This is my job IRL. <-- YouPorn YouTube link - Willow, do not click this, your computer will explode and then your dad will beat you or something
According to people older and more paranoid than me, I'm not supposed to post anything related to work on Facebook because someone might see something and get pissed off and tell someone and get me canned.
However, I get to see and do some funny/weird/cool/funny shit at work, so I figured I'd treat you guys to a few stories and quotes and whatnot here and there.
Note: I will not be posting any HIPAA violations.
So, without further ado...
Last Edit: Jul 9, 2012 13:55:20 GMT -5 by Mury 6.0
So there are essentially two fields of work in EMS (emergency medical services).
The one that comes to mind for most folks is 911. This is whom you call when grandpa falls and shatters his hip into a million pieces, or when your pregnant girlfriend gets into a fistfight with her dad and starts complaining of diffuse abdominal pain. We come in hot (LNS, lights and sirens), determine if you need paramedics (affectionately known as God), wrap you up, and take you to the hospital.
There's also transport, which most people wouldn't even think exists unless they've dealt with it. This is the service that's used when your grandpa needs a ride from the hospital where he got his hip fixed to a nursing home where he's gonna fall and break something within the first week where he can be taken care of and kept safe, or when the ER doc determines that your pregnant girlfriend needs to go to a hospital with specialized maternity and neonatal facilities fucking now.
911 and transport are as different as they are similar. The experiences overlap more often than not. Most of the shit you see is routine; some of that is boring, a lot is unique to the field in the same way that computer chair jousting is unique to office jobs. I'll post a lot of those stories.
And sometimes, shit comes clean out of nowhere. Some calls come so far out of left field that you're not even sure what sport you're playing. I'll give you these sometimes, too.
I am not gonna keep this organized at all. Sometimes, I will post a story; sometimes, I'll post a quote. Sometimes, I'll go into tangents; sometimes, you might find it hard to follow along as I try to explain the ideas and concepts relevant to what I'm trying to tell you. I might post one thing at a time as I remember it, or I'll write up a bunch of stuff and dump it. Some of the stories will be my own, some will be those of my coworkers.
The key is that I will try to keep everything as truthful as possible. Of course, I may embellish here and there; conscious or not, such is the nature of storytelling. But there is one thing about emergency services that you'll hear any time you ask anyone in the field for a story or two:
You learn in EMT school about scene assessment, something you do before you even arrive on location. It begins when you first hear the call ("XYZ's ER going to ABC nursing home" vs. "XYZ hospital's psych unit going to ABC behavioral health clinic"). You know off the bat what the general nature of the call is gonna be - old lady going back to the nursing home, some nutter going to a psychiatric hospital, etc.
But my favorite thing is when you actually get to the hospital. I make sure to look for the reactions of the staff when we let them know we're here for whatever patient.
"Oh thank God" is my favorite, especially if I'm gonna be driving and my partner gets to sit in the back with this person.
So I say, "that bad, huh?" and the responses can vary. Here are a bunch I've heard:
"She's completely out of her mind."
"He came in because he was beating up his nurse, you tell me."
"Just make sure you double-glove before you go in there." (follow-up conversation: "what's her medical history?" -> "Pick an STD, she probably has it.")
"It's not that she's a bad patient, she just has to pee all the time."
"I hope you guys carry Vicks VapoRub."
"Did you bring restraints?"
"He keeps ripping out his IV, but I don't think the nursing home wants him to come back with it in, anyway."
"I don't know, I just got him. Do you need me to sign anything?"
"She's a frequent flier, she's just here for vicodin."
Last Edit: Jul 13, 2012 16:00:25 GMT -5 by Mury 6.0
Radio goes off. "29, I need you to head to XYZ helipad, I'll get back to you."
This is neat. I normally run BLS (basic life support) transport - two EMTs on board, as opposed to ALS (advanced life support) or critical care transport, which has two EMTs and a nurse - and helicopter runs are usually crit territory.
This particular helipad is only about fifteen minutes away, so my partner steps out for a smoke. She's two puffs in when the radio goes off again.
"29, SouthStar (one of the major medical helicopter companies in the area) is en route, I need you there yesterday. Go lights and sirens."
