djdigdoug

Sorry that I haven't been around lately, I've just worked 88 of the last 120 hours. This is quite legal in my business, in fact very commonplace. Another reason that our interventions/skills must be "muscle memory" so we can perform them in our sleep if we have to w/o thinking, as my instructors used to say. Because a lot of the time we are half-asleep on calls. We are "technically" allowed to sleep in between calls, which is why we are allowed to work these kind of hours. But there are a lot of "if's" for sleeping...IF our Ambulance is cleaned and stocked, IF the base is swept, mopped, garbage taken out, dishes done, etc., and the biggest IF of them all...IF there are no 911 calls going out! When I was going through school I was always told that ALS (advanced life support) meant two things - 1) Always Lying Supine, and 2) Ain't Lifting Shit! Boy was that wrong. That shit goes out the window when you work in a system that ALS is the primary response, and you have to carry every patient out on a Stair-Chair. I had myself fooled into thinking that Firefighter's would help us carry patients. Reality is that they are useless as tits on a bull, mostly just stand around giving the patient the "Stare of Life," and can't even get vital signs done for us prior to our arriving.

Anyfuck, I had probabl the worst call of my life yesterday. The call came in as a "man on fire," and I recognized the address but didn't know why. As we arrived on-scene, all I could smell was burnt fles and hair and I knew it was bad. I walked in the door of the apartment and saw a man lying in a puddle of water with all of his clothes completely charred and his hair singed.

As I looked at his face I recognized him as one of our "regulars" named Bobby. Bobby had a stroke ten years ago from doing too much coke, and was left with limited use of the right-side of his body, expressive aphasia (he can only say the words "no," "please," "home," and "fuck you!"), and a seizure disorder for which he is frequently non-compliant with his meds because his is also a suicidal alcoholic (he attempted suicide once by stabbing himself 20 times).

We got him into the ambulance and began removing what was left of his charred clothes, and a lot of his skin was sloughing-off with them. Once we got his clothes off we realized he had 2nd degree burns over 80% of his body and probably wasn't going to make it. Trying to get an IV was next to impossible because the skin that wasn't falling off was tough as leather, but I finally found a vein in his had and got the FLuids running into him and gave him 4mg of Versed, and 20mg of morphine to put him out so my partner adn I could intubate him because his airway was compromised. Needless to say he's probably not going to make it, but he is at "Man's Greatest Hospital," so who knows. One thing for sure is if he does make it, God must really hate him, I mean the suffering he's already been through, and he seems doomed to walk the earth suffering forever.

Worst part was that the Police showed up at the hospital and said that all of the evidence pointed to the fact that bobby doused himself with lighter fluid and set himself on fire! What a fucked up, painful, ugly way to kill yourself! It took us well over an hour to clean the back of the ambulance and get rid of the smell. I don't think I'll get that smell out of my nose for weeks.