So, yesterday was ridiculous. I'm stupid and thought it would be a good idea to schedule my ambulance clinical after class. And right before work.
8am-5pm: Class
6pm-6:30am: Clinical
12:00am-9:00pm: Work
You want to know what its like to be an EMT?
Stare at the picture above for 5 hours.
Done? Good.
Now, stick a red strobe light on top of your car and drive 25 blocks as fast as you can while making siren noises.
Walk into a very dirty white-trash living room, hook up an EKG to a 73 year old white man who has been dead for "an hour or so" (according to his family). Print out the flat line. Call coroner. Call a doctor. Pronounce the dead dude officially dead.
Get back in your car, and drive slowly back, sans strobe light and siren noises.
Stare at this picture for another hour.
Find a cold stretcher (of highly questionable cleanliness) and lay down and nap, being sure to wake up at least every 20 minutes to loud death metal and calls coming on the radio which always sound fun, but you never get to go on. Stare at the picture intermittently between sleeping for good measure.
Spend 20 minutes calling the dispatcher every bad name you can think of for not giving your truck any calls. Continue laying on stretcher, trying to sleep.
While asleep, have someone push you out of bed (ideally on to a very unclean and very hard and cold floor) and make loud siren noises. Congratulations! Your now going on a call! Pick yourself off of the floor, and drive very fast (complete with strobe lights and siren sound effects) for about 40 blocks to what dispatch promises is "a early 20's white male with facial trauma secondary to being assaulted with a base ball bat".
Get very excited about the prospects of baseball-bat-related-facial-trauma. Arrive. Stand outside in the cold for 20 minutes, taking vitals signs. On a man with a small cut on his lip from accidently being hit with a wiffle-ball bat in some kind of drunken game. Dispense band-aid, and sincere condolences regarding his newly-impregnated teenage girlfriend.
Drive back, slowly, again without any lights or sirens. Continue staring at picture for another 5 hours.
Drive to station to go home, and then turn around and go back, because the people who need to relieve you are late and you cannot leave until they are on.
Watch the sun come up.
See the sleepy douchebags who made you stay late arrive, only 45 minutes behind schedule. Drive slowly to the station.
Congratulations! You now know what its like to be an EMT!
(*Disclaimer: this was only my experience yesterday, like any jobs, there are upsides and downsides. Yesterday was not a good day to be an EMT. This does not mean that all days are bad days to be an EMT.)
I'll have to finish later, regarding the other adventures including bizarre wind/sand storms, being tailgated by an asshole with a life-sized cross on top of his car, and other fun.
I have to sleep, because it going to snow 14 inches + at WP/MJ tomorrow, and I have to be there. And hopefully Tuesday, too. And Wednesday. And Thursday. And Friday. Call me if your in the area and want to come :)
1 comment:
Yep.
And then there will be the nights that you don't get any calls. Seriously, I think one ride we ran on 1. Changed posts a bunch of times (not station based), but only ran once.
And that was a pretty foolish scheduling choice. I think you mean work from 12:00pm-9:00pm though. At least it was a learning experience!
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