Mixed Blessings

After months of begging, pleading, and documenting the shortcomings and failures of my paramedic partner, she FINALLY has been told that her standing orders have been pulled and she can no longer function as a paramedic by herself. She is back on probation and will be evaluated by the Lieutenant starting next shift.

I guess I should maybe give a little background info so y'all won't think I'm just a terrible person for being happy.

She's a new medic--had her license just over a year. She and I have been partners for about 6 months, but not by choice. We were forced to work together because no one else wanted to work with her. I promised myself that I would try to help her and I really and truly did. I tried---even though I didn't want to. I told myself that if she failed as a medic here it wouldn't be because I didn't try to help her. Apparently, I tried too hard because I wound up holding her hand and making up for her shortcomings. I made sure she didn't kill anyone and patiently answered all her questions.

Until she got a major attitude and didn't want help anymore. So I quit. Why should I waste my time and energy on someone who doesn't want or appreciate it? Screw that! I've got better things to do with my down time at the hall. Like sleeping or sleeping.....Then she started complaining about MY attitude....

Let's be perfectly clear, I'm not a saint in all this. I've rolled my eyes at her, I've talked bad about her (to the Captains only, though), I've gotten frustrated with her, and yes, I've been rude to her. BUT, I've never done any of that in front of a patient, family members, fire fighters, or other responders. That's so unprofessional that I can't even describe it.

A friend of mine passed away this summer after a courageous fight with melanoma. While I was out of state attending her memorial services, my partner took it upon her self to email several of the administrators and make terrible accusations about myself and our captain. The past three months have been pure HELL. I've barely spoken to her unless it directly relates to patient care and I was told to not do anything with her patients unless she was about to harm them. I've been pretty close to quitting my job due to the hostile work environment that she has created here with her behavior and her attitude.

So today, finally the first step was taken to terminating her. She'll be evaluated until either she passes muster or it's determined that she just can't be up to par. Nonetheless, I am no longer responsible for her actions or inactions....She is currently someone else's problem....And I anticipate that she won't make it which means that I'll never have to work with her again!

Those that have followed this for the past several months will truly understand how I feel and know that I'm not being just mean spirited. If you don't know me, then I'm sorry if you think I'm just being mean and cruel.

Keep checking back for the updated drama.....The next installment of "As the Light Bar Turns"

Giving Thanks

Today, take the time to give thanks for the blessings in your life. Someone out there ALWAYS has it worse than us. I know at times it's easy to get bogged down in the minute details of life, so make a list of all that life has given to you. It's easier to do this when you make a list of all that you are grateful for.

Here's my list. I challenge you to make your own.

• I'm grateful for my friends and the opportunity to get together with so many of them last month.
• I'm grateful for my family who always supports me, even if I'm wrong.
• I'm grateful for my job that gives me a paycheck and provides food and a roof over my head.
• I'm grateful for the internet, it keeps me connected to my friends and family who live far away.
• I'm grateful for my kitties, they keep my feet warm at night and help chase away loneliness and sorrow.
• I'm so incredibly grateful for my good health insurance policy.
• I'm grateful for my good health.
• I'm grateful for the chance to have known and loved two friends who passed away this year. One taught me how to live life with your whole heart, the other taught me how to be strong when faced with adversity.
• On a lighter note, I'm thankful for coupons and the Sunday paper/sales ads and the generous people who patiently taught me how to make my tight budget stretch further.

This holiday season, reach out to someone who has less than you. Open your heart and love. Be thankful for what you have.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

In loving memory of William Joseph and Amber Denise.

Life lessons learned....

You learn a lot of life lessons by watching other's misfortunes happen. Here are just a few. I hope that you will take these hints and tips with you and maybe, just maybe they will cause you to respond or react to a situation differently than you might normally.

• You DON'T always get a second chance to say what you mean to those that you love.
• Those whom you think that you know the best and whom you place your fragile trust in have the greatest ability to hurt you the worst.
• Life isn't fair.
• Bad things happen to good people.
• Life can change in an instant.
• Health insurance is a good thing.
• Say "I Love You" to the people you care about.
• Don't wait until tomorrow to say or do something important. Tomorrow might not come.
• Try not to have regrets. They just make you feel guilty.
• Pour your heart and soul into everything that you do.
• Love like you've never been loved before.
• Believe in yourself. You are stronger than you think!

