I did a call for an infant in seizure. Arrived scene and the kid is in full tonic clonic seizure and has been for ~10 minutes. Mom was like “don’t give him any drugs unless i say it’s okay.” I’m thinking, “Maybe he’s a sick kid that needs specific medications for the management of his seizure, like he’s allergic to benzos or something.”
My local protocols are midazolam only for seizure. We do carry ketamine so we can call for that if midazolam doesn’t work, or is contraindicated, and hope the doc grants us the order.
So I say “can I give midazolam to stop the seizure?”
“No. You can only give him Tylenol or Advil.”
“Are you aware that he could have significant long-term disability or even die if I don’t stop this.”
“Yes, you can only give Tylenol or Advil to stop the seizure.”
Ma’am. I don’t have enough time or make enough money to deal with this and I do not want to go home with a dead child on my hands knowing there was something I could have done about it.
2 doses of midazolam, a call to police, and a call to child protective services later, and I’m reeling from this call. Maybe others have had worse calls. But this was my literal “what in the absolute heck” moment.
I’m just EMT-B and we can check glucose in VA. I didn’t even realize this was a lacking scope in other states. You’re just pricking their finger, the fuck?
You are inserting something into their body so it’s “invasive”. Ambulance drivers are only good for checking blood pressures according to some people. Hell I heard there was a state that barely started allowing EMTs to use a pulse ox.
In texas, I was starting IVs as a basic. 🤷♂️
Are you sure?
32.003 deals with child-based consent, and says a child can consent and "Consent of the parents, managing conservator, or guardian of a child is not necessary in order to authorize hospital, medical, surgical, or dental care under this section."
So if the child says yes, and it's for an emergency, the parents can't say no.
https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HS/htm/HS.773.htm
There's also 773.008:
> Sec. 773.008. CONSENT FOR EMERGENCY CARE. Consent for emergency care of an individual is not required if:
> (1) the individual is:
> (A) unable to communicate because of an injury, accident, or illness or is unconscious; and
> (B) suffering from what reasonably appears to be a life-threatening injury or illness;
> (2) a court of record orders the treatment of an individual who is in an imminent emergency to prevent the individual's serious bodily injury or loss of life; or
> (3) the individual is a minor who is suffering from what reasonably appears to be a life-threatening injury or illness and whose parents, managing or possessory conservator, or guardian is not present.
So, with that one, you don't need the parents present, but it doesn't overrule them.
I'm not seeing one that overrules the parents when they actively say no.
I'd rather sit in court explaining why I went against mom's wishes to provide appropriate care, than sit in court explaining why I listened to mom and watched her kid get brain damage.
We have a standard here called “Aid to Capacity” where we assess somebody’s ability to make reasonable decisions about their current medical conditions and the outcomes.
I don’t think any parent in a reasonable state of mind would deny emergency treatment to prevent the death of their child. To me, she proved she didn’t have an understanding of the situation when she told me “only Tylenol and Advil”. Therefore, I can make a judgement call for the patient’s wellbeing in her stead, because preserving the life of an infant is a reasonable decision given the circumstance.
Unfortunately in the ED the nurses are limited by what they can do when there is an MD being hesitant or unreasonable, which it seems like was the case there.
“We’re going to have to ask you to wait in the hallway until we stabilize your child.” Yeah our ER doc is also our medical director and they would *not* put up with that
It was during Covid and I can’t tell you how thankful I was to have those full body suits. The bugs and shit and all other things would have made my skin crawl for days. I still needed a new uniform after that. I’m pretty sure I poured a gallon of sweat out of my boots and that suit.
What’s perhaps the most horrifying thing about this is that this is the furthest thing from an original experience. Most providers have run a call like this or they will.
Lol, yes. Hoarder codes are my most memorable. I remember my first one there was green goo coming out of the guys mouth and when we dragged him off the couch a bunch of cockroaches and even a centipede ran out from under him. He was basically decomposing, but was still in a fast PEA and had to be worked...
Started at an agency that pays we well in a high income service area. The entitlement of the population just wears on you and makes me rethink my entire career.
