiac enzymes were elevated and he was having the 'big one'. They ended up flying him to an interventional cath lab, reiterating to never ignore that atypical chest pain patient.
Other than that we had a litany of shortness of breaths, fainting, and generally ill people. Tis the season. Every hospital within 40 miles was on divert, which basically means they were all open. Today even, our hospital was toying with the idea of going on mini disaster. They must be quiet happy that we haven't gone out today.
I do have pictures of our PIMP trucks that are just about ready for publishing, (but they are currently waiting in my home computer).
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