Lost

"Getting there is more than half the battle." Oh so true. I had my first call at full time work that I had to respond alone to the other day at 3am. I am not surprised at all that the call was on a road that simply didn't exist. I started with our GPS unit, it wasn't listed. Okay, to the old fashioned way! Not in the map book. Neither were the cross streets. Great. I was pretty far away from the general area of the call, so I headed in the direction I knew it was in and hoped for the best. And by hoped for the best, I mean prayed and cursed a lot. When I got a little closer, I got clarification from our dispatcher. And by clarification I mean no help at all. Thanks to the ambulance crew, I knew I was on the right track, and they talked me in. It was, of course a brand new development. Not yet on the map.

Needless to say, I was a little freaked out. Luckily, when you are lost at 3am, you are lost alone so I didn't have any traffic to deal with. Because of the sheer distance between us, it took me ages to get there. They could have taken the patient to the hospital and had her registered by the time I got to the scene, but they dutifully waited for me.
The patient wasn't too bad off and the call was uneventful.

After all this, I have decided that it would be funny to have a voice recorder in the truck. Maybe I am the only one that talks to myslef, but I doubt it. There would have some nice recordings of me muttering about roads that aren't on maps, faulty directions, curvy country roads, and the insanity of responding alone.