Friday Day Shift (0730-1730):
- last tour now... do or die! Under the microscope now! So CLOSE to passing and graduating... and yet so far from actually doing so! Anything can happen in one tour that can really screw you over!
- one real call today: 14 year old girl who fainted during her exam and was unresponsive for around 5 minutes. She was perfectly fine when we got out there to Chestermere. BUT her bp was really low for unknown reasons so... we transported her.
- two other 'fake' calls: one was a supposed OD... but he wasn't and it was more police matter so we just left. And another was a 4 car accident with some pretty bad damage... but all 4 drivers were perfectly fine and walking around with absolutely no complaints... so we left and left it to police and fire.
Saturday Day Shift (0730-1730):
- not a bad day... 3 calls total.
- first call was for a 16 year old pregnant girl whose contractions were starting. The info we were given on our way there made us think we had an imminent delivery on our hands... but she was only 3cm dilated by the time we got her to the hospital... so she has another 24 hours to wait or so, lol. But 16 years old!!
- second call was for an elderly lady who slipped and fell and 'possibly' dislocated her hip as the doctor who 'assessed' her on the PHONE determined! When we got there... she had perfect mobility to both legs... good distal pulses AND was able to weight bear and walk on her own! Phone assessments from doctors... to a nursing home that apparently is considered one of the WORST in all of Calgary. sigh.
- third call was for an elderly man who was feeling weak and having tremors all over. He started to get wheezes on the way to the hospital... and had a high fever without him knowing about it... very strange symptoms. But probably sepsis.
Sunday Night Shift (1730-0730):
- dropped by the EMS headquarters to get some maintenance work done on our equipment... it's a nice building.
- had 2 actual calls all night. One was someone with... what appears from all accounts to be indigestion! lol. That was a strange call. The other was a patient who had problems everywhere... pain everywhere... headache, sharp jaw pain... chest pain that moved around... left flank pain... left hip pain... right arm numbness... left arm pain... and in the end... we gave him some drugs and he felt better and decided to leave the hospital before even getting checked out cause the wait time was too "long"... some people... the WORST pain in his life ever... and he decides to just walk out because the wait was too long, lol. Was looking after another crews patient so that that crew could go home since their shift ended... and that patient decides that he NEEDS to go for a smoke... so... we bumped him back into the waiting room!
- had another car accident on Deerfoot... with absolutely no injuries again, lol
Monday Night Shift (1730-0730):
- had 4 calls tonight. One was someone with extreme food poisoning from eating at Oriental Phoenix, lol. One was with possible kidney stones. Another was a bipolar patient who OD'd and was hallucinating seeing maggots in which he then attempted to burn the maggots with a can of hair spray and a lighter!! The last one was a 14 year old female who was totally intoxicated... enough that we almost intubated her. We pumped some fluid into her and she regained some consciousness and then started asking for hugs and kisses... so... we figured she had taken Ecstacy and probably a bunch of other drugs as well.
- So, I passed my practicum!! Which means I passed my course! 4.0! lol Now, I just have to wait 4 months for my provincial certification exam... sigh. Oh well... gives me time to focus on DVBS and the future...
- Leaning towards maybe working Rural for a year or two... seems the experience gained through Rural will benefit me as a medic overall. I could probably jump directly into city or Calgary Health region... but I'd be a poor medic because I wouldn't have the experiences. So... I'm going to start looking into rural placements!
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Tour 3
Thursday Day Shift (0730-1730):
- tired... so very tired... from monday to monday... I'll have worked 72 hours... not including the hours I put into DVBS either.
- luckily, it was a NICE slow day. We had one call the entire day! lol. Boring... but a nice change of pace to the 5-6 calls a day!
