20 January 2006

Long Day

Wow. I don't think the day could have dragged out any longer. We did a lift assist at 0900. After that we did absolutely nothing until almost midnight.

Tonight was the first night of the EMT-B class that I teach for. I am stationed in the same building that it is taught at. I went downstairs to see what the cat dragged in this semester. There are about 75 students. I helped out ushering the students in and getting them settled in. Then I just hung out with the other instructors until almost 2200. Still no calls. I went back up to our "quarters" on the second floor. I tried to go to sleep, but sure enough we got a call. Our dispatcher told us that we had a call downstairs- a student from the paramedic class that was going on up on the seventh floor was having chest pain. Her boyfriend brought her down in a wheelchair to the ambulance. She had a cardiac history and was scheduled for surgery at the end of the month. We really couldn't do much for her-she had no veins and refused to let us use either of her ACs. So, with nothing for veins in her hand, and stable vitals, we just drove her to the hospital-practically BLS (besides the monitor).

We ran several other calls after that and had about an hour break. It was 0750 when I was awoken by the Nextel. We had a call...our off time was in ten minutes. They sent us on priority to a nursing home for "hypoxia." The woman had a history of internal bleeding among many other things, was extremely pale and had passed out twice prior to our arrival. The RN said that her oxygen sats dropped to 88% on two liters, so they put her on a NRB. She was at 100% when we got there. No problem. The RN had also noted a large lump under the woman's armpit and bruising on her breast and down the side of her ribs. It started two days ago. Hopefully it's not advanced cancer that they just didn't have the time to notice. I have taken her before. Last time she needed a blood transfusion. She was doing pretty well when we left.

I got out at 0945; just in time to leave for class.

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