And another one..

I received an email this afternoon from a friend who frequents this blog. She included a link to this article.

Folks, your Nation's responders are dying on a weekly, and sometimes daily basis. One day, we won't be here when you need us. PLEASE, PLEASE if you see the flashing lights on the road, SLOW DOWN, move over, and pay more attention. It will save you anguish and possibly jail time (many states add a felony if you kill a FR while they are in the course of their job duties). You will also help to ensure that that person returns home to their families.

Please be more careful...We all want to go home at the end of the day.

To my fellow responders--we MUST be more careful. We should expect issues when working wrecks on the interstate and the side of the road. This career we have chosen is dangerous. It is up to YOU to make sure that you return home safely.

The nightmares have returned

I've passed the spot where you died 7 times today. I can't avoid it when I'm up at this station. I try not to think about it but seeing the places in the asphalt where parts of your vehicle violently gouged lines in the ground as they twisted and flew through the air. I try not to remember the bruising left on the roadway from all the fluids brings back that day fresh in my mind. I pretend that I don't see the permanently-burned-into-the-asphalt rubber marks from where your tires were drug across the roadway. Unsuccessfully, I try to block out the sounds, sights, and the smells from that day that seem so fresh in my mind.

I wonder what would have happened if I could have saved you. Could we have gotten you extricated from the tangled metal fast enough to make a difference? What kind of quality of life would you have? And the simple fact that it took the Fire Department over 2 hours to extricate your body after the investigation was complete doesn't lessen the guilty feeling that I have. We SHOULD have been able to do something.

I see your face--what was left of it--twisted in agony and I know in my heart that you did not go peacefully. I know that you suffered and only hope that you were already unconscious when the dump truck barrelled down on you at 65 miles per hours. Every time I've closed my eyes today, I see the scene from on onlookers point of view. It's like hitting the replay button on the DVD and watching it from a disembodied distance. Almost as if I was a spectator and not the one to pronounce your lifeless body, broken and bloodied, dead.

I anxiously wait for the dreams to come tonight, knowing that by the time I am fully awake they will have turned into nightmares.

Your blank stare, the stare of death and agony, will haunt my days and interrupt my nights for the rest of my life.

Rest in peace.

Car Wreck

On duty today.....I hope that things are mellow today. I truly don't feel much like working today.

I was driving to an appointment yesterday, going a route that I don't usually travel and came upon a car wreck involving an 18 wheeler and an older model station wagon full of people. Looks like the 18 wheeler lost control on the wet roads and t boned the other vehicle, causing it to roll over several times. Thank God everyone in that vehicle was buckled in or they all probably would have been ejected--especially the 3 little ones in the back seat.

It's strange to be the first one on the scene when I'm off duty. I don't usually stop because by the time I pass the accidents, there is usually law enforcement, EMS, and the FD already there. Thankfully, I didn't have to do anything really, other than help calm down the kids and Mom. Once EMS got there, I gave report to the crews and helped them get everyone loaded up and then I went on my merry way.

It poured here yesterday, we really needed the rain but I hate driving in it. It was so bad at one point that I about needed to pull over because the visibility was so low.

If there is anything that you my readers would like me to blog about, send me a message and let me know!

Have a safe day and be careful.

Please keep "Alex" and his family, especially his uncle in your prayers today.

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!

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.