- The call that we did receive was for someone who had urinary retention... otherwise known as the... "I CAN'T PEE" syndrome. :P
Friday Day Shift (0730-1730):
- Fastest start to a shift today... we tend to go in early (around 0700) to help relieve the shift before us early cause it SUCKS having to stay for an entire night shift... or any shift for that matter... and our first call was at 5 minutes after 7, lol. No time to get ready or anything... didn't even get a chance to look over our vehicle to make sure we had all the necessary equipment and supplies, lol
- Got 4 calls today. The first two were chest pains that the patients were afraid were possible heart attacks... turns out that neither of them were, so that was a good thing.
- The 3rd call was just plain stupid. Our patient who only spoke Punjabi was complaining of abdominal pain at a Walk-In Clinic and the doctor there called us to transport to the hospital. It honestly seemed like the doctor didn't even assess the patient... cause he read to us off a sheet of paper and didn't seem to really know what was going on. And then when I assessed our patient... I found nothing. My paramedic preceptor assessed our patient... and found nothing. The triage nurse assessed our patient... and found nothing. So, we ended up sending her into the waiting room. Stupid walk-in clinic doctor. We think it was just a flu...
- The 4th call was a sad call. 15 year old patient who wanted to commit suicide. She's the oldest of 7 siblings... and is counted to be the primary care-giver for the rest of her siblings. On her GRAD day... her mother came to school in the morning (the 7 month pregnant with TWINS mother) and ended up crying and screaming at her daughter saying everything was her fault, that she was useless and that she was no longer wanted and that the mother was going to call social services to take her away... the patient then stated she wanted to kill herself... so we had to transport her to the hospital... and I'm pretty sure she missed her grad night because of it.
- after seeing/hearing calls about 8-month old kids dying... 6 year old kids dying in the hospital... a 1 year old kid dying in their sleep and the parents coming to find a VERY dead child in the morning... this last call and so many more calls... I feel so BLESSED and I think one of the things I REALLY want to change about myself is to STOP COMPLAINING! 72 hours a week + VBS hours? Work, VBS, Sleep being my daily routine? Wow... I'm so happy that I CAN do that. But boy was I getting grouchy when I was hearing some of the youth complaining about very very trivial things...
Saturday Night Shift (1730-0730)
- yet another tiring night shift with maybe an hour of down-time. Zzzzz
- pretty much zoned-out for this entire shift... which sucked bad. But had 6 calls again.
- started off with 2 consecutive calls to the Drop-In center... and man is it dirty and stinky and crowded!! You'd think that with the economy as it is... there wouldn't be so many people at the Drop-In... but man was it crowded... and scary... the first call was for a psych/suicidal ideation individual who has a history of depression that got fired from her job and wanted to OD but turned for medical help instead. I learned that I really need to gain some sort of empathy for patients... no matter how stupid it sounds or how stupid they sound... I still need some sort of empathy! Guess I need to work on my attitude about dealing with (my opinion of) stupid people. The second call there was for a seizure... and my first sight of... lice. I know I didn't get any on me, but man... me and my partner kept on feeling itchy for the rest of the night, lol.
- Third call was for a girl that had a bruise on her head from sibling rivalry. Fourth call was for MVC (motor vehicle crash) with the patient having neck pain... though not enough neck pain apparently to 'stoop' as low as having to pee into a bedpan. She'd rather sign a release form and walk to the washroom to go pee and possibly become a quadriplegic for the rest of her life then to pee into a bedpan. Fifth call was for another suicide attempt where the patient took about 60 pills and slit both wrists to absolutely no success (strange how health care workers always joke about how it was too bad they weren't successful cause then we wouldn't have to deal with them). Sixth call was for a patient who seemed to be having a bad reaction to a new drug that was prescribed to her the day before.
Saturday Night Shift (1730-0730)
- probably the BEST night shift I've ever had! Went to bed at 2... slept till end of shift around 7, lol. Wow. Just wow.
- only 3 calls for this night shift.