Oh my. Alright, my partner puts out her ciggy to save for later and climbs inside. I start making my way across the parking lot and flick on my lights when I get to the street. It's just after midnight, so I'm only working the sirens when I approach and go through lights.
Not even ten minutes later, we pull up to the helipad. Now, there's a certain way you're supposed to park an ambulance when you're meeting flight medics, with minor variations based on what company it is (SouthStar pilots are overly cautious NJ State Troopers, and Cooper Hospital choppers, from what I hear, are piloted by ex-military freaks who don't even bother scoping out the LZ (landing zone)). You park with any lights facing away from the LZ; at night, pilots use night vision to land, and headlights will blind them.
The fun part is waiting outside - experienced folks tell you to stand with the truck between you and the helipad, because the wind and dust from a landing helicopter are insane.
Anyway, so we pull up, and I get into position. My partner keys up our dispatcher.
"Dispatch, 29, arriving at XYZ helipad."
Short pause, then,
"29, disregard. Post in the area."
Now, I need to take a moment to explain something to my darling readers. Anyone who works in emergency services knows this, so I just need to point it out so you guys can understand this a little better:
Dispatchers are f$@king retarded a@%$#&e pieces of $@%^ $@@#D#%@!(r$@ <@(((><{ !#^(@ who are so full of @*@&& T@(D@#% ^*%&!!#% *(@# lorem ipsum !*$&!#^ $$@#! (%*!#&% $@#*(! with a bucket of !#**!& (!*# %%&! !&&$*#(@( %*$&!& !* ((^*% #&!* and so we generally are not too fond of them. My particular nighttime dispatchers are immensely stupid; perhaps they're not, and there really is a logical explanation for everything - the point is that no logical explanation is ever given to us, and so we bitch and moan and talk about how dispatchers are idiots.
So my partner hops out and relights her cigarette.
Two puffs. Radio goes off.
"29, stay there, you're gonna be meeting the flight crew, stay there, I'll get back to you."
....
She finishes her cigarette.
Half an hour (...) later, we hear the helicopter coming. They circle around, land, and we meet up. My partner and I are assuming that we're gonna be taking the medics to the hospital, because flight medics do not like it when crit nurses touch their patients (as a general rule). We're less than two minutes away from the hospital, so we (rightly, I suppose) assume that we will be doing the driving.
Not so.
Much to the ire of these particular medics, our company decided to use the crit truck that was posting in the area to bring the patient over. So basically, we sit there and keep the medics warm in our truck (while the State Troopers sleep or play Angry Birds in the helicopter's cockpit). This goes on for about twenty minutes, and then we hear sirens.
"Oh crap," I say, since we'd been chatting that whole time and the most important thing slips my mind. "Do you think the cops will mind if I get a picture of the helicopter?"
"Oh, why that does indeed tickle my fancy! no," responds one of the medics.
So I run out and get this picture just as the crit truck is pulling up. Pardon the shitty quality; it looks better on an iPhone screen, I guess >.<
Crit truck pulls up. At this point, it's almost comical how many people are involved in bouncing this stretcher along the grass to the chopper: myself and my partner, the two flight medics, the two crit EMTs, and the crit nurse. It would have been even better if either of the two pilots got out to help, but since when can a cop be arsed to help medical services?
The patient's a bit of a mess. Two gunshot wounds to the chest, one to the face; he's tubed, has three or four drips going, has a 12-lead monitor hooked up, and he's "Cooper naked" (admissions to Cooper's trauma wing must be wearing their birthday suits, hence the term.) At least the dude's unconscious and doesn't have to realize how much trouble he's going through.
We help load him up, then run off with our stretcher. The chopper rotors power on, and the medics are gone.
It takes us a good ten minutes to clean up afterward, since there's all kinds of awesome nursing equipment and blood and guts and stuff everywhere. Dispatch has us posting in the area again, so we hang out with the crit crew for a good fifteen minutes before parting. My partner manages to have an entire cigarette without interruptions. It turns out to be a decent night.
This isn't really about EMS (as in emergency medical services), just about emergency services in general.
