Ready yet?

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Sometimes you get patients who are waiting for you at the front door, keys in hand, suitcase packed with their favorite pillow, their face pressed against the screen for fear of missing you drive by. And before you've even put the truck in park and put your gloves on, they're bolting the front door and walking down the driveway. Whoa, whoa, wait a minute Ms. Sweet Elderly Lady... lets check you out first. This kind of presentation, if you will, by our patient usually leads me to believe that this is in fact NOT a life threatening call. And because we have the option to call for a basic rescue to come transport and/or refuse transport at all if deemed appropriate.... I'm usually headed down that path. I've run a plethora of these... usually constipation or trying to get to a surgery appointment on time. Frustrating to say the least, but I have an affinity for older folks and don't mind taking the time to check em out, give them the "next time..." speech and help them lock their house up.

Then you have the calls where either the patient or the family calls and while from initial presentation its not a load and go.... after you hook them to the monitor, a few flags raise.... then the 12-lead... more flags... and you're like, "OK, lets get going, we'll do everything else enroute." That's when your patient keeps finding just one more thing that they just HAVE to have. Be it insurance card, meds, ... their favorite pillow.... and you're approaching the line of either snapping that, "Look, we can't stay here any longer, we really need to get going, now." vs. getting that one more thing that will help relax them and not cause any undue distress. Its that affinity for older folks that keeps me tottering on that line. Sometimes I just have to be the bad guy. But its only for their health and well-being.

Then there was the call at 0800 this morning for a 20-yr male with a cramp in his foot. Really son,.... really? The cabulance is here...