- 1 call for an anxiety attack that came out as SOB (shortness of breath). Had a patient who was a walk-on for the rugby team that was trying to keep pace in drinking with his new rugby friends (and his rugby friends were the stereotypical rugby players... HUGE, no neck, BIG guys) that ended up not working so well for the little guy, lol. He ended up puking it out in the washroom and passed out enough that his friends (BIG RUGBY FRIENDS) thought his heart stopped and started CPR on the little dude, lol... they ended up doing about 3 compressions before the little guys eyes popped WIDE open and called EMS. :P We, along with all the nurses, had a good laugh at that. When the little guy gained some sort of sanity back later after puking some more... he complained of soreness to his left chest wall... and didn't know why, lol! And our last call of the night was some asian dude with rectal bleeding and I had to utilize my very limited cantonese to communicate with the family and patient. :P Luckily, he had very limited English... but enough to communicate roughly what we needed to know. :P
- tired... so very tired... from monday to monday... I'll have worked 72 hours... not including the hours I put into DVBS either.
- luckily, it was a NICE slow day. We had one call the entire day! lol. Boring... but a nice change of pace to the 5-6 calls a day!
- The call that we did receive was for someone who had urinary retention... otherwise known as the... "I CAN'T PEE" syndrome. :P
Friday Day Shift (0730-1730):
- Fastest start to a shift today... we tend to go in early (around 0700) to help relieve the shift before us early cause it SUCKS having to stay for an entire night shift... or any shift for that matter... and our first call was at 5 minutes after 7, lol. No time to get ready or anything... didn't even get a chance to look over our vehicle to make sure we had all the necessary equipment and supplies, lol
- Got 4 calls today. The first two were chest pains that the patients were afraid were possible heart attacks... turns out that neither of them were, so that was a good thing.
- The 3rd call was just plain stupid. Our patient who only spoke Punjabi was complaining of abdominal pain at a Walk-In Clinic and the doctor there called us to transport to the hospital. It honestly seemed like the doctor didn't even assess the patient... cause he read to us off a sheet of paper and didn't seem to really know what was going on. And then when I assessed our patient... I found nothing. My paramedic preceptor assessed our patient... and found nothing. The triage nurse assessed our patient... and found nothing. So, we ended up sending her into the waiting room. Stupid walk-in clinic doctor. We think it was just a flu...
- The 4th call was a sad call. 15 year old patient who wanted to commit suicide. She's the oldest of 7 siblings... and is counted to be the primary care-giver for the rest of her siblings. On her GRAD day... her mother came to school in the morning (the 7 month pregnant with TWINS mother) and ended up crying and screaming at her daughter saying everything was her fault, that she was useless and that she was no longer wanted and that the mother was going to call social services to take her away... the patient then stated she wanted to kill herself... so we had to transport her to the hospital... and I'm pretty sure she missed her grad night because of it.
- after seeing/hearing calls about 8-month old kids dying... 6 year old kids dying in the hospital... a 1 year old kid dying in their sleep and the parents coming to find a VERY dead child in the morning... this last call and so many more calls... I feel so BLESSED and I think one of the things I REALLY want to change about myself is to STOP COMPLAINING! 72 hours a week + VBS hours? Work, VBS, Sleep being my daily routine? Wow... I'm so happy that I CAN do that. But boy was I getting grouchy when I was hearing some of the youth complaining about very very trivial things...
Saturday Night Shift (1730-0730)
- yet another tiring night shift with maybe an hour of down-time. Zzzzz
- pretty much zoned-out for this entire shift... which sucked bad. But had 6 calls again.
- started off with 2 consecutive calls to the Drop-In center... and man is it dirty and stinky and crowded!! You'd think that with the economy as it is... there wouldn't be so many people at the Drop-In... but man was it crowded... and scary... the first call was for a psych/suicidal ideation individual who has a history of depression that got fired from her job and wanted to OD but turned for medical help instead. I learned that I really need to gain some sort of empathy for patients... no matter how stupid it sounds or how stupid they sound... I still need some sort of empathy! Guess I need to work on my attitude about dealing with (my opinion of) stupid people. The second call there was for a seizure... and my first sight of... lice. I know I didn't get any on me, but man... me and my partner kept on feeling itchy for the rest of the night, lol.
