Started off the morning with a 6-month pregnant homeless woman who hadn't had anything to eat in 24 hours. She called 911 from a payphone in a Pizza Hut parking lot. She says that she sleeps in a vacant house across the street. Complaining of ab pain but not having contractions. She looked just so exhausted. I don't know if she was truly having ab pain for not, but it appeared that just being able to lay down in a clean environment and close her eyes was a great relief. I spoke with the nurse in L&D about trying to discharge her to a women's shelter. The nurse who took report was pissed that we brought her in. They would have been pissed had we brought ANYONE in... we interrupted their Sunday morning coffee and sitting on their butts. After I got her signature, I apologized for ruining her day and told her to perk up... she could be homeless and jobless too. If anything has been a shock to get used to its the attitudes of the ER to EMS.
Thunderstorms moved into the area and the next 5 hours were rollover after rollover after rollover. We had 8 or 9 but I could hear all the other stations too having them all day. None of ours were terribly serious. All self-extricated. First one, both folks restrained with no airbag deployment. Pax had no complaints, just shook up. Assessed her and BP was 168/100. She was refusing transport, and after she signed off and was heading out the back of the squad said her chest wasn't feeling right. Put her on the monitor and at first looked ok.. a little tachy with crazy tall R waves. Nothing terribly alarming. No past hx of cardiac. Another minute or so and she starts throwing trigeminal PVC's. She says her chest hurt and it was going straight into her back. She was pointing more to the Angle of Louis... I was thinking possible aortic bruise or tear.
So the refusal was out the window and we took her in. Kept watching the monitor as it would oscillate between trigeminal and bigeminal PVC's. 12-lead looked perfect. Am glad she didn't leave on the refusal.
Didnt see much of the station throughout the day. Got a little sleep and was called for a chest pain around 2:30am. It was really a post-delivery epidural wear off. She looked miserable... but the baby was adorable.
But it was that call that I almost blew the house up. We're pulling back into the station around 3am and there is a very strong smell of natural gas in the bays. I hop out of the drivers seat and notice part of the plug from the shore line is still in the ambulance port. My old dept had auto-ejectors for the shore lines. We do not. I say a little oops and we start opening the bay doors and investigating where its coming from. Walking around the bays I walk over to the shoreline cord and am looking it over.. three exposed wires.. wow.. I did a doozy on that one... I drop it and sparks fly everywhere! I'm realizing that I sure am glad there isnt a huge concentration of gas in the bays or that I started playing with the wires! I follow the cord up the wall to the ceiling, along the ceiling, along the top of the bay doors and back down to the wall plug and unplug it. It's about now that I'm looking again and the shoreline cord had been wrapped around the gas line on the ceiling that goes to the bay heaters. Yep, I broke the gas line when I pulled out on the earlier call.
"in the news today.. a firehouse was blown to smithereens in the middle of the night..."
We woke Cap up and he had to call the Bat.Chief to make a report. Good one rook... good one.
In the grand scheme of things not a big deal.. everyone forgets to pull the shorelines. I've seen engines flying down the road with 25' of cable following them. Bad part is.. "B" shift now cant cook or have hot water til the line is fixed. Oops.
Went back to bed after we aired out the place and woke up to the bell.... thank goodness for crews that come in a little early and take that call. God luv ya. I'm going back to bed.
Monday, June 26, 2006
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