Listen to your momma.

Recently we had one of those “You’re kidding, right?” calls.

Since I live in the great Midwest and it is the dreary month of February, it is not uncommon to encounter snow, ice and generally just weather cold enough to freeze hot piss before it hits the ground. This particular day, it had just stopped doing that wonderful snow/rain mix we are so well known for and the temperature was rapidly declining. As I had anticipated, we received a call for someone who had slipped on the ice and now is complaining of ankle pain. When we get there, we slowly shuffle ourselves across the frozen parking lot and up the ice block stairs to the patient.

Once inside we find our patient with her ankle wrapped haphazardly in an ace bandage and a bag of ice over it moaning and crying. With our crew of 4 EMTs and one firefighter, we send one back out to bring the squad around back to the elevator instead of risking our own ankles to carry her down the stairs. (Sometimes we do actually come up with some good ideas!) The remainder of the crew start the routine. I was appointed to inspect the injured ankle. As I approached with utmost caution to lift the bag of ice, the patient screams in pain as if someone just drove a nail into her eyeball and we all instinctively freeze. I asked the patient what happened…

“You were going to touch my ankle.”
“Um yeah, but I didn’t touch it yet.”
“I just figured it was going to hurt.”

It quickly dawned on us that she is going to be one of THOSE patients. (I know you know what I am talking about.)

Somehow with the four of us left and plenty of whimpers from the patient later, we finagle her onto our cot. Once on the cot, we give her the required schpeal about giving ones-self a hug and keep your arms in, kind of like the droning you hear right before your harness tightens on the Batman ride at Six Flags. We count it out and on the utterance of “three”, the patient flails her arms, shrieks in a tone that I am certain only creatures with four legs could hear, and simultaneously bitch-slaps both people on the sides of the cot. Phenomenal. The lecture that followed just about brought tears to my eyes. You would have thought it was a well practiced Oscar speech. It literally just rolled off Rachel’s* tongue like singing ‘Happy Birthday.’

The fun did not stop there however. I drew the short straw and was voted to transport. Here are some highlights of the transport.

1. This patient is a lying liar. *See yesterday’s blog
2. You do not need to wear 7 support bracelets at one time, especially on one hand.
3. The smallest needle we carry is a 24g. The more you piss me off or hit someone on my crew, the less likely you will be to get “the little one”.
4. Yes, I have a license to do this even though I am volunteer, dipshit.
5. Just because I am not getting paid, does not make me a ‘nee-nee’ as you call it.
6. I really am glad that you were a tech on the cardiac unit, but does not mean you are a nurse. Self-diagnosing is a bit overkill.
7. Telling me you “know” when you break bones is hilarious. It is side-splitting funny when you have never broken a bone before.
8. Your veins suck, but you bet your ass I can hit them, even *gasp* while we are going down the road.
9. If the hospital tells me to take you to triage, your whiny ass is going to triage, even if you worked at this hospital in afore mentioned cardiac unit. Newsflash! You are not that special.
10. When I tell you to stay on the cot, I mean literally, do not remove yourself from the cot. Until I lock the wheels and lower it, you are taking one hell of a chance of “breaking” your other ankle.

I felt the need to apologize to the triage nurse for leaving her there as she did not understand why she was not ‘next’. (There are an abundance of references to the ways of triage in some of the blogs I frequent if you are unsure as to what I am referring to.) Unfortunately, this patient must not have learned that in the cardiac unit.

Finally, to answer the question as to why you shouldn’t hit your EMT…Because just like your momma told you, it just isn’t very nice.