- Third call was for a girl that had a bruise on her head from sibling rivalry. Fourth call was for MVC (motor vehicle crash) with the patient having neck pain... though not enough neck pain apparently to 'stoop' as low as having to pee into a bedpan. She'd rather sign a release form and walk to the washroom to go pee and possibly become a quadriplegic for the rest of her life then to pee into a bedpan. Fifth call was for another suicide attempt where the patient took about 60 pills and slit both wrists to absolutely no success (strange how health care workers always joke about how it was too bad they weren't successful cause then we wouldn't have to deal with them). Sixth call was for a patient who seemed to be having a bad reaction to a new drug that was prescribed to her the day before.
Saturday Night Shift (1730-0730)
- probably the BEST night shift I've ever had! Went to bed at 2... slept till end of shift around 7, lol. Wow. Just wow.
- only 3 calls for this night shift.
- 1 call for an anxiety attack that came out as SOB (shortness of breath). Had a patient who was a walk-on for the rugby team that was trying to keep pace in drinking with his new rugby friends (and his rugby friends were the stereotypical rugby players... HUGE, no neck, BIG guys) that ended up not working so well for the little guy, lol. He ended up puking it out in the washroom and passed out enough that his friends (BIG RUGBY FRIENDS) thought his heart stopped and started CPR on the little dude, lol... they ended up doing about 3 compressions before the little guys eyes popped WIDE open and called EMS. :P We, along with all the nurses, had a good laugh at that. When the little guy gained some sort of sanity back later after puking some more... he complained of soreness to his left chest wall... and didn't know why, lol! And our last call of the night was some asian dude with rectal bleeding and I had to utilize my very limited cantonese to communicate with the family and patient. :P Luckily, he had very limited English... but enough to communicate roughly what we needed to know. :P
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Tour 2
Wednesday Day Shift (0730-1530):
- PCR's (Patient Care Reports) are improving, so that's great!
- Still struggling to integrate theory and in-class scenarios into real-life situations... but that will come with time and experience!
- get 3 calls today... one crack addict in a VERY shady house with a possible OD. One schizo suffering from depression and who had possible suicidal thoughts after ingesting a lot of alcohol in the morning! and one chest pain with unknown diagnosis...
- had some down-time in the afternoon and went shopping again, lol. Went shopping at some old bookstore with a MILLION books! Also, was able to drop by the church for a quick look at the water damage to the Chinese side sound system and... from the looks of it... it's a goner! The amps at least... it looked like it was just pulled out of a swimming pool. That's how soaked it was! Sure hope the system was under warantee cause I honestly don't think it's going to operate again. I'm going to try to turn them on after they dry off and hope for the best, but very doubtful right now. *EDIT* Seems it works after all. Shocking!! Though it seems like one of the monitors is giving off static now.
- and worked an extra hour of overtime again!
Thursday Day Shift (0730-1730)
- wow, today was a long day. An hour overtime again. And pretty much non-stop all day long. We had to extend one of our hospital visits around 1pm just to have time to eat something for lunch!
- was informed to go into firefighting instead of becoming a paramedic. Cause of how crappy paramedics get treated by the city and the crappy dispatching and a whole whack load of other stupid things.
- had 5 calls today. One hypoglycemic (very little blood sugar) where we were surprised this person wasn't unconscious with how low their blood sugar level was. One highly intoxicated individual who passed out in the middle of a street after drinking yellow listerene. One badly dislocated elbow. One decreased level of consciousness with such a wide variety of issues that we still have no idea what was going on with this patient. And another decreased level of consciousness with feelings of dizziness and SOB (shortness of breath).
Friday Night Shift (1730-0730):
- for a Friday night, it wasn't too bad. Got 6 calls and about an hour of sleep.
