Paramedic… I See Dead People
They say that the more you do of something the more that you will see it… for example, you decide you like the new model Audi… then wherever you go, you seem to see the new model Audi. The question then becomes, was the new model Audi everywhere in the first place, and you just didn’t notice it, or is it turning up everywhere now, just because you’re interested in it… I don’t know… and this all seems too wishy/washy a topic, but from my own experience and that of other paramedics that I know…
I find that since I became a paramedic and started to go to sick and injured people everyday, I seem to always see sick or injured people while I’m off duty.
This is a compilation of stories are some of the more ridiculous events I’ve had since I beaome a paramedic and have been off duty, around home or about. For a period I worried that I kept on killing everyone around me (or hurting), but I look at it more possitively these days, and believe that these people were going to die whether I was around or not, and it was good luck that I was there to help them. You decide…
1. Its a quiet day at work, and my partner and I take the Ambulance and go for a cup of coffee… an old lady walks in and looks at us, and then suggests that it must be a quiet day. I acknowledge her, and she sits down and orders a cup of coffee. Two minutes later, the waitress comes over and tells us that the same lady is feeling unwell and can we come have a talk to her. I come over and ask her what’s wrong, and if she’d like our help… she looks at me, and says “I don’t feel very well…” and then immediately vomits, large, copious amounts of frank (arterial red) blood. She had undiagnosed oesophageal viracies, which had just ruptured. We did everything we could to make her comfortable and got her to hospital. Within ten minutes of arrival at hospital she died from blood loss. It all happened so suddenly, had we not been there when the oesophageal viracies ruptured she would have been dead by the time we arrived.
2. I’m driving back from a paramedic course… I’m wearing my uniform, only because I hadn’t gotten around to changing yet, and was on my way home in my own private vehicle. I’m flagged down by an SES person (State Emergency Services), who tells me I can’t drive through… there’s been a bad accident… he then tells me that there’s no phone reception and he can’t call 000 (the Ausralian emergency phone number)… he then suggests that I drive back about 15kms and try to call 000 from there… at this point, he notices the uniform that I’m wearing…
The off duty paramedic now recognised… the off duty SES worker decides to drive back to get help… so I find myself, without any equipment, in the middle of nowhere, with a car that has rolled off an embankment and is now laying 80 odd metres down the gentle mountain slope…
I tentatively wonder down the hill and calmly ask “is anyone’s in the car”… no- response… then yell as I get a little closer…” can anyone hear me?”
To this, I get the answer… “I’m okay, I’m just trapped… and upsidedown… can you help?”
I wonder down and find an older lady, upside down, and stuck by her seatbelt… fundamentally unscathed…
She looks down at me… “Wow… you guys got here quick!”
I inform her that I was just driving by…
After several failed attempts to free her… I wonder back up the hill… find a small knife (in my car tool kit… ) and come back down to free this damsel in distress…
She ended up virtually injury free (the car wasn’t so lucky)…
3. I’m doing my shopping on my way home from work (again, in my uniform… why do I wear this thing?)… I casually chatting to the check-out lady, who appears to be a little short of breath… I politely ask her how she is… and she tells me that she’s been feeling crook most of the afternoon… “oh, you poor thing… just a cold or something?” I ask conversationally… “no… I have had this funny pain in my chest…”
A small part of me thinks maybe I should stop there and politely avoid asking anymore questions that will inevitably lead to me having to call an Ambulance… but I was away at school when they were teaching young kids the value of discretion and leaving things alone…
So I ask “tell me abit more about this funny feeling in you chest…”
Within minutes I acknowledge the fact that this lady is having a heart attack and organise calling an Ambulance…
She was later taken to a major hospital, where it was confirmed that she was having a myocardial infarction (heart attack) and was taken to have an angiogram, where she had cardiac stents inserted and made a full recovery…