Doing What Heroes Do...

I'd like to order one ambulance with nothing on it...
8:29 Responded to an auto-pedestrian accident. A yellow Mustang was driving down a narrow street and hit a construction worker, who was working on the side of the road. The Mustang did not stop. The pt. was a 50 y/o HM, CO severe back pain and some minor cuts and scrapes. Pt. also says he was knocked unconscious (a very bad sign of possible head injury). We immobilized the pt.'s spine with a backboard/c-collar and transported him to a level 1 trauma center. While enroute, the pt. took off his c-collar and got off the backboard...he said he didn't need it, it hurt him, and it caused him to have nasal congestion. He said he needed to sit upright (like you would in a regular ol' car). I guess that makes me wonder...what was the purpose of calling an ambulance?

It was the fault of the car in front of me...it just stopped...
10:44 Responded to an MVA on the freeway. It was a one-car accident. The driver of the one car said, in an angry and accusatory way, "the car in front of me just stopped for no reason...what was I supposed to do?" Lately, it seems like a lot of people are being victimized by drivers slowing down or stopping in front of them. They may want to look into learning what a safe following distance is. She avoided the car but didn't avoid the wall. Her passenger CO shoulder pain, and she was transported to the hospital.

Prescription drug refill...
13:44 Responded to the home of 51 y/o BF, CO of a headache and high BP. She lived about 2 miles from the hospital of her choice. We responded from about 15 miles away (due to heavy call volumes in the city at the time). It took us about 15-20 minutes to get there. The pt. says she was out of her prescription meds and she needed a refill. The pt. walked out to the ambulance, passing by the car of one of the 5 occupants of the house, and we transported her to the county hospital. When we arrived, she was escorted to the waiting room.

Wrong Location for No Patients...
15:15 A responsible citizen named Monica called 911 for a car accident. She may have given us the wrong location, but at least she didn't stop and check to see if anyone needed an ambulance. We drove all over trying to find the location. We called Monica to find out where it was...she didn't really know because she wasn't on location, nor did she ever stop her car. When we finally found it, the occupants of the cars were walking around the accident scene with absolutely no injuries to report.

One city service abusing another...city service on city service crime...
17:16 Responded to a Metro Bus incident on the side of a road. A 55 y/o WF was exiting the bus on her scooter, she turned too sharp at the bottom of the ramp, and she toppled over. She said she wasn't hurt, and she didn't want or need an ambulance. I asked her if she told the bus driver that she didn't want an ambulance, and she said "yes." The bus driver responded by saying that, even though the lady didn't want an ambulance, she had to call one anyway...company policy.

She wanted to take her free health care business elsewhere...
17:51 Responded to a 22 y/o HF, CO severe bleed from the vagina. Pt. was 5 1/2 weeks pregnant, and she had started spotting two days prior. She went to the hospital on the first and second days of the bleed (today would be the third hospital visit in 3 days). She complained that the hospital didn't hardly do anything to help her (of course she did not have insurance or a doctor...she was asking for free health care). We found her in a car, in a parking lot, about 2 miles from her house. Her friend was driving her to the hospital, but not to the same hospital to which she had gone for the past two days, because she didn't like the FREE care she was getting. She was going to the county hospital, downtown, which was about 10 miles away. On the way to the county hospital, she passed right by the other hospital. They stopped at the shop where her husband works and decided to call an ambulance to get her the rest of the way to the hospital, since she was bleeding so badly. We arrived and transported her, without treatment (there's nothing we can do for this problem), to the hospital which had already seen her (twice) for this same problem...the hospital she drove passed. It was less than one mile away. She was not very pleased, saying "I don't like this hospital; they don't ever do anything to help me." Again, she does not have insurance or a doctor; she was complaining about the free care that a private hospital was giving her.

Bug hunting incident...
20:49 Responded to the home of a 30 y/o AF, CO a bleed on her head. She was standing on the sink, trying to catch a bug, and she fell to the ground and hit her head. The bleeding had stopped when we arrived, and she said she felt OK. She decided that she would have her boyfriend come and drive her to the hospital.

To Have Fibromyalgia or Not To Have Fibromyalgia...

There's an interesting little debate going on between a few medical professionals and a few patients in this mad, mad world of blogs. The debate is over Fibromyalgia, and whether or not it's a real disease; but more than anything, the debate is over drug-seekers and patients concocting diseases to get the drugs they want from the benevolent totalitarian government. The debate is between BusyMom345, on her Fibromyalgia Support blog and medical professionals like MonkeyGirl and Ambulance Driver. Here's my response to the debate...

None of this would be a problem if drugs were deregulated & decriminalized, like in most other (UNFREE) countries. You wouldn't have to go to the doctor and make up a bunch of crap about how much it hurts. You could walk into a pharmacy, like a free person should be able to do, and buy whatever you feel like buying for whatever condition you think you might have.