- the first call we got was a drunk homeless guy who was complaining of having seizures... just so he could get a ride to the hospital and get free food. It's sad seeing them with nothing... but it's also stupid seeing them use the hospitals to get food and to tie up hospital assets cause now he has to have a bed so he can get checked out and keep other people with actual medical emergencies waiting... the nurse was really annoyed cause a 9 year old died in the emerg. earlier that day and it's like... man... though it was funny watching this guy 'pretend' to be having seizures in the hallway... and we'd be like, "what are you doing?" and he'd say "I'm seizing"!! sigh...
- second call was just a patient transport back home from the hospital. We found a possible psych-ward escapee on 17th ave that CPS ended up taking. Had a teen with a possible leg fracture. Got called for an assault where a guy was beat up bad and had some bleeding from the head, but he still wouldn't cooperate so CPS took him instead (and when the police finally found his ID... they were pretty shocked in an excited kind of way, so I think they got someone they've been after for a while... lol). And finished the night/early morning with someone with possible Septic shock but we found out the day after from one of the attending nurses that this patient actually had kidney failure (one of the rare times we actually find out what was actually WRONG with the patients we transport, lol).
- otherwise, another long night with little to no sleep.
Saturday Night Shift (1730-0730):
- another long night... with only half-an-hour of sleep. I should really consider firefighting, lol. That way I can at least get a couple hours of sleep every night shift!!
- 8 calls this night. One was a sore arm from a car accident with some cuts from the airbag. Had a SOB (shortness of breath) call that was resolved when the patient finally calmed down. Had a patient with abdominal pain.
- Got thrust into my first MAJOR trauma without any preparation as we were the second car on scene to a call we didn't receive (so no prior knowledge to what the call was about) and got sent with the crew of the first car and this patient had an unknown amount of knife wounds to his lower back and was bleeding out pretty badly. And even though he was bleeding out really badly, he was still fighting us while we were trying to save his life! lol... but then again, this patient also got pepper-sprayed by the police before medics arrived on scene too.
- One call was for a domestic disturbance where the patient either got slashed by a knife... or slashed herself with a knife, and was not cooperative either so CPS took her as well. Had a call where a VERY elderly patient slipped out of bed and couldn't get back up... so we ended up just checking her vitals and then more of less just lifting her back into bed. Finished the early morning with 2 patients at once (which we technically aren't supposed to do... but we did it because they were both simple enough patients we didn't want to bother anyone else in the early morning after a long night) The first one had drank 23 beers and had 3 lines of cocaine during the night and was complaining of his heart racing and we noticed that he was becoming paranoid. The second one was someone who got beat up and had continuous short-term memory loss which was strange cause he was perfectly fine except for cuts on his face... but then he started thinking we were psychic cause we knew information that he just gave us and we were like... ummm... okay there, lol.
- then went to church after the shift and fell asleep in my car right outside of the church cause I got there early and apparently people were staring at me while I was sleeping... or so I was told... strange.
- PCR's (Patient Care Reports) are improving, so that's great!
- Still struggling to integrate theory and in-class scenarios into real-life situations... but that will come with time and experience!
- get 3 calls today... one crack addict in a VERY shady house with a possible OD. One schizo suffering from depression and who had possible suicidal thoughts after ingesting a lot of alcohol in the morning! and one chest pain with unknown diagnosis...
- had some down-time in the afternoon and went shopping again, lol. Went shopping at some old bookstore with a MILLION books! Also, was able to drop by the church for a quick look at the water damage to the Chinese side sound system and... from the looks of it... it's a goner! The amps at least... it looked like it was just pulled out of a swimming pool. That's how soaked it was! Sure hope the system was under warantee cause I honestly don't think it's going to operate again. I'm going to try to turn them on after they dry off and hope for the best, but very doubtful right now. *EDIT* Seems it works after all. Shocking!! Though it seems like one of the monitors is giving off static now.
