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!