Ooh, boxes!

Last week when I got home I went to work. I did a 24, went home and did my weekend 12 hour shifts the next two days. Whew! The price of love.
I did a transfer shift with my roommate which was pretty fun. We didn’t do anything too out of the ordinary but were pretty busy. We did get to take a trouble breathing out of a local nursing home. I love it when I see a lady sitting straight up in bed, clearly struggling for breath, pursed lip breathing, using accessory muscles, a pulse ox of 86% with 4 lpm on her nasal cannula and staff telling me that this has been going on for 3 days. I don’t know what people are thinking sometimes.

The highlight of the day was when we found ourselves driving behind a UPS truck that unbeknownst to the driver, had its back door open. There was another car between us and the truck. We stopped at a light and as Andy and I discussed how cool it would be to see what was in all of those packages, our good citizen of the day (the car in front of us) made a futile attempt at alerting the driver of his increased potential to lose cargo. But, the light turned before she could help him. I kept behind and at the next light, Andy took up the PA system and said “Attention UPS driver, your back door is open!” It was hilarious and we were all pleased to see the driver put on his hazards and hastily shut the back door. I could never work for a postal service. I would be too curious to see what was in all the boxes.

Last week I also had a healthy dose of misuse of the system. We were called to a guy who might have mistakenly taken his short acting insulin instead of the long acting one he should have taken. Apparently, he took it, his sugar got unusually low very quickly, he had a candy bar, it went right back up to normal. When we arrived he said he was feeling fine. Great! Problem solved, be more careful next time. But oh no. This patient was a minor and mom insisted that we take him in. She’ll even ride along. We were about a 1 minute drive to the hospital. At this point we could hardly argue, although I felt that my questioning made it clear that her son was fine. So we begrudgingly walked him outside and drove to the hospital. When I arrived, I discovered that dad had driven separately. What!? If I had know this, I probably would have more or less insisted that the patient go with him. I can understand concern for your child, but not when it is completely unfounded. I don’t know what people are thinking sometimes.