- and worked an extra hour of overtime again!
Thursday Day Shift (0730-1730)
- wow, today was a long day. An hour overtime again. And pretty much non-stop all day long. We had to extend one of our hospital visits around 1pm just to have time to eat something for lunch!
- was informed to go into firefighting instead of becoming a paramedic. Cause of how crappy paramedics get treated by the city and the crappy dispatching and a whole whack load of other stupid things.
- had 5 calls today. One hypoglycemic (very little blood sugar) where we were surprised this person wasn't unconscious with how low their blood sugar level was. One highly intoxicated individual who passed out in the middle of a street after drinking yellow listerene. One badly dislocated elbow. One decreased level of consciousness with such a wide variety of issues that we still have no idea what was going on with this patient. And another decreased level of consciousness with feelings of dizziness and SOB (shortness of breath).
Friday Night Shift (1730-0730):
- for a Friday night, it wasn't too bad. Got 6 calls and about an hour of sleep.
- the first call we got was a drunk homeless guy who was complaining of having seizures... just so he could get a ride to the hospital and get free food. It's sad seeing them with nothing... but it's also stupid seeing them use the hospitals to get food and to tie up hospital assets cause now he has to have a bed so he can get checked out and keep other people with actual medical emergencies waiting... the nurse was really annoyed cause a 9 year old died in the emerg. earlier that day and it's like... man... though it was funny watching this guy 'pretend' to be having seizures in the hallway... and we'd be like, "what are you doing?" and he'd say "I'm seizing"!! sigh...
- second call was just a patient transport back home from the hospital. We found a possible psych-ward escapee on 17th ave that CPS ended up taking. Had a teen with a possible leg fracture. Got called for an assault where a guy was beat up bad and had some bleeding from the head, but he still wouldn't cooperate so CPS took him instead (and when the police finally found his ID... they were pretty shocked in an excited kind of way, so I think they got someone they've been after for a while... lol). And finished the night/early morning with someone with possible Septic shock but we found out the day after from one of the attending nurses that this patient actually had kidney failure (one of the rare times we actually find out what was actually WRONG with the patients we transport, lol).
- otherwise, another long night with little to no sleep.
Saturday Night Shift (1730-0730):
- another long night... with only half-an-hour of sleep. I should really consider firefighting, lol. That way I can at least get a couple hours of sleep every night shift!!
- 8 calls this night. One was a sore arm from a car accident with some cuts from the airbag. Had a SOB (shortness of breath) call that was resolved when the patient finally calmed down. Had a patient with abdominal pain.
- Got thrust into my first MAJOR trauma without any preparation as we were the second car on scene to a call we didn't receive (so no prior knowledge to what the call was about) and got sent with the crew of the first car and this patient had an unknown amount of knife wounds to his lower back and was bleeding out pretty badly. And even though he was bleeding out really badly, he was still fighting us while we were trying to save his life! lol... but then again, this patient also got pepper-sprayed by the police before medics arrived on scene too.
- One call was for a domestic disturbance where the patient either got slashed by a knife... or slashed herself with a knife, and was not cooperative either so CPS took her as well. Had a call where a VERY elderly patient slipped out of bed and couldn't get back up... so we ended up just checking her vitals and then more of less just lifting her back into bed. Finished the early morning with 2 patients at once (which we technically aren't supposed to do... but we did it because they were both simple enough patients we didn't want to bother anyone else in the early morning after a long night) The first one had drank 23 beers and had 3 lines of cocaine during the night and was complaining of his heart racing and we noticed that he was becoming paranoid. The second one was someone who got beat up and had continuous short-term memory loss which was strange cause he was perfectly fine except for cuts on his face... but then he started thinking we were psychic cause we knew information that he just gave us and we were like... ummm... okay there, lol.
- then went to church after the shift and fell asleep in my car right outside of the church cause I got there early and apparently people were staring at me while I was sleeping... or so I was told... strange.