If I wasn't already a vegetarian...

**Don't read if you've got a weak stomach. Lots of bodily fluids are present in this blog.**

I've decided that me and Dinty Moore beef stew (the nasty microwaveable kind) aren't friends.

I decided this after seeing it erupt out of a patient's mouth and both nostrils like Mt. Saint Helens. I didn't know the human body could produce such copious amounts of vomit. The smell was putrid and when combined with the other unpleasant odors of death, almost unbearable. I was pretty close to tossing my own cookies, right on her ample chest.

When her family called 911, she was in respiratory distress. When we got to the scene a few minutes later, she was blue and not breathing. While attempting to intubate her and secure an airway she vomited a little. When her heart finally stopped beating, the volcano erupted. She also lost control of her bladder and bowels.

Why do people always die in the smallest room in the house? This patient was found face down in the kitchen and between me and my partner, the fire department, my Captain, the patient, and our equipment, there was barely enough room to think. I distinctly remember the sight and sound of the vomit hitting the sides of the refrigerator as it first bubbled, then streamed out her nose.

I drilled a needle into her lower leg so that we could attempt to administer medications in order to try to restart her heart. She was a large woman and the needle barely made it through her flesh and into her bone marrow. We pushed 3 rounds of drugs and delivered her to the code team at the ED no worse off.

They managed to get a heartbeat back and were talking about admitting her when we left.
I felt dirty. It took an hour to clean our unit. The Dinty Moore made a reappearance during transport and wound up inside 2 of the cabinets. It also ended up on my pants, my pullover, in my hair, and on my boots. Nothing is more cleansing than throwing the nasty funky uniform in a bio hazard bag and taking a hot shower. Doesn't matter that it was 30 degrees outside and my hair would have frozen to my head if we had to go out again.

All that mattered is that I washed Dinty Moore down the drain.

I hope he never returns. I'm not sure I could take it again.

A few of my more memorable calls

I thought I'd share with you a few of my most memorable calls....

Earlier this year, getting dispatched to the sidewalk in front of the hospital for a female patient who had just given birth. Mind you, it's o' dark thirty in the morning and 20 degrees outside....

We arrived on scene and found a lady lying on the sidewalk, holding her newborn in her arms. We got her up off the sidewalk and into the back of the ambulance where she delivered the placenta. I clamped and cut the cord. After drying off the infant, we wrapped him up really well and I stuffed him under my pullover to try to get his body temp up. I stood with him in front of the heater and prayed for his core temp to come up. Other than being severely hypothermic, both Mom and baby eventually did fine.

We came to find out that this was the 5th child for this mother. She went into labor and Dad drove her to the hospital. Instead of dropping her off at the ER to go up to L&D, he parked in the parking garage. Well, she made it to the sidewalk when Junior decided he just wasn't waiting anymore.

I've worked numerous car wrecks where people should have been dead or seriously maimed and they walked away just fine! Mostly because they chose to wear their seat belts.

Then there is the patient who calls all the time for breathing problems and really she's lonely. I know the last time we had a city wide power outage, and we had to take her to the hospital because her air conditioner went out.....Uh, no kidding lady there's no power ANYWHERE in the city.

The saddest thing is people refusing care who really need to go. Several years ago I responded on a call, I don't even remember what the complaint was at the time. The patient absolutely refused to go. We did everything short of having him arrested and forcing him to go--We legally couldn't do that anyways as he was totally competent to make his own decisions. He looked horrible and had a significant history. He said he already had a doctor's appointment for the next day and just wanted to keep that. He signed a refusal and we left. 10 hours later, we were doing CPR on him as his family watched.

He COULD have been ok. He might have lived if he had gone to the hospital the night before when we were out there.

How about the patient who was trying to burn trash (hey man, watch this!) in a 55 gallon barrel and ended up with a fancy ride via LifeFlight helicopter to the burn unit at our local trauma center, with facial, airway, and chest burns.

