What I Get for Taking Vacation

It's been a hell of a week. I took a shift off on Tuesday to spend a few days away with my wife celebrating our 4th anniversary. I paid for it though, before and after.

The shift before my anni-vacation, my partner and I ran 5 calls before noon. One of which required cardioversion for SVT after two unsuccessful rounds of adenosine. In the middle of all this, dispatch is paging us that there are return medivans waiting at providence ER. We made three round trips to Portland that shift.

I had to paralyze and intubate a stroke patient while nervously waiting for additional personnel from rescue. We took him to Portland on a vent.

Upon returning from my anni-vacation, I had a first ever experience as a patient went from a 3rd degree block to cardiac arrest in front of me. I was setting up an oxygen mask and not looking at teh patient when a fireman said "I think he just went out on you!"

"No he didn't." I replied as I double checked the monitor leads (one of them had fallen off). It was then the patient went from pale to purple in 10 seconds. Fuck I thought.

"Code 99." My partner calls into the radio. Immediately this is followed by the FTO sitting at post "Medcom from Medic 3, does 1 need our assistance?"

In the middle of applying defib pads, setting up for the intubation, and IV, I grab the handset. "Negative 3, fire is already on scene." I don't need another medic to drive 15 minutes from post to 'assist' me on a code when I'll be off scene in less than 10. (I have a problem with second ambulances responding as "back up," something I'll rant about later.)

That shift was rounded out with a transfer for gall stones at midnight. Something I truly considered a valuable use of my emergency medical skills.

Today, it continued with a trauma system entry from the memory ward at one of the local adult care facility. The patient fell outside and was in the rain for 10-20 minutes before the caretakers found him. He had a huge hematoma on the back of his head and was supposedly altered from his normal state of dementia. Turns out he had a subdural bleed as was a trauma transfer 30 minutes after arriving at the hospital.

And this afternoon, I took my second vent transfer of the week, an acute MI with complications. I just took a vacation, but really, I need another one.