If I can do it, so can you.

You can figure out what you’re doing, and show up with a store of knowledge that can actually help somebody in a crisis. Basic stuff. Give them some oxygen. Recognize CHF from an asthma attack. Stop the bleeding. Don’t give D-50 to pregnant people. Carry diaphoretic people who are clutching their chest down the damn stairs.

You can treat people with respect, whether they deserve it or not. Make no mistake, not everybody deserves it. But by disrespecting them, you are disrespecting us, the rest of the people who show up every day, put on the uniform and do the damn job.

You can listen to people. Especially family members who happen to love the person you were called to help. You don’t know a person’s history. You don’t know about their addictions, prior heart surguries, stents, fistulas or anxiety levels. You don’t know a thing about them. So listen while you observe, and treat the patient to the best of your ability, always leaving room for adjustments. Because if you can’t treat a person as an individual, you may as well plant yourself in front of a book or computer screen and read about those of us who who can.

You can stop acting like god’s gift to the medical community. Nursing home nurses operate in an enviornment far different from ours. Ridiculing them because they didn’t start an IV the correct size, or start an Albuterol treatment makes you look like an idiot, and I really don’t care if that’s the way you operate, but you make me look like an idiot as well.

You can drive the rescue, or ambulance efficiently, intelligently and safely. Blaring the horns and sirens and driving like a maniac just because you can is no reason to do so. People react differently to stress. Give them a second to move, you will be amazed at how many do so. Scaring the shit out of them causes nothing but problems.

And remember, you represent all of us every time you answer the call. Act like a professional and you will be treated accordingly.

And so will the rest of us.

*disclaimer: the nicest patient told me while in the back of the rescue about the “last one who came,” and how she made the her feel small, and worthless, and worse than before she called. And here I thought we were supposed to make people feel better. Silly me.

They stepped over him, around him, and on him. He sat in a pool of his own blood and vomit, drunk and bewildered. More kids walked by, laughing, stumbling, making fun of the pathetic one.

We lifted him to his feet, helped him into the rescue and gave him the kit; a bucket, a towel and a sheet thrown over him. He promptly puked next to the bucket and onto the sheet. His name was John, he’d been out with five friends from Bristol, a small town ten miles east of Providence.

“Where are your friends?” I asked.

“I don’t know, they left me here,” he slurred, then vomited some more.

I’d like to go on a rant about these useless kids leaving their mess for others to clean up, but I don’t see it that way. I’m actually kind of proud of this generation, with some notable exceptions, this being one of them. People John’s age are in Iraq and Afghanistan, and doing a heck of a job there. They don’t leave their friends behind. We’ve got some young people on the Providence Fire Department who are doing a great job, though us old timers seldom let them know it. Other people in their twenties carry on just like I did, and my parents and their parents did, I suppose. I think it’s our job to complain about the new generation, their work ethic, their horrible music, their wild ways, but in the end everybody grows up, and has kids of their own to worry about.

Nevertheless, this kids friends are a bag of assholes for leaving one of their own alone and intoxicated in the nightclub district, where anything could have happened to him.

A few blocks away, a few hours later another intoxicated guy ended up in the rescue. This one made it home, but fell and wouldn’t wake up. He was a little older that the usual amateurs, twenty-three. Two of his friends came with us in the rescue, held onto him, held the bucket and made sure he was okay. They didn’t leave him for us to take care of, they did the best they could. One of the girls that came with us told me he was an EMT.

In Isreal.

I immediately thought of the suicide bombers. I think I might have had a drink or two while away at college with those images rummaging around my head. The girls said he was simply an amazing person, unlike anybody they knew, and this situation was highly unusual for him. I wondered what was going on behind his peaceful, intoxicated face as we drove him to the hospital. Probably a lot more than I could imagine.

I’d like to  send him and his friends to Bristol when he wakes up, to teach some kids there a thing or two.

Not all battles are fought in the public eye. Private wars are waging all around us. Not nearly enough survive.

http://www.info-komen.org/site/TR?team_id=145365&fr_id=1846&pg=team

http://happymedic.com/2010/10/01/go-pink-challenge/

0620 hrs.

Complete darkness. Still damp from the shower. Half dressed I put my belt through the first loop, reach around and give a mighty tug, leaving third degree burns on the roll of fat that now hangs over the waist of my uniform pants. That wasn’t there yesterday, I’m sure of it.

Jeez, can’t a guy eat half a pizza in bed at midnight anymore?

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

1. Stop eating everything in sight

2. Exercise

3. Get bigger pants

Time to update the fall wardrobe and figure out what’s for lunch.