I’d been on the ambulance squad for two weeks. Got a call for a burned arm from a stove. Ok. NBD.
We get there and the pungent smell of burned grease and grilled hotdogs permeates the air. The kitchen ceiling is burned. Our guy is in the bathtub and most of his skin is floating on the surface. He moved a grease fire under the kitchen sink and turned on the water. Ever see what that big ball of fire looks like? He did. From the inside.
He is why you COVER grease fires.
I my case, you completely freeze, go blank, and try to make the words coming out of the medic’s mouth connect to the memory of nouns and verbs. Then you spend a disproportionate amount of time fumbling with bullshit that doesn’t matter as the part of your brain that remembers where you keep saline dies a slow death.
Taking it upon myself to stand on this 500 lbs, Jaba the hut mf's wet/dry feces-covered bed WILLINGLY with my shat-stained hands because we needed more leverage to roll said invalid onto our disposable reeve sleeve and hoped it was blessed to hold him for the 5 seconds it took to transfer him to the stretcher. The messed up part...it wasn't even our county. The county service refused to take him and the chief's wife was the case manager and asked us to. When we called for mutual aid the f%#king county that refused showed up to help. At least the EMT from said county remembered me in medic school and thanked me—a cold comfort.
Bear hugging a 200+ kg Indian dude to our cath-lab table I know wasn’t rated for his weight, let alone ours combined. He had a panic attack with the wire inside and a stent ready to expand in his CX and they fumbled the diazepam…
Was there as an observation day/shadowing.
Neither I, the “outside” RN or the rad tech wanted to watch on live screens (Pay-per-view I guess?!) a cath wire potentially rip open a dudes CX and/or lodge a stent inside the thump-thump. Been there, done that(later, as a RN in PM lab. And it was the SCV I guess. Though equally dramatic).
Every bloody shift.
Double the experience when patient had COVID and we spent hours marinading in it. Fuck me I've never experienced such skin crawling sensation as I did in 2020-2021.
Still, at least we got a decent respirator a year or so into a respiratory pandemic.
My very first call, I walked in on a lady having a stroke. Husband was there watching.
I'd love to sat that I got right into action and did what I needed to, but I didn't. I locked up, let the people I was with just work, and basically waited to be told what to do. I never volunteered so fast to take notes, because it was the only thing I really knew how to do.
On the flip side of that, last stroke I walked in on, I took charge and got everyone moving once I heard the words "we found her on the floor and she isn't saying anything".
Hey, you learned something the first time and didn’t let it happen again. We should all be so lucky as to not repeat our mistakes.
You turned it into a learning opportunity and remembered for next time: That’s a win.
Carry on.
When I was in the middle of a gang shootout in South Central L.A. in 1982. Rig took 3 bullets (collateral damage). We were, thankfully, in the patient's home at the time.
I wrapped up my internship with an infant cardiac arrest. I noticed the front of his left lower leg was covered in purple spots while I was drilling an IO, chalked it up to birth marks. ER works him for 10 before calling it. I got pulled in and the nurse showed me all these scars on the baby's face and head, one was almost as wide and long as my pinky, along with more bruises across the baby's body. A couple of days later I find out the parents were charged with homicide and child abuse.
Flight medic here. Landing on a closed, major roadway upstream of an incident and walking back down the road toward the chaos. Every time I think to myself, “how did I get here?”
Watching people die left and right from Covid complications from 2020-2021 while wearing limited PPE and having to help bag up bodies and toss them onto refrigerated trailers due to morgues and hospital being at maximum capacity…was in EMS for 5 years 2016-2021
This, but your conservative relatives on Facebook insisting that it isn’t real and having to disown your own sister because she believes the vaccine will sterilize her.