The fact remains that as a prehospital provider, we are frequently given a unique glance into many aspects of peoples lives that they may not share with others. We also frequently see how stupidity equals job security...

Until next time!

I wish you could know-Poem

This is the poem that I promised to find and post for the Mamas.

I wish you could know

I wish you could know what it is like to search a burning bedroom for trapped children at 3 AM, flames rolling above your head, your palms and knees burning as you crawl, the floor sagging under your weight as the kitchen below you burns.

I wish you could comprehend a wife's horror at 6 in the morning as I check her husband of 40 years for a pulse and find none. I start CPR anyway, hoping to bring him back, knowing intuitively it is too late. But wanting his wife and family to know everything possible was done to try to save his life.

I wish you knew the unique smell of burning insulation, the taste of soot-filled mucus, the feeling of intense heat through your turnout gear, the sound of flames crackling, the eeriness of being able to see absolutely nothing in dense smoke - sensations that I've become too familiar with.

I wish you could understand how it feels to go to work in the morning after having spent most of the night, hot and soaking wet at a multiple alarm.

I wish you could read my mind as I respond to a building fire "Is this a false alarm or a working fire? How is the building constructed? What hazards await me? Is anyone trapped?"

Or to an EMS call, "What is wrong with the patient? Is it minor or life-threatening? Is the caller really in distress or is he waiting for us with a 2x4 or a gun?"

I wish you could be in the emergency room as a doctor pronounces dead the beautiful five-year old girl that I have been trying to save during the past 25 minutes. Who will never go on her first date or say the words, "I love you Mommy" again.

I wish you could know the frustration I feel in the cab of the engine, squad, or my personal vehicle, the driver with his foot pressing down hard on the pedal, my arm tugging again and again at the air horn chain, as you fail to yield the right-of-way at an intersection or in traffic. When you need us however, your first comment upon our arrival will be, "It took you forever to get here!"

I wish you could know my thoughts as I help extricate a girl of teenage years from the remains of her automobile. "What if this was my sister, my girlfriend or a friend? What were her parents reaction going to be when they opened the door to find a police officer with hat in hand?"

I wish you could know how it feels to walk in the back door and greet my parents and family, not having the heart to tell them that I nearly did not come back from the last call.

I wish you could know how it feels dispatching an officer, fireman and EMT out and when we call for them and our heart drops because no one answers back or to hear a bone chilling 911 call of a child or wife needing assistance.

I wish you could feel the hurt as people verbally, and sometimes physically, abuse us or belittle what I do, or as they express their attitudes of "It will never happen to me."

I wish you could realize the physical, emotional and mental drain or missed meals, lost sleep and forgone social activities, in addition to all the tragedy my eyes have seen.

I wish you could know the brotherhood and self-satisfaction of helping save a life or preserving someone's property, or being able to therein time of crisis, or creating order from total chaos.

I wish you could understand what it feels like to have a little boy tugging at your arm and asking, "Is Mommy okay?" Not even being able to look in his eyes without tears from your own and not knowing what to say.

Or to have to hold back a long time friend who watches his buddy having rescue breathing done on him as they take him away in the ambulance. You know all along he did not have his seat belt on. A sensation that I have become too familiar with.

Unless you have lived with this kind of life, you will never truly understand or appreciate who I am, who we are, or what our job really means to us... I wish you could though.

-author unknown-

What's the worst thing....?

***Warning Graphic content/language. Reader discretion advised.***

We almost slept all night last night. I knew we would have to get up at least once to take a patient back to her home, and we did. Other than that, we slept most of the night until shift change. My partner and I had a EMT student riding with us yesterday. They are almost done with school and our student did pretty well. He was successful in all his IV attempts and graciously accepted all of our suggestions.

The longer I've been in EMS the more I dread the question, "what's the worst thing you've seen?", "what's the grossest thing you've seen?", and "what's the worst call you've been on?" The longer that I do this job, the more I see and the less I want to share. Most people who don't work in public safety or medical careers just don't understand what we do. They want to hear the cool things but they aren't prepared to hear about body parts on the side of the road or doing CPR on a 3 week old child.