Someone linked me a video of a police chase where some guy stole a patrol car. Having done 911, I've talked to police officers before, and I'm friendly with a few here and there.
It is possible to steal a police car. It is unlikely, and it is an incredibly stupid thing to do. Even as a fellow emergency worker, joking about stealing a police car is very iffy.
I feel really, really bad for the guy in that video. Jacking a cop car is like opening a Pandora's Box and releasing an endless world of shit.
Paramedics have this lovely little drug called Narcan. Very simply put, Narcan nullifies opiates. If you overdosed on percocets or heroin or something, even if you are DOA (dead on arrival), it is entirely possible for you to receive Narcan and jump awake.
In the wonderful experience of many many medics I've talked to, heroin overdoses who receive Narcan are best served with a cop or two sitting on top of them. Here's how the dialogue usually goes:
"Blah blah blah advanced medical jargon"
"blah blah blah administering Narcan"
......
"YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS YOU KILLED MY HIGH"
Reminds me of a story a medic once told me. It wasn't about a drug overdose; this was a diabetic emergency. Ever hear about how diabetics with severe sugar/insulin imbalances can go completely crazy? Well, apparently this tiny middle-aged lady managed to beat the utter shit out of three (count 'em - three) cops before she was finally wrestled down and given meds. Imagine "waking up" to see a dog pile of cops sitting on top of you.
Don't get me wrong, it's a terrible disease, and I can promise you guys right now that I will off myself before I ever let myself progress that far (this is on the same list as 'going on dialysis' and 'getting stuffed into a nursing home') ...
But Dementia patients are a heck of a lot of fun =)
There was the lady I took back when I was training with this company. I was with two precepting EMTs, and we got called for a transport from a hospital floor back to a nursing home.
This lady wasn't very cooperative at all. They had her fitted with boxing gloves (these adorable padded mittens that the "swatter" patients get, and one look at us told her we weren't even remotely trustworthy.
"Unhand me, you animal!" she screamed at one of my preceptors. "I will call 911!!"
"We are 911," he chuckled.
A few months later, I had this wonderful black lady. Sweetest patient ever, demented completely out of her mind. We were also taking her from a hospital floor to her nursing home.
So she's sitting in the armchair by her bed. My partner and I park the stretcher in front of her so that we can get her on using the very technical "stand and pivot" maneuver. The patient's nurse offers to help us (for future reference, this statement should bring about "shock" and "surprise" emotions in my readers; this is an incredibly rare occurrence), so I stand by the stretcher while my partner and the nurse get on either side of the patient. They reach under her arms, count to three, and help her stand up.
Now, let me try to paint this picture with as much detail as possible - at least, there were certain specific details that stood out to me. As I said, the patient was a sweet old black lady, like the kind of sweet old black grandma you'd imagine telling stories from her rocking chair on the porch. The important thing is that she had that old-time black lady accent - I want to call it a Louisiana accent, something lightly Southern like that.
So, with that image in mind, back to the 'stand and pivot'. My partner and the nurse help her stand up, and just as she is about to turn around to get onto the stretcher, she looks at me. In her eyes was the purest, most distilled form of horror I had ever seen in any person, ever. It was the sort of look you get when you find out that you have cancerous AIDS and will die before you can get home and throw out that gay furry scat porn collection in the top drawer of your dresser.
So she gives me this horrified look, dead in the eye, and she says:
Teagan Offline: This board is full of nostalgia.
Aug 22, 2020 8:39:09 GMT -5
Missing the old MH: gotta say missing when MH and all that was around.
Nov 6, 2019 0:02:30 GMT -5
Willow_lazy: why tf are there 400 posts about adidas
Sept 6, 2018 17:35:57 GMT -5
Azrael: I'm not hard to find, since I'm the only one there who goes by "Azzy", I'm pretty sure. XD
Feb 10, 2018 16:44:41 GMT -5
Azrael: Dunno if anyone still pops by here from time to time, but if any of you mofos do and still feel like gettin' yo nerd on, I've been hanging around this here place a bunch recently: www.roleplayerguild.com/
Feb 10, 2018 16:44:10 GMT -5
Azrael: hold onto your pantaloons
Jul 25, 2016 5:16:43 GMT -5