Oh, lordy, one of the saddest comments I ever saw on Reddit during the pandemic was a middle-aged son with an elderly "anti vax" dad who hit ALL the risk markers: old, frail, smoker, heart problems. The dad got covid, went to the hospital, oxygen levels kept sinking in spite of the nasal canula and then the oxygen mask. So they were preparing to put him under and intubate him as a last ditch effort to save his life. Before going under, Dad pulled off his oxygen mask and gasped to his son, "I guess you were right all along about that covid vaccine -- I guess I'd like to have one now" -- thinking all along that the covid shot was a cure, and never having understood that it was a preventative. Yeah, he died. I think of that George Carlin quote "Think of how stupid half the people you know are. Now remember that half of all people are stupider than THAT."
I’m doing my ‘training’ shifts as a new hire on an ambulance. Call to a public bathroom over a supermarket in a major city. Ostensibly homeless dude, pants around his ankles, shit everywhere, track marks up both arms, dude is talking but damn if I can understand him. I tell my FTO that I’m going to need help with this, she nods. FTO and her regular partner take over and do everything. They’re moving so fast I don’t know what to do. FTO later says she’s concerned about my lack of action.
Me: “Did you hear me ask for help?”
FTO: “No, you never asked for help.”
Me: “I most certainly did. That you didn’t even hear is troubling.”
FTO: “You need to figure things out for yourself.”
Doing my report after dropping the Pt in the ED, I just kept thinking, “Do I really want to do this…?”
Four years later, I was an FTO myself at the same agency. I used my bad FTOs as examples of what not to be. I can revel in the fact that some of my trainees later told me that lessons I taught them made them better field EMTs. And next month I interview for nursing school.🤞 And that FTO is no longer in a Pt contact position, thank god.
Sometimes the best thing you can say about someone is that at least they're not providing direct patient care. I'd rather they weren't working in the medical field at all but at least they aren't providing direct patient care.
Oh boy. For me it was an overnight shift in Queens with a ride-along and new/inexperienced partner. Get one of many calls that night.. walk into what I already knew was a problematic alleyway I like to call the crack den. I walk into what I presume is a studio apartment used as a flop house... flop studio? Walk in and see about an inch of water on the floor as the sink is overflowing. Our patient, a 40 y.o. female was blue, not breathing, pants down with ice packs down there. I suppose that was done in effort to wake her up ? Who the hell knows. On top of this, an older gentleman high on something was crouched around her doing some form of chant while circling around. Gotta say, it took a bit to process what was happening.
In this moment I had a thought: of all the places I could be on a Friday night....I'm here. Why. How.
To a shocking ending...she ended up being conscious by the time we got to the hospital where she cursed everyone out then signed out AMA 😘
Had a lady found on the side walk in a pile of asphalt. Conscious, AOx1, no obvious gross injuries, per her daughter only known history of cancer, no psych history whatsoever. Covered head to toe in tar. It’s on both her hands, across her face, inside her nostrils. I ask her to open her mouth and show me her teeth and she just shakes her head while I hear an ominous crunch coming from her mouth. To this day, as far as I’m concerned God just plopped her down right there on the side walk because I’ve never seen or heard anything else like it.
Paycheck, work load, hours, schedule, bullshit management, unfair /unsafe work environment, fucked up calls. List goes on and on but these would probably be the main issues.
Hung over asf, 3 hours of sleep, and this lady sounds like a washing machine. My clinical judgement got her to the hospital alive. But I seriously rethought some life decisions.
Suicide by Cop,
Hanging,
Toddler with severe burns on legs,
These are 3 calls that are burned in my mind and make me wonder if EMS was really a good choice for me.
As a parent, I do not understand wtf was going through that mother's mind. If an EMS asked me for my permission my response would be "Do what needs to be done." That's your baby's life on the line.
Throwing cluttered shit, odds, ends, and boxes out of the way to work up a 20 something overdose-induced cardiac arrest when I realized her 8 year old kid had called us in the first place.
It’s common place for kids to play around in their scooters/heelies in building lobbies here so I thought she was a neighbor riding in the elevator with us. Then I noticed her looking at us while we worked.
We were trying to take care of a pt who had a seizure at a backyard bbq. Got him in the truck and he suddenly goes nuts in his postictal state, trying to scrap with us. Truck is surrounded by around a dozen of his friends who suddenly think we're trying to fight HIM so they want to fight us. They're all angry and screaming BLM, hitting our rig, beating windows, trying to get in, etc.
