I’ve had trouble sleeping of late. Since we got back from Indianner, Loki has been on prednisone to reduce swelling in his ear from a yeast infection, and has been getting me up multiple times a night to go outside to pee as a result.
The night before this tale, I had a very rare nightmare, this one about the Jerk-In-Chief cutting the Defense and Homeland Security budgets, with me winding up unemployed once again. That left me in a chipper mood at the office yesterday, let me tell ya.
Then there’s the always popular fire or rescue page in the middle of the night, the nucleus of this tale.
It was 3:30 AM, and I just laid back down after Loki wanted out to answer the doggy call of nature. The tones went off for a single vehicle rollover, with the patient ejected from the vehicle. The location was on the far side of the county. Screw it, says I. I can’t make a timely response, and I rolled over to go back to sleep.
Second round of tones, and the dispatcher was noticably annoyed that nobody was answering. VWife turns on ALL the lights… “Aren’t you going?!?”
“NO. it’s on the other side of the county.” 'Bout that time, one person called in as enroute to the scene.
“Oh, you’re right.” Maybe my reasoning sounds selfish, but if I responded and got a unit, it would be a minimum 20 minutes before the ambulance got there, and that was a real consideration.
Another round of tones, and Steve the Barber answered that he was getting an ambulance. Cool, he lives a lot closer to the station and the scene. I rolled over once again.
Bubba, who was the first to answer, got to the scene, and reported head injuries and a possible broken hip or pelvis (quoting the patient, “MY BUTT HURTS!”). Oh shit, a major trauma. Out went another page for an Intermediate, and a call for a helicopter.
Well, I ain’t gonna get back to sleep with all this traffic, there’s still a conspicuous lack of responders, including EMT-Is and Paramedics, and I’m the only -I I know of that has heard this. I hauled my ass out of bed and called in. So did Jack, the assistant chief.
I got to the scene about 4 minutes behind both Jack, and the ambulance. Our patient was lying in a field, caked in mud, and complaining loudly that his head and butt hurt. It was also readily apparent he was intoxicated, because you could smell booze on his breath from 10 feet, seriously.
He was backboarded, his legs were bound together so his right could be a splint for the left, and we loaded him up into the ambulance. The first thing we had to do after trauma stripping him was give him a birdbath just to have clean spots for his IVs. He got 2 of them, and I did mine without coaching.
His face was bloody, after biting his tongue. The numerous small lacerations contributed, and I picked out a few pieces of wheat stubble. His left hip was extremely painful, and he could not lower his leg. His right eye was black, swollen, and getting worse while we watched. He also had numerous signs of a head injury. We have no idea how long he was lying in the field, because no one witnessed the rollover. A couple passing by found the wreck after the fact. One telltale that he’d been there a while was the mud packed in his ear canals had dried.
The air ambulance reported back that they were socked in from the weather. Great. He’s going to Norfolk General, and we’re driving. That’s one long trip. It took an hour even with lights, siren, and pedal to the metal.
Nothing bad happened during the ride, but his blood pressure was acting funny, and he was getting incoherent and losing consciousness, so that head injury was getting worse and more involved. I wish him well, because Natasha Richardson is a perfect example of what can go wrong with head traumas.
I also wish me some undisturbed sleep right now.
