My Birthday July 4th

Monday July 4, 2005 So on Sunday night I got called in. I started at 1900 on Sunday we ran all night and when we finally stopped for a little bit I got a phone call at about 0800 on Monday. It was my step-mom telling my father drove himself to the hospital last night because he was coughing up blood. Now he was being transported to the big hospital downtown. I'm thinking okay he ' just getting admitted for some complications with his CHF since he's not on lasix anymore. I tell her that they should request my company to do the transport. My partner for the day is a great medic I would be driving and it would be a very nice little transport. She calls me back and says the transport team is already there. She tells me Critical Care is transporting him. EXCUSE ME. "Oh it's just cause of the holiday and they don't have any other crews." says my stepmother. Now my stepmother knows noting of EMS much less private EMS. Critical Care only transports the really serious stuff they are like ground Med Flight. They always runs lights and sirens . They have a four man crews two medics one nurse and a driver. I knew all this and at that time until I had better info I wasn't going to worry my stepmother. Then she says they are moving him because his cardiac enzymes are off. Oh sheet I think he's having an infarction or through a PE. But maybe not. If I can find out what unit he's being admitted to we'll be okay. I call people I know one the transport team but I get voicemails. So I call the transport line at the hospital to see where he's being admitted. MICU. Oh sheet. It's not good at all it's very bad. I call my stepmother and tell her what is actually going on and try to get her out of her denial. She kept saying no it's not true because they just didn't have enough crews. I finally got through to her and she headed downtown. Now my birthday sucks even more. I call relatives and church people and ask everyone to pray. Then I am headed out on a call. I tell my partner that unless we have a patient if anything happens to my father I am lighting the squad up and heading downtown. He says okay I'll be right there with you. My partner tells my boss it's my birthday and my boss buys me a cake. Which ended up begin the only good part of the day. So after my father is settled in I call up the MICU to talk with his nurse and see what his levels were. His troponine was going down but they still needed to run it two more times before they could rule out an MI. So back to work I go call after call after call. With one squad all day on the fourth we ran about 20 calls. If was bittersweet to see some fireworks as I was giving patient care in the back of the squad as were we running hot down the freeway. In between vitals I could see them soaring into the air and exploding. No conclusion on my father and the possible MI when I tried to get some sleep for about 3 hrs before we started running again. Then finally on Tuesday I was relieved at about 0700. Yeah I get to go see my father in the hospital. So off I ran to the hospital where they were getting ready for a catherization. Then they drugged him up including benadryl for his possible allergies to the dye. Then he started having a reaction to of all things the benadryl. As soon as she injected it it started burning. Then he started getting confused and saying something was iching him. He kept scratching and saying it iched. He was getting really tired and moving all over the place. He pulled out 2 really good IV's And if I hadn't been there as he was trying to pull out the third one it would have been three. Put a new tagaderm and a lot of tape saved that one. Then they found no blockages and no MI. I was very happy. Then I got called into work. Only 9 hrs after I left from a 36 hr shift. So while they were pulling out the sheaths from the catherization. I blew my father a kiss and went back to work. I finally got off on Wednesday night at 2300. So in those last 72 hrs I worked about 66 of them and didn't get to sleep in my own bed for three days. I slept until 1100 today and am now finally going to wash my uniforms. I will probably get called in tonight. But if I don't answer my phone because I turned it off I will get to sleep in my bed two days in a row. - Jessiye 10:2