YAY! I didn't think I would actually make it long enough to post a second blog, but I did. Horray for me. As I sit here at work again eating my bowl of now cold oatmeal (yes I eat oatmeal every day I work for breakfast.) I realize that my huge and faithful group of followers might actually want to know how work went the other day. WELL, let me tell you! It was terrible! To begin the day, my partner down in central/south county medi-vaced out a stroke patient around 11 am to noonish. I was only half listening to the radio traffic at the time. Not two hours later I was sent for an "injured person." Turned out to be a decent call for a traumatic injury of face vs. swing for a young boy. While I was discussing the situation with a trained medical doctor up at John's Hopkins over the med radio, I hear over my pager a call get dispatched right up the road. Now. Let me tell you. I am in Millington. They have one ambulance. I am in it. I am not leaving it. The next closest paramedic is in Lynch. Maybe 20 minutes away. Ha or so I thought. My boss shows up. Climbs into the one ambulance that I am in. Asks if everything is ok. Then leaves. He is going to take the second call. Just a little background. The system I run in is a chase car system. That means I drive a vehicle separately from the ambulance. And we meet at the scene. My boss drives the same way. So there he is, driving away to the second call while I am in the only ambulance in town. Needless to say, Queen Anne's county was kind enough to send over one of their paramedic transport units to help us out. I am still trying to get a helicopter and calm a young boy who is done with the whole business of ambulances and wants to go home. So I am sitting and waiting. And what do my ears here? A third call dispatched. Lucky for me, it was down in Chestertown. My partner is sent on it. Then there is a fourth call dispatched. More background. We have 2, count them 2, fully staffed paramedic chase vehicles on 24/7. My boss is also a trained paramedic but since he is the boss, he only is counted when we have 2 or more calls going at once. And if you all are paying attention you will notice we have more than 2. We have 4. That's right 4 calls. One call is going horribly bad, due to the fact that some providers may have gone to the wrong address. But I got that info secondhand so I can not be sure. But to top it all off, one of the 3rd or 4th calls is requesting a helicoper at the same time I am. Needless to say, my total time spent from the time I arrived to the time I was finished was 56 minutes. Way too long for that kind of call. But the flight paramedics were very nice and once they arrived everything went very quickly. To round out my day half in Galena, I ran a chest pains call. Lucky me the ambulance showed up with a great team. A local volunteer paramedic and her husband. They are very funny together. Later in the evening I was called back to Millington. This time I was in Lynch. So it took me a few minutes to get there. The patient refused and I went back to the office. Easy night so far. The final call of my shift came in a 0235. That is 2:35 am. A large amount of tones were being paged out. I popped out of bed and began getting ready to go somewhere for something. Being the jumpy paramedic that I am, I figured someone had died and an engine was being dispatched to help. Ha was I wrong. The dispatch is finally started and I realize I am not going to a medical call, but a structure fire. In Golts. Golts is the far top and to the right, end of the county. I believe it meets up with the Delaware line. I get on the road and head in the right direction. Dispatch gives additional information to the unit responding. "Be advised, stage prior to the scene. The caller advises that some one broke into the church and is setting in on fire. The caller believes they have torches and are torching the place." As I continue driving, I chuckle to myself. It's been raining since 7pm. And (insert 2.5 hours for a call and restock and travel time) the ground is very wet. I laughed because it was too wet for anything to catch on fire. Turns out I was right. There was no fire. But I was cancelled before I got on-scene so I am going by what someone who WAS on-scene told me. The rest of my shift was uneventful. Yay.
