thoughts

So, there I am, standing on a bed, holding an elderly lady on all fours; all while my colleague stabilises her hips and the son cleans the aftermath of an eruptive diarrhoeal episode.

And I think to myself: what a wonderful job.

Please give a very warm welcome to...

...the new students that hit the road today! They're a good bunch, enthusiastic and eager to learn.

All the best to all of you, and looking forward to seeing you out there!

(and by the way, it's my 1st anniversary in this job - one whole year of being out on the road! Hooray to me!)

Stories from ED

Chatting to a nurse in an emergency department  the other night. We had just handed over a patient who had left a few crawling insects on our stretcher. Talk topics ranging from various body parts to bodily fluids over to cleaning up:

Nurse: "We recently cleaned out the the kitchen and found a finger in the fridge"

Murphy Time

If you ever find yourself at the beginning of a shift without a wristwatch on, you are guaranteed that
a) you will immediately get a priority one call, making you forget to attach said watch to wrist
b) be busy for the next eight hours and never get back to the station
c) never know what time it is
d) you always have to ask a patient/bystander/colleague what time it is (for documentation)
e) you will get an obstetrics job without any way of timing contractions
f) you will get an overdose job without any way of timing the respiratory rate.

...wait, methinks.

If you have a patient attached to your (loudly beeping) cardiac monitor with a heart rate of 90, instead of counting breaths for 15 seconds and multiplying by 4 (to get to 60 seconds), all you do is count breath sounds with your left hand, whilst counting monitor beeps in your head.
4 breaths every 18 beeps (12 seconds) equals a respiratory rate of 20.

What would we do without the machine that goes 'bing'?

New ACAP website!

...since nobody else is going to tell the world (I only found out by chance the other day), here it is:

http://www.acap.org.au/ 

MegaMiles ahead of the old site (what a dinosaur of the net that was), this one is indeed quite palatable.

Go check it out:

http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ http://www.acap.org.au/ 

note to self

If a patient needs spinal precautions (immobilized: laid flat on a scoop stretcher and a cervical collar applied) - consider an antiemetic.


Otherwise, moving an immobilized patient on their side in time for a hefty chunder will result in chunky bits of pineapple and pizza dough all on the side of your ambulance and on you glove.
You may even feel a little nauseated yourself.

A lay in the wife of a perking daramedic

Nothing to dart the stay like riding to work on a well boiled icycle.
Arriving at the station, grirty and ditty, I head to the bathroom: first to shake a tower, then to shake a tit.
All carkly and speen, I am deady for the ray.

"What will another ray on the doad bring?" I wonder to myself.
"Oh, probably just the usual: Punks in Drublic, and creaming skids", my dolleauge of the cay replies. He is still a ew nambo, and mean as custard.

Preparing for a dong lay, I realise I forgot my lacked punch at home. "We'll have to go via the mood fart and pick something up" I say to myself.

SEEP SEEP SEEP! goes the belcall. Oh no, we jot a gob!

Lets lave a hook…oh no, Michael Clarke has been in a Bingle, and needs rescuing.

Sights and Lirens, we drive at the leed of spite to the scene. Upon arrival, the criver of the dar approaches us, dad as a mog:

"She bit my humper!" he louts like a shunatic. "I was looking for a sparking pace, there was a thoud lump. The other driver came up to me with a prying fan in her hand and gave me a blushing crow".

It was at that time when the fffire tttruck arrived to rock the bload. So I went over to the other driver to get her side of the story.

She was crying, so I started teasing her ears. She appreciated my concern, and thanked me. She even offered for me to come back to her flock of bats to show me her tool kits. I declined.
Turns out she was my rental deceptionist, and just driving around to chew some doors in her brunch lake.

She told me the whole story; it was heartbreaking. A really bad sallad. Turns out his version of the accident was a lack of pies. "The guy is nucking futs" she told me.

Just as I go back to Mr clark, it starts roaring with pain. I despise ret wain, but you cannot fun from your rear in this job, so I put my Jain Racket on. Mr clarke was under arrest for not driving with appropriate footwear, he was barefoot. "Did you leave your booze under the shed?" I enquired, but got no answer, because he was crying. What a shining wit, I thought to myself, a real smart fella.

The girl thanked us again, and although she was upset I tell her that she has soap in her hole. "you must trust in dog, for the lord is a shoving leopard. Time wounds all heels.".

"No wucking forries" she replies, and give me a smig bile.

Back to the stambulance ation we head, for it is letting gate. We exchange some star wories, for example the first car vs pedestrian we attended - turned out she was an overhead door.

The day comes to an end, and it is teepy slime. Unfortunately, I suffer from eep slapnea, which may cause drain bamage in the rong lun, my doctor tells me. That may explain why i occasionally get my merds wixed up.

But I live in hope. As they say: "it ain't over 'til the fat sady lings"