Yesterday I had a very restful shift. We got back our station from our final call at 8 pm and didn't leave until they woke us up to go home. We watched a couple of movies and life in general. All in all, it was a great night. During they day though...not so much. It wasn't that we had bad calls or anything, it was just the situation of the calls.
Our first call was someone who had rolled out of bed and needed help getting back in it. The fire dept got there before we did and took care of it for us. No big deal.
Our second call was to a quick fix clinic that is there when they need us, and where they need us. Unless of course they don't want you there and send you away. We had a patient who had the flu and the doctor felt she needed to go to the hospital by ambulance because of this. I guess he didn't feel comfortable letting her husband drive her the 3 miles to the hospital. So instead, I was the one who got to drive her the 3 miles. Only if the dr knew that it was me driving, he may have changed his mind.
Our third call was out to the Leesburg community waayyyyy up in NE Rankin county. So far out, that when responding with lights and sirens, it still takes 25 minutes to get there. Well, we got there and a gentleman was walking, talking and cutting jokes with the firefighters. He complained of a headache. Yep, a headache. "Well sir, have you taken anything for it?" I asked. Nope. "Of course not, why should you have taken tylenol or aspirin, it only would have helped the pain." I said in just pure defeat. He wanted to go to the hospital to get checked out. So we took him 30 miles to the hospital. No insurance=us not getting paid. So thats roughly 60 miles of fuel we used and two hours pay for a medic and emt for a headache. And people wonder why health care costs are going up.
On our fourth call, I was saddened. It was a nursing home call for a patient with Alzheimers. Her daughter said that her mother was having problems breathing. She asked her mother to tell us about it. This woman has not spoken a sentence of any type in the last nine months. The daughter still thinks that her mom is with us mentally. This was not the case. We hooked mom up to our monitors and found nothing wrong. She was breathing normally, but we took her to the hospital to make sure. I just wanted to hug the daughter. You could tell she didn't want to believe her mom, the woman who taught her everything, was not that same person anymore. I saw in her eyes that if he accepted the reality of the situation, it would drive her crazy.
Our final call was for someone else at a nursing home who had the flu. Instead of putting this patient in there wheelchair van and driving them across the street to the hospital, they called us.
Ahhhhhhhhhh.
Yet, I still love this job. Go figure.
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4 comments:
I'm really quite disappointed that your life isn't like Grey's Anatomy.
Just kidding - these are crazy. Did the flu people maybe need transport because of liability? Maybe some of these people just want ambulance rides (from NON ambulance drivers) because they think they're exciting or something.
Two of the transports were for liability. Just chaps me that these places don't think about the finacial burden they put these people under by having us transport. I mean, just to transport someone to a hospital, it is 800 dollars. That doesnt count milage,treatment or anything else.
GOOD GRAVY 800 dollars????
when i had to go pick up my daughter, the bill came to 1300 dollars. it aint cheap.
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