Everybody thinks it's great to be busy. High volume areas are in demand, Paramedics and EMT's brag about the number of runs they do.

*Newsflash*

It sucks. Patient care crashes. Morale crashes. The ambulance crashes. I don't care who you are, and how many calls you do, and how many lives you save, and how great you are and caring and knowledgeable, you can only take so much before YOU crash. Or I crash.

Closing in on 2500 runs and it isn't even June.

Rescue 1 is overdue for a crash. And the mayor wants a 10 percent reduction in fire department spending.

Calls have increased every one of the twenty years I've been here. Every one of the twenty years I've been here I've been told the city is broke, make due, give back.

I'm tired of making due. Something has got to give.

Give back, we're told by the taxpayers. Do more for less. Give, Give, Give.

I've given enough. Maybe it's time the taxpayers give a little, and put some pressure on their neighbors, and their elected leaders and figure out a way to get their fellow citizens to be a little more self sufficient, and quit using the 911 system just because it is there.

Nightmares, sleepy arms, scrapes, fevers, sniffles-and when we arrive and walk past their cars they look at us incredulously when we ask if they are serious, and demand we do our job.

If I did my job I'd beat the shit out of them for contributing to the downfall of our society. And then hold them accountable for squandering resources for their own selfish needs.

But that job is secondary to the job I do for the city. So I put them in the ALS rig, and they bitch and moan and demand to be carried in on the stretcher so they can "get right in," and I keep my big mouth shut, and swallow the rage, and do it again and again and again until something truly horrendous happens, and I'm called, but have nothing left with which to put the pieces back together properly, and I do a half-assed job and rush them to the ER where equally burned out people do their best to pick up my slack.

It's 0700. Shift change. Fresh faces at triage, tired ones still pushing stretchers in. Different patients, similar stories. The shift that just left fought the weekend battle with us, was as punch drunk as we were, beaten down by the incessant barrage of patients, some drunk, some mentally ill, some bleeding, some dying. Some had no reason at all for being there, just lost souls looking for attention.

I've got an old lady on the stretcher. Five minutes ago she sat in a pile of excretement of her own making, on the floor in her bathroom, looking dazed, drooling. Her family left her there, waited for us to enter the hot zone and offer assistance. They were not certain of her date of birth, or medical condition, but did come up with a hand written medication list.

The meds gave some indication of her condition, heart, diabetes, high blood pressure. The family gave us nothing. With little to go on, and some good tools to help put things together, we ruled out MI, Hypoglycemia or stroke. TIA? Maybe. Dehydrated? Maybe. Vasal/Vagal? Maybe. Seizure? Probably.

Back at triage. My friends from the night shift are gone, dragging their tired selves home, or wherever. My new friends are in, fresh and ready to work. They too will be beaten down before long, like last night's crew, but at the moment expect a cohesive report. Instead, they get this:

"Duh, I tink she had a seizure."

What can I say, I expected people on the same wavelength.

Bright eyed meets bleary eyed in a battle at triage, may the best man win!

I lost.

Sorry, Carol.

My story was incomplete at best, but made perfect sense to me. And anybody else who had spent the night babysitting the minions of Providence.