The problem here is not fibromyalgia and whether or not it's fake, nor is the problem Monkey Girl or Ambulance Driver saying that fibromyalgia is BS. The problem is government regulation which, by depriving people of their freedoms (the very thing our benevolent totalitarian government was NEVER supposed to do), causes "free" people to start sneaking around the government (acting unfree). It also causes nurses and doctors to start acting like the Gestapo, trying to detect whether or not someone is lying about their condition and deciding whether or not that patient can have their precious drugs. Why would "free" patients lie about their condition, and why would "free" nurses feel like they had to police them? We ain't free.

Decriminalized & deregulate drugs, and let Natural Selection sort people out. What's more benevolent than allowing people to freely decide what they want to put in their own bodies, even if the all-knowing tyrannical majority DOES think it's detrimental?

Musings of a Highly Trained Monkey: Anonymous internet angst

I like reading this chick's blog about working as a nurse in the ER. She's definitely got all the great qualities I admire in an medical professional...crusty, jaded, cynical, angry, realistic, opinionated...

Musings of a Highly Trained Monkey: Anonymous internet angst

Pablo Escobar's Got Nothing on This Drug Dealer...The Government

It was generally a pretty typical day for a crusty ambulance driver (Tuesday, May 13, 2008). We passed out a few band-aids, transported a few people for no apparent reason, saved a lady, killed a guy...blah blah blah. But there were two runs that really stood out, and they had a surprisingly similar theme.

Addicted to the anti-addiction, highly addictive drug...
One guy was a 48 y/o WM who was CO breathing problems. He had gone earlier that morning to the clinic (crack house) to get his Methadone pills (a drug which is similar to heroine to help people break their addiction to heroine...because heroine is illegal, but Methadone isn't). He's been getting Methadone treatments to break his addiction to heroine FOR THE PAST 25 YEARS!!! While he was at the clinic to score his government-funded Methadone prescription, in the care of government-funded doctor (drug dealer), he complained of breathing problems, which typically get worse when he takes Methadone. The drug dealer told him to go ahead and head home, and when it got worse, he should just call 911. Anything is believable in this business, but that was hard to believe. Imagine a doctor telling someone to plan on just waiting until his condition became life threatening (which is the only reason to call 911, right?) and then call 911. It turns out the guy had an oxygen saturation level of below 50% (anything below 90% is bad).

I need more meds...I took all the ones I had at one time...
The other guy was a 59 y/o WM hobo who was found lying on the ground next to his "homeless & hungry, anything will help, god bless" sign. Apparently he had been collecting money at his usual intersection all day, he earned enough money to buy some alcohol, so he OD'd on the rest of his government-supplied Haldol and Prozac pills and washed it down with some alcohol. This is the third time my partner picked up this hobo within the past couple of months. The pattern seems to be that he OD's on his pills, calls 911, tells us he wants to commit suicide, takes a government-funded ride to the government-funded crack house (the hospital), and uses his Medicaid to get more dope (Haldol and Prozac) from his drug dealer (the doctor, funded and sanctioned by the government).

It's no wonder the government has waged a war against drugs. The government is the biggest drug dealer of them all. Non-government drug dealers are cutting into the government's drug dealing profits and threatening to break up their monopoly. They do what any mob of criminals would do...destroy the competition.

Really, what's the difference between "legal" and "illegal" drug dealing & drug use? As far as I can tell, the only difference is that the "legal" version is funded by money which is stolen from people at the point of a gun by a gang of thugs (the IRS), and it's protected by fascist, tyrannical laws that keep competitors from breaking up their monopoly; while the "illegal" version is funded by individuals who voluntarily choose to buy and sell their drugs, in a free, non-coercive market.

Next Verse, Same As The First...

Four More Drivers Fell for the Oldest Trap in the Book...
7:00 Responded to a 4-car accident on I-10. This accident happened at almost the EXACT same spot an accident happens nearly every day. It's a spot where traffic starts to slow down for an interchange, and it's just on the other side of a hill, so the drivers can't see what's on the other side of the hill until they get there (at 65-70 MPH). Today, a 30 y/o BM was driving an 80-something broken-down Cadillac, he got a flat tire, kept driving on the flat tire (on the freeway), passing an exit, until the tire came off the rim, and stopped in the right lane of the freeway (there was no shoulder). An unsuspecting motorist came over the hill and fell into the trap (got another one!). A 65 y/o white couple ran into the back of the Cadillac at about 45-50 MPH in an SUV. Another car ran into the back of the SUV, and a firefighter, driving a Hummer, got side-swiped in the next lane by someone. The driver of the Cadillac was changing the tire at the time and somehow cheated death, but his mother was in the front seat, and she was in pain...."Real bad"....where?...."all over...I cayn't feel ma legs." My partner poked her legs with a pen to test her claim of paralysis. She jumped and exclaimed "owwwwa." We transporter her and the 65 y/o WF from the SUV who had pain in her neck, a contusion on the back of her head, and high BP.

