Pair of Hands
So, Andy’s partner was feeling ill, so I came in on Friday night. After I arrived, nothing happened. Really. We had one call 5 hours after my arrival that was a refusal.
But, I did get paid overtime to get a fair amount of sleep. Three hours after Andy left, my real shift started and we had 2 transfer calls. One was a 6.5 hour NICU transfer. This was a little weird for me. Back in MD, for NICU calls, we’d take the team, but still have a role in the call. Here, we pick up the team, and do absolutely nothing except lug the isolette around.
It was, as many NICU calls are, a situation where I felt desperate to have my hands full of something. The need to feel useful was overwhelming. Once our destination changed from 20 minutes away to an hour and a half away, I set my mind to calculating if we had enough oxygen in the main tank to get us there. I also occupied myself remembering how pH, Co2, pulse oximetry, and breathing rate are all connected, and how the treatments they were attempting would work.
On the way to the other facility, I even rode in the front seat, which illustrated that it was so not my patient that it didn’t even matter if I recorded any vitals or even supervised care. At the beginning of paramedic school, they told me I was not yet a paramedic, but a pair-of-hands, but for this call, I wasn't even that.
Yesterday we had a normal day until the end of our shift when we got to take a 911 call in my 1 stop light town. Because it’s kind of far away, they send an interfacility truck to the 911 calls there instead of tying up a city truck. I was pretty excited, as it served as my first call with my future fire dept. I was surprised to find out that our patient had been pepper sprayed for resisting arrest. “Pepper spray, in my little town? No way!”
Since then, I enjoyed stars and seclusion, happily slept in, found some whitewater (joy!), impressed a stranger, met another snake, ate ice cream, and washed dishes.
But, I did get paid overtime to get a fair amount of sleep. Three hours after Andy left, my real shift started and we had 2 transfer calls. One was a 6.5 hour NICU transfer. This was a little weird for me. Back in MD, for NICU calls, we’d take the team, but still have a role in the call. Here, we pick up the team, and do absolutely nothing except lug the isolette around.
It was, as many NICU calls are, a situation where I felt desperate to have my hands full of something. The need to feel useful was overwhelming. Once our destination changed from 20 minutes away to an hour and a half away, I set my mind to calculating if we had enough oxygen in the main tank to get us there. I also occupied myself remembering how pH, Co2, pulse oximetry, and breathing rate are all connected, and how the treatments they were attempting would work.
On the way to the other facility, I even rode in the front seat, which illustrated that it was so not my patient that it didn’t even matter if I recorded any vitals or even supervised care. At the beginning of paramedic school, they told me I was not yet a paramedic, but a pair-of-hands, but for this call, I wasn't even that.
Yesterday we had a normal day until the end of our shift when we got to take a 911 call in my 1 stop light town. Because it’s kind of far away, they send an interfacility truck to the 911 calls there instead of tying up a city truck. I was pretty excited, as it served as my first call with my future fire dept. I was surprised to find out that our patient had been pepper sprayed for resisting arrest. “Pepper spray, in my little town? No way!”
Since then, I enjoyed stars and seclusion, happily slept in, found some whitewater (joy!), impressed a stranger, met another snake, ate ice cream, and washed dishes.
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:-)
~M
DTs