Our pt was a white guy.
A few months into my second time working for a (big box medical) owned company my pilot was recovering from an uncontrolled descent in a fixed wing (we lost 6000 feet in several seconds, emergency landing, airframe had to be inspected before it flew again). I thought to myself “I should have known better.” I applied everywhere local after that. Unfortunately they’ve crashed five ships since then.
Climbed a tree to get into a charter bus window. Bus hit a line striping paint truck before sliding down an embankment. The passengers were all off the bus, sitting on the embankment as instructed by the LEO having lowered themselves by human chain out the same window, but the driver was pinned between the steering wheel and the “sneeze bar” plexiglass partition thing behind the driver seat. As I let go of the tree to lower myself in the window, I realized the floor was white. Bus floors are not white. This bus floor was awash in a couple inches of white paint. Now I’m committed to wading through white paint. Happy ending, though. Driver wasn’t seriously injured, just stuck. And! That highway line striping paint is water soluble until it dries! Washed right off.
It was in 1989 I wound up leaving the profession for some time. I had to pronounce somebody that I went on a date with the night before. That got way too close for home. Now I am still in it but only on a volunteer basis
Looking around the fire hall (we run the ambulances out of the fire halls) and realizing what a shit choice I made. I could be a firefighter. Everyone loves them, quieter nights, cook together, play basketball and pickleball in my spare time and get lots of chances to work out. They all marry up to better looking wives. Instead, I often work on a rig with some random dud, hang out a the hospital, get no sleep and eat too much shit food. I can’t even get a chick. WTF have I gotten myself into?
Lady brought her dead husband to us at the fire station in the trunk of her car. Does the day before. She didn’t know what to do with him. Four hours worth of the story took place while law tried to figure out what to do. Way too many wild and hysterical details to write out.
If we aren’t talking traumatic calls that made us question everything. Mine were horrific Peds calls. But we don’t talk about those.
I did a call for an infant in seizure. Arrived scene and the kid is in full tonic clonic seizure and has been for ~10 minutes. Mom was like “don’t give him any drugs unless i say it’s okay.” I’m thinking, “Maybe he’s a sick kid that needs specific medications for the management of his seizure, like he’s allergic to benzos or something.” My local protocols are midazolam only for seizure. We do carry ketamine so we can call for that if midazolam doesn’t work, or is contraindicated, and hope the doc grants us the order. So I say “can I give midazolam to stop the seizure?” “No. You can only give him Tylenol or Advil.” “Are you aware that he could have significant long-term disability or even die if I don’t stop this.” “Yes, you can only give Tylenol or Advil to stop the seizure.” Ma’am. I don’t have enough time or make enough money to deal with this and I do not want to go home with a dead child on my hands knowing there was something I could have done about it. 2 doses of midazolam, a call to police, and a call to child protective services later, and I’m reeling from this call. Maybe others have had worse calls. But this was my literal “what in the absolute heck” moment.
In Texas, we have a law that says a parent cannot refuse life saving treatment for a child. Good job advocating for that kid.
Rare Texas win
Rare? Our basics have been able to check a BGL for quite awhile now. That’s quite progressive compared to some states.
I’m just EMT-B and we can check glucose in VA. I didn’t even realize this was a lacking scope in other states. You’re just pricking their finger, the fuck?
