Saturday, May 26, 2007

It is now officially summer....

My captain says that it's not officially summer until you see the first girl in a tank top, barefoot, drunk, with a baby on her hip on a run... It's now summer.

We were pounded Wednesday. 18 runs in 24 hours. If you figure a minimum of 1 hour per run, that doesn't leave a lot of time. Of those 18 runs, 3 were actual "I need a medic" runs. The other 15 were things that most people would handle different.

Ass whippings were being handed out one after another, and I'd guess at least 6 or 7 of our runs were assaults of some kind. One guys "old lady" stabbed him with a broken beer bottle. He had a few scrapes and a couple punctures but nothing serious. It was hot, he'd been drinking, she'd been drinking and the next thing you know she's chasing him around with a broken beer bottle. I'm sure you've all seen it before in your neighborhoods. Same ole story. The last thing he told me as we were pulling into the hospital parking lot was "But you know, I still love the bitch".
Another guy was in a bar and "for no reason at all", some guy sucker punched him in the mouth. Split his upper lip clean up to his nose. Now this guy easily stood 6', and probably weighed 220. He wanted me to tell the police that he fell off his bike. That way he could go back to the bar and "take care of business". I told him that from the looks of him, he may want to keep away from that other fella cause I didn't want to pick him up for another ride to the hospital again. I wasn't too keen about doing it this time... What ever happened to the day when you took your ass whipping like a man and just went home afterward and put a bag of frozen vegetables on it? All he could say was he didn't have a bag of frozen vegetables.

My first run of the day was an actual 911 run. A poor little old lady was having trouble breathing. You cold hear her gurgling when she'd breathe from the front door. This is usually CHF, (congestive heart failure). Your heart doesn't pump well and fluid begins to back up into the lungs. It's almost like a slow drowning. By the time you can hear audible gurgling, they need to get to the hospital. These poor people are tired from trying so hard to breathe, it puts stress on their heart. I've actually had people ask me to put a tube down their nose to help them breathe. Nasotracheal intubation is not fun for the patient at all. First, if they've had it done to them before, you know that they are prone to needing it again. Second, if they've been through it before, and are asking for it again, you know they're in trouble.
In her case, we gave her some drugs, lots of O2, and got her to the hospital before she needed to be intubated.

My second actual emergency run was on a guy that was at work and co-workers called a medic for him because he was acting lethargic and confused. He had a history of diabetes, and had eaten lunch but not taken his insulin yet for the day. We tested his blood sugar and it was 356 which is high, but not high enough to make someone act strange. (Normal is 80 - 120). He could stand, walk, acted a little dizzy on his feet. He understood questions, but when it came to answering questions he had problems. You could tell that he understood the question, but couldn't form the words to answer. We ran him to the ER, and gave the ER doctor the story. Just as we got him into their bed, he had a huge seizure. For an epileptic, a seizure is like hitting the re-boot button on your computer. Their brain shuts down, then slowly comes back "on line". That's why they're so groggy after. This guy was seizing, but would try to look at you if you talked to him during the seizure. The only thing was that his gaze was up and to the right. He was having a massive bleed in the right side of his brain. I haven't heard yet what his outcome is. That run kind of bothered me because during the whole run, he didn't care about taking anything with him except for a stack of about 30 envelopes. They were invitations for his daughters graduation and he was supposed to mail them out.

My third true emergency of the day was at 1 am. It was a guy that while riding his bicycle was hit from behind by a speeding car. A witness said that the guy and his bike were both knocked thru the air and into the ditch. He estimated the cars speed at about 45. The car never stopped. My patient was pretty lucky. I think that he got off with just a broken collar bone and leg. Lots of gravel rash on his face and body. The biggest obstacle on the run was that my patient was a deaf mute. It's hard to find out what hurts a person when they can't talk. I'll give the guy some credit, if it were me and I'd just been hit by a car and I wasn't able to convey to my caregivers what hurts, I'd probably be a basket case. He was calm, and of course quiet, throughout the whole run.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Beef. It's what's for dinner.

Marinated London Broil
Buttered Corn
Twice Baked Potatoes
Salad
Bread

*Sigh*
We rotate cooking, driving and other assorted duties here at the station monthly. This'll be my month to cook. The one benefit to cooking is you usually fix what you like. The hardest part to cooking for a station full of firefighters is trying to decide what to fix. Sure, everyone has their specialties, but you can only spring those once a rotation or they soon become not-so-special. Our crew has some great cooks on it, and some not so great ones.
Mark is our out of the box guy. "Cook and serve" means easy-to-make for him. One of the funniest meals I ever had at the firehouse was the day he had pork loin slices, white rice and corn. What made it funny was the look on the guys faces when they each took a bite of corn. I knew what it was, so it didn't take me by suprise, but Mark had never heard of hominy. He just looked at the label on the can and figured it was "king size" corn. So he just fixed it like a can of corn...
Sean is a good cook, he likes to put some effort into his meals. He makes an awesome lasagna.
Roscoe likes to try new things, some from recipies, some off the top of his head. He's the type that'll throw chicken breasts, mushrooms, cheese, wine and rice in a skillet and throw it in the oven to cook. Some of his creations are good, some are better.
Rick's menu consists of just a few things. Taco salad, lunch meat, hamburgers and pizza pie. If he gets a wild hair and tries something different, well, lets just say you're really pushing your luck.
I'm the meat-and-potatoes guy. My mom is an excellent cook, we didn't eat fancy things... I guess a kind of southern type cook. I cook like her, (or try to).
So... it's gonna be beef tonight for dinner.
It was simple, easy chicken salad for lunch.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Dont worry, I'm not dissappearing again... Just nothing exciting. I work again Saturday, I'm sure there'll be something noteworthy then.