Phillip asked me about the worst call I've been on, and thank god we got interrupted because about a month ago, I worked a car wreck where my patient's brain were sprayed all over the back seat of the car like paint from a sprayer. I can still see my patient's face, crushed by the B post on the driver's side of the car. I found an eye ball about 15 feet from the car. My patient was so horribly disfigured, it was difficult to discern what was car and what was body parts. It was difficult to identify certain anatomical landmarks.

It is somewhat eerie to look into a person's nasal passages and see the inside of the back of their skull without anything in the way. It's just not natural and I lay in bed at night sometimes picturing his face and it makes it hard to sleep. This is the first time in my 7 year career that I've ever not talked about a call much. I know there was nothing that we could have done, I mean the patient was dead likely on impact. But it's the loss of life, especially when it is so violent that is what I mourn.

It's my job to provide treatment and transportation to patients requiring emergency care. I find sometimes that the strangest thoughts run through my mind when I work calls like this, a fatality MVC. I must protect the patient, their families, and the general public. The media, thank god was not pushy and stayed behind the crime scene tape set up by the highway patrol. The general public isn't prepared to see the kind of things that we do, the kind of things that haunt my dreams. It is my responsibility to protect the dignity of my patient, even in death, and to advocate for them when they have no voice.

So, as I found an eyeball on the side of the road and stepped over blobs of brain matter I found myself wondering, "How in the hell is the funeral home going to make him look good?" I hoped like hell that the family wouldn't insist on a viewing. I assumed they would have to make positive identification by fingerprinting or DNA testing since there weren't any facial features left.

About 30 minutes after being on scene, I began feeling dirty. All I could think about was getting back to the station and taking a long, hot shower. I wanted to wash all the funk off of me, the death lingering like a cloud of nasty perfume. I wanted to change my uniform and put on clean pants. I wanted to scrub the bottom of my boots to get all the blood and brain matter off the bottom of them.

And then I realized that I hadn't eaten lunch yet. I was hungry.

I don't know how often I'll write, but I've found that it helps to write my thoughts and feelings down. Patient information will be vague to protect my patient's privacy to the best of my ability. Names (if used) will be changed, scene locations and call information may be altered. Patients will be referred to using either gender reference, regardless of what their sex is.

This is my blog. I make no bones about the fact that there will be graphic content, sarcasm, and morbid humor that most won't understand. But, I'm writing this for my own sanity, not yours. If my writing bothers you, then please refrain from reading it. I'll post at the top of each blog if there is graphic content, that way you can decide to read or not, depending on your comfort level.

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A few of my favorite Sites

EMS Links

* IAFF--Fire/EMS union
* EMS Village
* Flight Web
* Field Medics
* Nat'l Association of EMTs
* Nat'l Registry of EMTs
* Nat'l Flight Paramedic Association
* EMT City
* EMS 1
* EMT Life
* Make your own Shift Calendar

Fire Links

* Firefighter Nation
* FireHouse
* Patriot Guard
* IAFF Fallen Fire Fighter Memorial

Other Links

* Annoying Coworker
* Become a BzzAgent
* Live, Laugh, Blog
* MySpace
* Pogo--A great game site
* St. Jude Children's Hospital
* The Breast Cancer Diaries
* The Last Soldier
* Visit my Mini City

About Me

I work somewhere in the continental United States as a Paramedic. I've been a medic for 4+ years and have been in the public safety field for almost 7.

I love my job, I can't imagine doing anything else.

My blogs are my own thoughts and feelings. They in no way reflect the opinion of my employer (past or present) or any organization or medical facility that I happen to be affiliated with.

Because the government believes that medical personnel doesn't do enough to protect the privacy of patients and has created the nightmare that I will call HIPPA, I disclose the following information:

Events portrayed as recent are not. The other day is a broad term meaning anytime within the author’s life. Also, "the other day" may refer to "last week", "a year ago", "just now", "earlier today", "last month", etc...You get the idea.

All case reports presented on these pages are composites of multiple patients with all identifying information changed to make the stories better…I mean for the sake of confidentiality.

Medical advice should only be obtained from your personal physician, not from an anonymous EMS blog.

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This policy is valid from 02 November 2007

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