I Got Intestines in My Scrotum
11:25 Responded to a half-way house for a 55 y/o WM, CO pain in his testicles. He has had a hernia for the past 5 years, and his intestines descend into his scrotum. Normally, he just pushes his intestines back up, out of his scrotum, with his finger. Well last night, at around 12:00 a.m., too much intestine descended into his scrotum, and his scrotum was swollen to about 5 times its normal size. We transported him to the county hospital, so taxpayers could pay for his hernia, in addition to his housing and the rest of his existence.

(GWI) Garage-Saling While Intoxicated
12:39 Responded to a garage sale for a 56 y/o WF. The owners of the garage sale report that this woman was at their house for 3 hours, and she was stumbling around and acting crazy. AFTER THEY LET HER BUY A BUNCH OF STUFF AND LOAD IT INTO HER CAR, they called the police and ambulance because they thought she was intoxicated. She told us she was o.k., but she had taken a new prescription med that morning and it made her feel weird. We found out she had a blood glucose level of 45. We gave her some glucose, and she was fine. We left her at her house, after a friend came and drove her home. What happened to the days when a neighbor would help you by giving you some food or driving you home, rather than selling you a bunch of crap, then calling the cops on you?

Help...My Neighbor is Sleeping
14:53 Responded to a city sidewalk for a 51 y/o WF laying on the sidewalk, sleeping due to heavy intoxication. A concerned neighbor drove by, saw her, and did the most charitable thing a neighbor does these days...called 911. We showed up, professionally woke her up, she got up, and walked home. She didn't want our professional help. I wonder if the neighbor could have just woken her up and drove her home....Nah...why, when you got 911?

Another Friend...Doing the Nicest Thing a Friend Can Do...Calling Him an Ambulance
16:06 Responded to the home of a 61 y/o WM, CO abdominal pain. Pt. says he's passing a kidney stone, which he did 2 weeks ago...exact same problem. I told him I would be glad to give him a ride to the hospital in the ambulance, but I didn't have anything to give him that might help...just a ride. He thought that made sense and asked his friend to give him a ride to the hospital (the one who did the charitable thing and called 911 for him). She said, "why don't you just go in the ambulance...you can lay down, and it's quick and easy." He said, "actually, it hurts to lay down; I'd rather sit." She said, "well, if you go by ambulance, they'll get you in quicker." I said, "no, actually they triage you the same, and you could still go to the waiting room, depending on how bad your condition is compared to the other people in the waiting room." He asked his friend "will you just take me?" She said, "(sighhhhh)....yeees."

Can I Have a Cigarette?...No...SMACK!
17:24 Responded to a restaurant parking lot for a 20 y/o HM employee of the restaurant. He says he was getting out of his car, and a HM hobo came by asking for a cigarette. He said he didn't have any, and the HM hobo smacked him, driving his glasses into his cheek and cutting his cheek. He had a small, 1/2 inch laceration on his cheek, which had stopped bleeding when we got there. We told him he might need a couple stitches, but we didn't have any stitches. We told him we could professionally give him a ride in the back of the ambulance for his small, non-bleeding cut. He decided he didn't need our professional assistance.

Damnit, I'm Still Alive...
20:26 Responded to a senior assisted-living home for a 60 y/o HM male, laying on the floor of his apartment in a pile of trash, hundreds of prescription pills, urine, and dollar bills. It looked more like a scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas than an old-folks home. He had self-inflicted cuts all over his arms and legs, and he had a blood glucose level of 12. We took him to the hospital and gave him glucose enroute. He was conscious when we got to the hospital, awaking to the realization that, damnit, he was still alive.

Jer-ry...Jer-ry...Jer-ry...Jer-ry...
1:01 Responded to the apartment complex of a 32 y/o WM, who was punched by his neighbor, because he went to his neighbor's door to ask him why he threw a lighter through his window. The guy that threw the lighter through the patient's window felt threatened when he came to ask him why he did it, so he took a swing at him, which reportedly knocked him to the ground. When we got there, they were still arguing...it looked like a Jerry Springer show. The guy had a little bit of pain (no bleeding) in his lip. He decided he did not need the professional, government funded assistance of a crusty ambulance driver to attend to his painful lip (any more than I already had by being called by him to come look at his painful lip).

Another Sleeping Guy
1:53 Responded to an intersection, where there was reported to be an unconscious BM at a stoplight, behind the wheel of his van, as reported by Tara, a concerned citizen who was driving by. When we arrived, there was no BM, van, or Tara. Of course Tara had left the scene. She was concerned enough to call 911 but not concerned enough to stick around. The BM, unconscious, driver of a van had apparently gotten conscious enough to drive away.