The best part of waking up

Sorry for weeks without posting. That's what happens when you work Wednesday nights in a small town - two weeks, literally no calls.

This Wednesday was similarly uneventful up until 5 a.m. when I awoke to the pager out of an otherwise good night's sleep. It was a nursing home call; possible fractured hip. Jumped out of bed, hopped in the Ambulance, and off we went.

One of my favorite part of calls when I'm not the driver is the pre-scene prep work: holding on to the handles on the roof of the ambulance with one hand while it bounces over the rough back roads and shuffling through compartments and cabinets with the other, looking for all the things that might come in handy on the call. I used to feel a little seasick when this happened first thing in the morning, but this particular day I was feeling very awake.

We arrived on scene to find an elderly person on the floor of the nursing home, clearly uncomfortable. After a brief on-scene assessment, we moved him up onto a backboard and from there to the stretcher. I love (some) nursing home calls since very often the patients there, even when they're quite ill, will have the best sense of humor about everything. This was one of those times: as I put the shoulder straps of the stretcher over the patient, he makes a rasping, choking noise. I look over at him like a deer in the headlights, worried that I had done something boneheaded, like tighten one over his neck, only to find him grinning at me mischievously. I smile, and we finish getting him up, covered thoroughly as it was about -2 out, and into the hallway. I'm maneuvering the stretcher and listening to the medical history given by the nurses, and in a minute we're out the door.

In the ambulance, heat is up, patient is shivering. Start oxygen, this helps, warms up, time for vitals. I take out my stethoscope - I use my own for the first time, knowing how poorly I can hear on the rig scopes, especially on older folks - and am surprised that the pulse is loud and clear the moment I touch the scope to the arm. Usually, even on a young, healthy person, I find I can't hear the pulse very well until the cuff is slightly inflated. I take the BP, don't believe the results, take it again, turn to my partner, and ask if he has high blood pressure or if the sweater is interfering. I was right, though; it's up around 175, whereas you and I are probably near 12o.

On the short ride to the hospital, you'd be amazed at how quickly you come to like or dislike a patient. Unless they're totally silent, they're usually very endearing or very troublesome, and this one was one of the best I'd seen. He asked my partner if she was a Signora or a Signorina,
and we all had a laugh. He then turned up and said, "If you can't have fun at this job..." and drew his fingers across his throat, making that same rasping sound as before.

That ride was excellent - I got to radio in to the hospital patient information for the first time, fill out a complete run report, and, best of all, actually feel like I helped someone. There's no better way to wake up than to jump out of bed without laying around procrastinating, get your things together, and go do something exciting right away. Now if only I could feel that way about my day job...