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