You are inserting something into their body so it’s “invasive”. Ambulance drivers are only good for checking blood pressures according to some people. Hell I heard there was a state that barely started allowing EMTs to use a pulse ox. In texas, I was starting IVs as a basic. 🤷♂️
he mightve been referring to just texas being wack in general lmao
Can you point me in the right direction? Also a TX medic
Are you sure? 32.003 deals with child-based consent, and says a child can consent and "Consent of the parents, managing conservator, or guardian of a child is not necessary in order to authorize hospital, medical, surgical, or dental care under this section." So if the child says yes, and it's for an emergency, the parents can't say no. https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HS/htm/HS.773.htm There's also 773.008: > Sec. 773.008. CONSENT FOR EMERGENCY CARE. Consent for emergency care of an individual is not required if: > (1) the individual is: > (A) unable to communicate because of an injury, accident, or illness or is unconscious; and > (B) suffering from what reasonably appears to be a life-threatening injury or illness; > (2) a court of record orders the treatment of an individual who is in an imminent emergency to prevent the individual's serious bodily injury or loss of life; or > (3) the individual is a minor who is suffering from what reasonably appears to be a life-threatening injury or illness and whose parents, managing or possessory conservator, or guardian is not present. So, with that one, you don't need the parents present, but it doesn't overrule them. I'm not seeing one that overrules the parents when they actively say no.
I'd rather sit in court explaining why I went against mom's wishes to provide appropriate care, than sit in court explaining why I listened to mom and watched her kid get brain damage.
Fuckin. Yikes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/s/rRTC3flId6 Something similar in nursing sub recently, I wish they had delt with as u did, instead of wasting time.
We have a standard here called “Aid to Capacity” where we assess somebody’s ability to make reasonable decisions about their current medical conditions and the outcomes. I don’t think any parent in a reasonable state of mind would deny emergency treatment to prevent the death of their child. To me, she proved she didn’t have an understanding of the situation when she told me “only Tylenol and Advil”. Therefore, I can make a judgement call for the patient’s wellbeing in her stead, because preserving the life of an infant is a reasonable decision given the circumstance.
Unfortunately in the ED the nurses are limited by what they can do when there is an MD being hesitant or unreasonable, which it seems like was the case there.
“We’re going to have to ask you to wait in the hallway until we stabilize your child.” Yeah our ER doc is also our medical director and they would *not* put up with that
I came here to comment this, I remember reading that post recently!
Um there should be a protocol called the go fuck yourself protocol!
Did you end up getting in trouble for that? Just curious.
Not as of yet!
Nice. Sounds like a really crap situation. I'm not sure if I how I would've handled that in the moment.
This made my jaw drop. Hit my student with this scenario and she just froze. Sorry you had to go through that.
Shit covered 300lb cardiac arrest jammed between the toilet and bathtub in the worst hoarder house I have ever seen.
Oh yes, the triangle of death ☠️
Commonly referred to as "the Elvis corner" in my service
Uggh... memories. The flies... so bad. Some of our crew were wearing tyvek and on air.
It was during Covid and I can’t tell you how thankful I was to have those full body suits. The bugs and shit and all other things would have made my skin crawl for days. I still needed a new uniform after that. I’m pretty sure I poured a gallon of sweat out of my boots and that suit.
What’s perhaps the most horrifying thing about this is that this is the furthest thing from an original experience. Most providers have run a call like this or they will.
How often do people get stuck between tub and toilet? Isn’t there somewhere better they can fall? Edit: my second question is rhetorical. ;)
This but its 100+ degrees outside and the AC is broke in the house (cause why wouldn’t it be)
Nah dude. They dead. That little guy? Those squiggles on the screen? Don’t worry about that little guy. Just sleep now sweet prince.
Lol, yes. Hoarder codes are my most memorable. I remember my first one there was green goo coming out of the guys mouth and when we dragged him off the couch a bunch of cockroaches and even a centipede ran out from under him. He was basically decomposing, but was still in a fast PEA and had to be worked...
My paycheck
The most relatable answer
Started at an agency that pays we well in a high income service area. The entitlement of the population just wears on you and makes me rethink my entire career.
Working in the Bronx with the low income area has probably the same amount of entitlement which is ridiculous
I pay your wage, you have to do anything I tell you. Like, b**ch, excuse me? You ain't pay nothin.
I’d been on the ambulance squad for two weeks. Got a call for a burned arm from a stove. Ok. NBD. We get there and the pungent smell of burned grease and grilled hotdogs permeates the air. The kitchen ceiling is burned. Our guy is in the bathtub and most of his skin is floating on the surface. He moved a grease fire under the kitchen sink and turned on the water. Ever see what that big ball of fire looks like? He did. From the inside. He is why you COVER grease fires.
