Psych City

First call was for a possible stroke. The lady had slurred speech and facial droop. The nurse said the speech was normal for her, but the drooping was new. The son noticed it yesterday. That's always nice. Other than that she checked out okay. We went priority to the ER on a "stroke alert."

We did mostly BLS bounces during the day. My youngest patient was 92 years old until the late evening.

One guy was a real cutie. He was in for a syncope. We took him out of the ER. He refused to be admitted because he said if he didn't get home his wife would die. So, eventually they let him return. He passed out because he has 100% blockage of one carotid artery and 25% of the other. He said he didn't want to get it fixed because he wants to go when his wife does. We got him back to his room at the nursing home, and as we walked in his wife's face got red and she teared up. She was really glad to have him back. I brought the cot into the hallway and my parter did paperwork as I remade the cot. I glanced back in the room and I saw the man walk over to his wife's bed, sit down and give her a big smooch. They had been married for 71 years.

Shift was downhill from there. All hell started to break loose in the evening.

We did psych after psych after psych. We didn't even wait for the hospital to call. We just headed back for the next one as soon as we cleared from the call. They kept us up almost all night. I think I just started to fall alseep around 0630. At 0715 they beeped us and told us we had one coming out. I figured it was just another bounce. Nope. It was going about 40 miles away. Thank God we convinced an oncoming crew to take the call because I had to work at 0800 at the firehouse. Whew. That could have been bad.