A day at work

I rarely talk about work in a blog. In fact, I think I only have once before. But, I'll tell you about some of my day yesterday without giving out information that would violate any one's privacy.

My partner, Dana, and I had to take a call as soon as our shift started at 8 a.m. As luck would have it, I arrived to work about 10 minutes early and was able to eat my breakfast before time to clock in. Why didn't I eat at home? Because I am not a morning person, and I hit the snooze button just enough times to get up, get ready, and go out the door.

So, we headed to another city to pick up a patient at a hospital to go to another facility for a treatment. When we arrived at the hospital, we were informed that another ambulance service had already taken that patient. It seems that they set up transport with both ambulance services. That's okay, the hospital has to pay for us responding there.

Then we got a call to take a patient from an assisted living facility to a psychiatric hospital 30 minutes away. We were told that the patient was combative and hitting people. We arrived only to be told that the hospital didn't have a room for her. They called the psychiatric units of two other hospitals and were told that they didn't have any beds available. So, I told the nurse to call the emergency room of our local hospital and just tell them we were bringing her in. I said that if they felt she needed to be admitted they would find a psych unit that would take her. She called and told them that we would be bringing a patient in and they said, "okay".

Finally, we are led to the patient. She was a tiny, 92 year old lady with advanced Alzheimer's Disease. She had been attacking other residents and staff that day. We approached her and did our best to make friends with her. She informed us that if we touched her she would beat the @#$& out of us. She repeatedly told us that.

I talked to my partner and told her that I didn't want to wrestle this poor old lady, and Dana agreed. So, I told the nurse they needed to call the police and get a Temporary Detaining Order (TDO) for this woman. We were still there when an officer arrived a few minutes later. His dispatcher thought they had already gotten a TDO, which they hadn't. He told me that he couldn't do anything without one.

The officer decided to talk to her. He went into her room to talk with her. All was quiet for a few minutes, then we heard her yelling. It was the type of yell you hear in the movies when someone is charging towards someone to attack them. Her bedroom door opened and the police officer was backing out while she was throwing small furniture and anything she could get her hands on at him. Then she started hitting and kicking him.

I thought he would tell her she was under arrest for assault, handcuff her, and then we could put her on our stretcher. But, no! I knew we couldn't leave her there to harm any of the other elderly people, so I told Dana, "Let's just do it!" The officer told us he couldn't help since he didn't have a TDO. So I got behind her and picked her up from under the shoulders while Dana got her legs. Now that I think about it, I should have given her a big bear hug that would have pinned her arms down, but I didn't, and she started hitting me. So, the officer did hold her hands while we got her onto the stretcher. We seat belted her in with three sets of seat belts and headed to the ambulance.

She got her arms and legs out of the seat belts (of course) and was fighting all the way to our unit. Once we got to our ambulance, I got a bunch of cravats (that we usually use to make slings) and we restrained her arms and legs with them. I really wasn't afraid of her hurting us, I was afraid of her hurting herself.

We rolled her into the E.R. and were assigned a room to take her to. In the mean time, she was telling everyone how we raped (that's not the term she used, I cleaned it up) her all the way to the hospital.

A couple of firefighters asked us if we wanted help moving her to the hospital bed. We told them that we did and what to expect. There were six of us in the room getting ready to move her when a nurse walked in the room acting cocky. She gave the impression that she just knew that everything was going to be okay since she was there now. She wagged her finger at the patient and told her that she needed to stop cussing and she needed to behave. Then she told us to untie her. We had to anyway to move her from our stretcher to their bed. So, we did, and she hands and feet had to be held while we moved her.

Then that nurse said to just leave her without restraining her. The next thing we all knew, that same nurse got kicked in the face by the patient (and she had been standing at the patients head)! That lady brought her leg all the way back to kick her. So, said nurse ran off to get an icepack. Last I heard, she had a possible broken nose.

The patient had kicked me in the face and hit me while we were loading her onto our stretcher, but there was no power to the hits I took. I didn't get hurt at all.

I hope the doctors can regulate this woman's medications. I think that Alzheimer's is one of the saddest diseases.

So, now Dana and I are ready for lunch. But, we have to go to another nursing home to pick up a man with abdominal pain and a fever. We figured this call wouldn't take long. We got a report, loaded him up, and put him in the ambulance. This patient also had advanced Alzheimer's and couldn't talk. But, you could tell he was in pain when you touched his abdomen. I told Dana to start heading to the hospital and I would get his vitals.

Well, he fought getting his blood pressure taken. When I finally got the cuff on his arm, I couldn't get his BP because he was moving/flexing his muscles too much. I couldn't get a pulse because of the same reason. So, I slipped a probe on one of his fingers to see what his pulse rate was. It was 177! Twice what it should be. So, I started him on oxygen, put him on a heart monitor (yep, heart rate in the 170s), and set up an IV. After we parked at the hospital, my partner held his arm so I could get the IV and then we took him inside.

I forgot to mention that the patient had a feeding tube that he had pulled out twice the day before. The nursing home staff put it back in both times. Apparently whoever did it, out it back in wrong. I suspect the patient had peritonitis (which would require surgery).

Dana and I were both sick with mild colds, so by the time we finished that call, we just wanted to rest during lunch. That was a bad idea. I got about an hour nap in, then the dispatcher told us we needed to go to a local drag strip where our other unit had a medical emergency going on. Race tracks have to have an ambulance on scene in order to race cars or other vehicles.

So, we headed to the track to stay there while our other crew took care of their patient. When we were half-way there, our dispatcher told us that a medical helicopter was on scene and they were going to fly the patient out unless the patient went into cardiac arrest. In that case, the ambulance would take them to the nearest hospital.

We arrived at the track and the helicopter was parked not far from where we were stationed. Racing resumed, and a few minutes later the other ambulance, with the flight crew, rolled up and put the patient on the helicopter.

I never get tired of watching helicopters (or planes for that matter) take off. After they left, my boss asked me and my partner to stick around. They were racing all motorcycles that day and some of them go over 220 MPH. He wanted us there in case there was a wreck.

I didn't mind staying, but by that time, I was regretting skipping lunch. We stayed there until after 6 p.m. There were no wrecks and no more medical emergencies. I had to go to a local hospital to change out some equipment, and finally we got to eat dinner around 7 p.m.

We went out for a sit-down dinner at an Italian restaurant then headed back to our building.

We were just getting settled in when our dispatcher told us that we had a call. It was for a woman at a psychiatric hospital who needed to go to the local hospital for an injury (self-inflicted). The dispatcher told us that she was a TDO. In other words, she was sent to the mental hospital by order of a magistrate. She was a flight risk. She was combative and she weighed 300 lbs. I told the dispatcher, "We just got beat up by a 92 year old woman today, I don't want to be beat up by a 300 lb. woman!" She said, "Well, the police are going to meet you there." Gee, that made me feel better.

I told Dana that if that lady even looked at us wrong that we weren't going to take her. I wasn't going to put myself in danger.

We arrived at the scene and two police officers were waiting outside with a nurse. She told us what was going on and we went inside. The officers approached the patient first and she was calm. So, we went and introduced ourselves and told her we were taking her to the hospital. She said that it was okay and she walked to our stretcher. We loaded her onto the ambulance and the police followed us to the hospital. Luckily, she did not give us any problems.

We made it back to the building and were blessed with a good night's sleep. This was great since we were both sick.

So, that was my Saturday.