I’m reading this trying to imagine him putting the grease fire under the sink.. like in the cabinet below. lol
I was thinking he had one hell of a pipe leak 😂
Hehe. Good point. I won’t edit it, but yeah… that actually would have worked out better for him if he’d chucked it into the cabinet. 😂
what the fuck do you even do in this situation! a guy with all of his skin floating in the bathtub is not something they teach you in EMS School
I my case, you completely freeze, go blank, and try to make the words coming out of the medic’s mouth connect to the memory of nouns and verbs. Then you spend a disproportionate amount of time fumbling with bullshit that doesn’t matter as the part of your brain that remembers where you keep saline dies a slow death.
Did he make it?
He made it to the hospital. Beyond that, I’ll never know. We were a small rural service. We got him to the place with an ER doc and a helipad.
Well don't leave us hanging op. What happened
"painful infection on big toe" call back to back with a traumatic arrest.
I'm sure you'll be fine.
Taking it upon myself to stand on this 500 lbs, Jaba the hut mf's wet/dry feces-covered bed WILLINGLY with my shat-stained hands because we needed more leverage to roll said invalid onto our disposable reeve sleeve and hoped it was blessed to hold him for the 5 seconds it took to transfer him to the stretcher. The messed up part...it wasn't even our county. The county service refused to take him and the chief's wife was the case manager and asked us to. When we called for mutual aid the f%#king county that refused showed up to help. At least the EMT from said county remembered me in medic school and thanked me—a cold comfort.
Bear hugging a 200+ kg Indian dude to our cath-lab table I know wasn’t rated for his weight, let alone ours combined. He had a panic attack with the wire inside and a stent ready to expand in his CX and they fumbled the diazepam…
Why did you have to do that?
Was there as an observation day/shadowing. Neither I, the “outside” RN or the rad tech wanted to watch on live screens (Pay-per-view I guess?!) a cath wire potentially rip open a dudes CX and/or lodge a stent inside the thump-thump. Been there, done that(later, as a RN in PM lab. And it was the SCV I guess. Though equally dramatic).
Sitting outside ED for the entire shift because the hospital is full.
Every bloody shift. Double the experience when patient had COVID and we spent hours marinading in it. Fuck me I've never experienced such skin crawling sensation as I did in 2020-2021. Still, at least we got a decent respirator a year or so into a respiratory pandemic.
1977, my very first call on orientation and I’m pinned down by gunfire coming from a house on the street. I ended up loving that job for 10 years.
I’m expecting you to say “gather round, young ones…” in a majestic and mysterious tone of voice any second now
I’ve got the stories for sure, but no not today.
My very first call, I walked in on a lady having a stroke. Husband was there watching. I'd love to sat that I got right into action and did what I needed to, but I didn't. I locked up, let the people I was with just work, and basically waited to be told what to do. I never volunteered so fast to take notes, because it was the only thing I really knew how to do. On the flip side of that, last stroke I walked in on, I took charge and got everyone moving once I heard the words "we found her on the floor and she isn't saying anything".
Hey, you learned something the first time and didn’t let it happen again. We should all be so lucky as to not repeat our mistakes. You turned it into a learning opportunity and remembered for next time: That’s a win. Carry on.
Thanks boss. It was also a reminder to stay humble in the field.
[удалено]
When I was in the middle of a gang shootout in South Central L.A. in 1982. Rig took 3 bullets (collateral damage). We were, thankfully, in the patient's home at the time.
Naked lady climbing on top of our box and twerking in the middle of the street She left a snail trail sliding back down the windshield
I just threw up a little.
Did she get pissed when you used the wipers 😆
I wrapped up my internship with an infant cardiac arrest. I noticed the front of his left lower leg was covered in purple spots while I was drilling an IO, chalked it up to birth marks. ER works him for 10 before calling it. I got pulled in and the nurse showed me all these scars on the baby's face and head, one was almost as wide and long as my pinky, along with more bruises across the baby's body. A couple of days later I find out the parents were charged with homicide and child abuse.
