Baby is here!

The newest addition to the FFPM family arrived this weekend. So I have taken a few weeks off of work. I could substitute stories from work with stories of a newborn, but I fear that I may scare away some of the followers. Maybe I will anyway, depends on how tired I am.
Until then I'll try to find something else to entertain my small brain.
I hope the ghetto will still be there when I return.

Oh man, Marvin shot himself in the face!

We get dispatched to a gun shot wound (GSW) call. Enroute the police notes come up on the computer and it says the patient shot himself in the face while attempting to shoot his "girlfriend". Upon arrival we find a guy who has in fact been shot in the face. He is also stuffed into the extra cab of a truck in the parking lot. Strange location since that is not where he was shot. As we are pulling him out and getting ready to rapidly transport to the trauma center, I am watching an exchange between the police and a woman. The woman is screaming that if he (the pt) lives she wants to press charges. The story is something about he came over to collect "rent" from her. I am pretty sure "rent" is code for profits made from prostitution. When he threatned her with the gun a struggle ensued and he shot himself in the face. As we were transporting the pt to the hospital we all started talking about the scene in pulp fiction when Vincent shoots Marvin in the face.

Saturday afternoon at the gay bar.

So like I have mentioned, I work in the "seedy" part of town. I have been assigned to my station since August and for the first time for me, we were dispatched to the gay bar for a fainting episode. The comments from the rest of the house start before we get to the truck. So we respond and pull up in front of the bar where The Village People are flagging us down. Not the actual Village People Group, but a few bar patrons that resembled the group. One member had a very impressive mustache. They all follow us in to the bar. My crew consists of 2 men and 1 woman. The female on our crew was prepared to protect "her boys" until an aggressive appearing lesbian made eyes at her. Apparently at that point we (boys) were on our own, as she was scared for herself. As we make our way around the bar, we are attracting some attention and a bar patron tells us that the patient "is a large man". For the first time ever in my EMS career, I was hoping for an overweight patient. Anyway we find our patient lying on the floor and was not feeling very well. His head being supported by a little skinny guy that was happy to remain in place as long as he was needed. The patient was; by his estimation, approximately 500 pounds. Well, the auto BP cuff (yes we are that lazy) does not fit his bicep so it is attached to his forearm. The auto BP cuffs are notorious for being inaccurate (but yet we are still too lazy to use the manual one) The reading comes back BP 100/60. The heart rate 28. Possibly inaccurate but it was confirmed by the pulse oximeter. Ah ha!! I think I know why our patient had passed out. So, possibly due to lack of blood flow our patient will not follow commands or allow us to assist him up. He insists on doing it himself. So Mr. 500lbs with a heart rate of 28-30 struggles, grunts and sweats himself up to kneeling. With some more grunting and a lot of sweating he attempts to stand. In the middle of this impressive effort to get to the gurney, our patient's pants fall to his ankles. And of course, our patient was not wearing any underwear. A large group of bar patrons are looking on and I don't know how embarrassed our patient was, but we were a little uncomfortable. The female of our crew was frozen with her mouth hanging open. Her only statement about what she saw later was " It was just so ......... big. I have never... It was just so big" I think she will be scarred forever. Luckily the other member of our crew was kneeling down directly behind our patient (eye to eye if you will) and as much as he did not want to, he reached down and restored a little dignity to the call. Remember our little helper? He was very determined that someone take his phone number down and provide it to the patient. Apparently they had just met and things were going well before the fainting spell. So as we were trying to render care and closing ambulance doors this guy is demanding us take his phone number. The medic who actually wrote it down got some grief for taking it down. Things went pretty well after that and we delivered our very nice patient to the ER alive and well.

Whoever invented the "Nurse Advice Line" should be kicked in the face.

So, last shift was exceptionally quiet. Except for the unspecific sick call. We had several cases of flu symptoms over a few days and " I called the nurse advide line and they told me to call 911" stories. You could call these "nurses" with a runny nose and they will tell you of the possibility of CSF leaking from your skull and to call 911. Nobody would notice if they had been replaced with a monkey and a parrot. The monkey would answer the phone and hold it up to the parrot(nurse), who would squawk "call 911". Completely useless.

The other excuse for a ems taxi ride from last shift : "I wouldn't have bothered you guys but I don't have any gas in either of my two cars." Just the reason EMS exists.

And lastly, the "I'll pay fpr it, I have madicaid / medicare." I usually respond (in my inner dialogue) No, that means I'll pay for it.

Drunk girls will stab you

So, while my crew and I were busy wrestling a naked overdose guy who shot himself in the leg because the fence was talking to him; a nearby crew had to respond to a stabbing call in our district. The intoxicated girlfriend stabbed the boyfriend in the chest - not too unusual for my district. The unusual part was when the engine had to respond back to the same address later that night for a pregnant female with abdominal pain. This "pt" was very intoxicated and the cool part was she was in police custody for the stabbing. So yes, the DRUNK pregnant female stabbed her boy friend in the chest with a kitchen knife. it was probably over the last beer. Good times

Sibling rivalry

So just before midnight on Valentine's Day we get toned out for a stabbing assault. We arrive to find private ambulance medic in full blown panic. But to her credit she has already loaded the patient onto the gurney and we are on our way shortly. After all, we are the tow truck, not the mechanic. So the transport goes well and we deliver our unconscious female patient alive. Strangely enough the female patient was stabbed by her sister. In front of both of their kids ages 4-6 years old. I just wonder what the argument could have been to make someone stab their sister several times.

New one by me............

So we get a call in the middle night....Why do most of the ridiculous calls come in the middle of the night? Anyway, we get a call for a POSSIBLE seizure. Most conscious adults can identify a person having a seizure. So we arrive to find our "patient" sitting wide awake and alert on his couch. Even tough Mr. Patient (age 47)answers enough questions to be orientated he indicates that his wife or mommy will be answering all the questions. So wife tells us there was no real seizure, he woke up preaching. So there it is... the call to 911 because an adult was preaching.
Wife tells the 4 paramedics in the room that last time she had to call for preaching the paramedics advised there was nothing wrong and left. Then he (the patient) got worse! Not knowing how the preacher could get worse, I asked for clarification. Surprise! There was no clarification, last time the preaching got worse! Right. You know they wanted to be transported by ambulance to be evaluated in the emergency room for uncontrollable preaching. Of course mommy had to come along to supervise.