I'm finally back on the streets! It's been such a long week. I've been working basically 12 hour on 11-12 hours off since Wednesday last week. I haven't gotten adjusted to working nights yet, which I should be as I always work nights on 24 hour shifts, but my body isn't having it. Usually I'm able to catch a couple hours of sleep at work, but I couldn't sleep for the life of me on any of my shifts yet. It's awful. And two of my shifts were out of our south station that is twice as far from my house as the one I normally work out of, and the traffic is absolutely awful as I have to go right through the city on the interstate to get there. Some days it takes as long as two hours to get there, and it's 30 miles. At least I'm back to my normal schedule as of next week. I haven't been able to sleep when I've been at home between shifts either. The most sleep I got was yesterday, and that was for two hours.
It hasn't been especially busy except for last night. I was basically cross-towning it for the entire shift. We had a multiple stabbing initially; the guy had two stab wounds to the head, and his lip was cut open, one stab wound in the middle of his chest, two on the back of his shoulders and two to his lower back. He was a mess-chest tubes and everything. We also took a guy with multiple drips, some of which we need a nurse to take, across the city and into another town. The worst was that we were way out west, had to drive basically as far south east in the city you can get (almost) to pick up the RN, then drive to the far northside to pick of the patient, and then take him way out of city limits to another hospital...then take the RN back, and then go to a post on the west side again. Way too much driving. Besides that we had a seizure patient.
The best part of shift was the random rain storm that came through. It was completely out of nowhere. There was a tiny blip on the radar, and even the weather channel continued to say it was clear with a 10% chance of rain all night. I swear that little cell was hanging over the city and going nowhere. We were driving up along the lake and the waves were massive. There have been rip current and riptide warnings out, but seeing it was wild. It was raining so hard that you couldn't see anything and the streets were getting flooded. The waves were crashing together and getting pulled back into the lake. It seriously looked like one of those toys where you can make waves in it...I wish I could explain it better. They were crashing up against the shore so hard that the spray was coming onto the highway. And everyone says the midwest doesn't get hurricanes! I disagree. Maybe it wasn't a hurricane, but it was like a monsoon. The city literally looked like the videos you see of hurricanes blowing through coastal cities.
I almost fell asleep on shift last night, but my partner was driving me nuts. First he turns on the air conditioning when it's like 55 degrees outside, then he changes his mind and turns on the heat. He falls asleep and is snoring like crazy. We kept getting diversion/bypass pages for different hospitals around the city. I know well enough that when one goes on bypass at least 5 others will as well, so I always clear my pager every time it goes off. Him-not so much. He'd sleep right through the page and wouldn't clear it, so it would beep every two minutes or so, and his damn phone kept dinging with emails and crap. I swear every time I started to doze one of the two would ding or beep again. I told him multiple times to put his stupid phone on vibrate and clear his pager. Of course he didn't. The stupid pager was STILL beeping on our way back to quarters at the end of our shift. And he kept saying "it's not my pager." Well unless we have another fucking person on our rig with a pager, it's YOURS! UGH. So annoying. I couldn't wait to get the hell off the rig.
Heading home was interesting. I guess the lack of sleep finally caught up with me. I was pretty much falling asleep at the wheel. I was guzzling coffee, chain smoking, and had the windows down freezing myself, or attempting to, to stay awake. I made it home thankfully. I finally got some sleep today, but I'm still tired. I pray I get good sleep tonight. I'm so sore from being in the damn ambulance-I can never get comfortable.
Back on the streets tomorrow night. I have no clue who I'm working with. I hope they're cool or at the very least somewhat competent....
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