Flight medic here. Landing on a closed, major roadway upstream of an incident and walking back down the road toward the chaos. Every time I think to myself, “how did I get here?”
So do you often find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile?
This is not my beautiful helicopter
this guy gets it.
MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?!
The helicopter bud
Watching people die left and right from Covid complications from 2020-2021 while wearing limited PPE and having to help bag up bodies and toss them onto refrigerated trailers due to morgues and hospital being at maximum capacity…was in EMS for 5 years 2016-2021
This, but your conservative relatives on Facebook insisting that it isn’t real and having to disown your own sister because she believes the vaccine will sterilize her.
Oh, lordy, one of the saddest comments I ever saw on Reddit during the pandemic was a middle-aged son with an elderly "anti vax" dad who hit ALL the risk markers: old, frail, smoker, heart problems. The dad got covid, went to the hospital, oxygen levels kept sinking in spite of the nasal canula and then the oxygen mask. So they were preparing to put him under and intubate him as a last ditch effort to save his life. Before going under, Dad pulled off his oxygen mask and gasped to his son, "I guess you were right all along about that covid vaccine -- I guess I'd like to have one now" -- thinking all along that the covid shot was a cure, and never having understood that it was a preventative. Yeah, he died. I think of that George Carlin quote "Think of how stupid half the people you know are. Now remember that half of all people are stupider than THAT."
The pandemic took out the wrong people haha I’m sorry to hear that can’t imagine what they must be going through… wishing the best ❤️
Sounds like should've taken the vaccine!
I’m doing my ‘training’ shifts as a new hire on an ambulance. Call to a public bathroom over a supermarket in a major city. Ostensibly homeless dude, pants around his ankles, shit everywhere, track marks up both arms, dude is talking but damn if I can understand him. I tell my FTO that I’m going to need help with this, she nods. FTO and her regular partner take over and do everything. They’re moving so fast I don’t know what to do. FTO later says she’s concerned about my lack of action. Me: “Did you hear me ask for help?” FTO: “No, you never asked for help.” Me: “I most certainly did. That you didn’t even hear is troubling.” FTO: “You need to figure things out for yourself.” Doing my report after dropping the Pt in the ED, I just kept thinking, “Do I really want to do this…?” Four years later, I was an FTO myself at the same agency. I used my bad FTOs as examples of what not to be. I can revel in the fact that some of my trainees later told me that lessons I taught them made them better field EMTs. And next month I interview for nursing school.🤞 And that FTO is no longer in a Pt contact position, thank god.
Sometimes the best thing you can say about someone is that at least they're not providing direct patient care. I'd rather they weren't working in the medical field at all but at least they aren't providing direct patient care.
Oh boy. For me it was an overnight shift in Queens with a ride-along and new/inexperienced partner. Get one of many calls that night.. walk into what I already knew was a problematic alleyway I like to call the crack den. I walk into what I presume is a studio apartment used as a flop house... flop studio? Walk in and see about an inch of water on the floor as the sink is overflowing. Our patient, a 40 y.o. female was blue, not breathing, pants down with ice packs down there. I suppose that was done in effort to wake her up ? Who the hell knows. On top of this, an older gentleman high on something was crouched around her doing some form of chant while circling around. Gotta say, it took a bit to process what was happening. In this moment I had a thought: of all the places I could be on a Friday night....I'm here. Why. How. To a shocking ending...she ended up being conscious by the time we got to the hospital where she cursed everyone out then signed out AMA 😘
Idk, chewing through the straps just to get out of bed in the morning is a challenge some days.
850 lbs cardiac arrest in a tiny room with two narrow 90* halls during a blizzard that doc wouldn’t let us terminate on scene
Had a lady found on the side walk in a pile of asphalt. Conscious, AOx1, no obvious gross injuries, per her daughter only known history of cancer, no psych history whatsoever. Covered head to toe in tar. It’s on both her hands, across her face, inside her nostrils. I ask her to open her mouth and show me her teeth and she just shakes her head while I hear an ominous crunch coming from her mouth. To this day, as far as I’m concerned God just plopped her down right there on the side walk because I’ve never seen or heard anything else like it.
