It's been a while

Not too much has been going on lately. A couple interesting calls but mostly dumb stuff.

I DO have some very good news. The next class of rookies came out of training, and we got one of them. This may seem asanine or irrevellant to you, but it's not. In fact, it's huge! I am still a rookie, but no longer "the" rookie. I got to pass off some of my chores to him last shift. He took it all in stride, it'll all be easier with both of us working.

Since I haven't had any good calls lately, or posted recently, here's one from a while back.

Every now and then, we get a call where dispatch won't tell us anything other than person down. We can usually get a little more information from the KDT in our trucks. Scrolling down the call info my partner read it aloud "possible 22." (demented person) OK, so this guy could be nuts. We beat the engine crew out of the station and got to the street quickly. Turning onto it and coming down the hill, I saw it.

"Uh, this is gonna be fun..."

"Why?"

"2 PD cars onscene."

OK, nobody said anything about PD even being enroute. Stepping out of the truck we can hear someone screaming. Not an occasional yell, but using every breath to yell. We walk inside to find 3 officers sitting on the patient, his dad holding one of his arms, and his big brother trying to help. We later learned that big bro works for our county PD and was just off-duty.

We learned he started screaming about 15 minutes before PD arrived, it was another 15 minutes until we got there. We tried talking to him but nothing worked. There was no chance he'd taken any drugs, legal or otherwise, he didn't have or do anything that would explain his behavior. So we did the only thing we could- restrained him to a backboard. We tied the soft medical restraints to him, strapped him to the board, and buckled him down for the ride. Dad rode in to the hospital with us.

Once inside the back of the rescue, he quieted down a lot. I don't know if it was getting away from his family that helped or not. He tried to work himself back up enroute, but my partner warned him if he didn't slow his breathing and calm down his head would keep hurting and he'd eventually pass out. Dad thought maybe his girlfriend had broken up with him or something like that. I hate to think all of that happened over a girl, but you never know.

We got him to the ER and unloaded him under the watchful eye of security. They were called to the ER in case we needed help, certainly nice to have another pair of hands. (Security is called down for different types of problems- psych, obese, respiratory diseases, and whenever PD brings one in...to name a few reasons)

We never did find out why he got so upset. We've been on many calls on his street since then, it's tempting to knock on his door to see how he's doing. Sometimes I wish we had a way to follow-up on certain patients, see how they're doing.

Take care