What’s Wrong With Me?
Posted: April 13, 2012 Filed under: EMS, Spirituality, Thoughts Leave a comment »
The young man on my stretcher exclaimed: “I just want to know what’s wrong with me!”
It wasn’t a question. I thought, I paused, I looked at him. Then I said, slowly, “Your problem isn’t medical.”
“You’re depressed,” I said. “You drink to self medicate. That makes your depression and anxiety worse. This all aggravates your bleeding ulcer. Then it just spirals down from there.”
He looked up at me. Our eyes met. “No one has ever told me that before.”
“The medical system doesn’t know how to tell you this,” I replied. “Your issue is emotional and spiritual, but you can’t fix it yourself.”
And this was the beginning of an even deeper conversation – with more eye contact and less shame…
Incongruity
Posted: April 8, 2012 Filed under: EMS, questions, Thoughts Leave a comment »
As soon as I walked in the room, I knew we had a problem. My first thought was, “this man is going to die – unless we figure this out.”
Weighing well over 400 pounds, this poor man was sitting on the edge of his bed struggling to catch his breath. The fire district paramedics were working hard to help him. They had already started to administer nebulized medication for his lungs and given him steroids to reduce lung edema. They were frantically seeking for a place to establish IV access. They finally got an IV in his shoulder.
But now the hard part loomed before us. Not only was this man about ready to stop breathing because of his exhaustion, but we weren’t sure how we were going to get him to the ambulance. It was going to take at least eight people to carry him, but eight people carrying a large man are just not going to fit through an older house – especially one stacked with boxes of clutter and stuff. In the meantime, we had a bariatric ambulance responding Code 3 to our scene and another fire crew to assist with lifting. Read the rest of this entry »
Serenity Now
Posted: March 20, 2012 Filed under: EMS, Spirituality, Thoughts 2 Comments »
As I sit in the ambulance, four dispatch centers chattering away, and the need to be constantly alert and aware, the cacophony can take its toll. I have a pager on my hip, and we are locked into the front seat of a ford van. After awhile I begin to feel like a caged rat. Add to this the sleep deprivation that only grows worse from working nights, and I begin to feel restless and anxious.
I try to get exercise by walking around, but a combination of the weather, the need to be constantly moving to new posts, and the shear demotivation of the job and I only begin to feel more an more caged. It’s really not a good thing – to take a highly motivated, relatively intelligent person, and cage them into the front seat of an ambulance for 12 hours at a time.
“…analysis shows that ambulance workers have a higher standardized mortality rate, higher level of fatal accidents, higher level of accident injuries and a higher standardized early retirement on medical grounds than the general working population and workers in other health occupations….more research should focus on sleeping problems, intrusion and hyperarousal among ambulance personnel.” ~Research article
To escape this, I read, browse the Interwebs, or surf Facebook and the web. Sometimes I can catch a nap – sleep being the ultimate refuge, but that is frequently interrupted and never guaranteed. Sometimes I try to read something more longform than the news – but again, I never know how long that will last – and it usually is short lived. In addition, it is difficult to concentrate at 3am with the radios chattering – knowing we could be the next crew sent out. Read the rest of this entry »
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