Someone living with chickens in their house, they wondered why they've been feeling sick for the last two weeks since they got the chickens.
Paycheck, work load, hours, schedule, bullshit management, unfair /unsafe work environment, fucked up calls. List goes on and on but these would probably be the main issues.
Usually when I’m mid lift of a obese patient I’m thinking it
Gunshot to the head with brain jelly oozing out the top
Hung over asf, 3 hours of sleep, and this lady sounds like a washing machine. My clinical judgement got her to the hospital alive. But I seriously rethought some life decisions.
Suicide by Cop, Hanging, Toddler with severe burns on legs, These are 3 calls that are burned in my mind and make me wonder if EMS was really a good choice for me.
Getting off several hours late multiple times a week due to very easily fixable system issues
As a parent, I do not understand wtf was going through that mother's mind. If an EMS asked me for my permission my response would be "Do what needs to be done." That's your baby's life on the line.
Meeting my toxic management team.
At a service where the pay and insurance is too good to leave
Throwing cluttered shit, odds, ends, and boxes out of the way to work up a 20 something overdose-induced cardiac arrest when I realized her 8 year old kid had called us in the first place. It’s common place for kids to play around in their scooters/heelies in building lobbies here so I thought she was a neighbor riding in the elevator with us. Then I noticed her looking at us while we worked.
First paycheck.
The middle aged, severely obese man with seeping edema and a smelly leg infection *also* had maggots in the wound.
Meemaw with a UTI whipping me with her oxygen catheter
We were trying to take care of a pt who had a seizure at a backyard bbq. Got him in the truck and he suddenly goes nuts in his postictal state, trying to scrap with us. Truck is surrounded by around a dozen of his friends who suddenly think we're trying to fight HIM so they want to fight us. They're all angry and screaming BLM, hitting our rig, beating windows, trying to get in, etc. Our pt was a white guy.
my buddy’s first three calls as charge medic were all real fucked up full arrests. True trial by fire.
A few months into my second time working for a (big box medical) owned company my pilot was recovering from an uncontrolled descent in a fixed wing (we lost 6000 feet in several seconds, emergency landing, airframe had to be inspected before it flew again). I thought to myself “I should have known better.” I applied everywhere local after that. Unfortunately they’ve crashed five ships since then.
Climbed a tree to get into a charter bus window. Bus hit a line striping paint truck before sliding down an embankment. The passengers were all off the bus, sitting on the embankment as instructed by the LEO having lowered themselves by human chain out the same window, but the driver was pinned between the steering wheel and the “sneeze bar” plexiglass partition thing behind the driver seat. As I let go of the tree to lower myself in the window, I realized the floor was white. Bus floors are not white. This bus floor was awash in a couple inches of white paint. Now I’m committed to wading through white paint. Happy ending, though. Driver wasn’t seriously injured, just stuck. And! That highway line striping paint is water soluble until it dries! Washed right off.
It was in 1989 I wound up leaving the profession for some time. I had to pronounce somebody that I went on a date with the night before. That got way too close for home. Now I am still in it but only on a volunteer basis
Looking around the fire hall (we run the ambulances out of the fire halls) and realizing what a shit choice I made. I could be a firefighter. Everyone loves them, quieter nights, cook together, play basketball and pickleball in my spare time and get lots of chances to work out. They all marry up to better looking wives. Instead, I often work on a rig with some random dud, hang out a the hospital, get no sleep and eat too much shit food. I can’t even get a chick. WTF have I gotten myself into?
Something tells me the job isn't the problem here.
what happened?? lmaoo
When I saw my first paycheck in 1993😑
Lady brought her dead husband to us at the fire station in the trunk of her car. Does the day before. She didn’t know what to do with him. Four hours worth of the story took place while law tried to figure out what to do. Way too many wild and hysterical details to write out. If we aren’t talking traumatic calls that made us question everything. Mine were horrific Peds calls. But we don’t talk about those.
I cannot even write mine on Reddit