Stage Day 2.

Much busier day today. We had 5 calls and from 2:00 am until 5:00 am it was one call after another. My "maitres de stage" are extremely nice and I couldn't ask for better people to learn from. Here's a list of my calls:

1st Call: Call came in for Respiratory Distress, 58 year old male. Upon our arrival the patient was breathing fine, was well coloured, and not complaining of any pain. We took the vital signs, attached the monitor, and took him to the hospital.

2nd Call: Transfer from Anna Laberge Hospital to Montreal Children's. 15 year old male, was climbing a tree and the branch broke and he fell about 1 story and landed on his back, he broke his left hip. This was my favorite call of the night, even though we didn't do anything medically, I got a chance to talk to this young man the whole way to the hospital. He goes to the same high school I went to and we talked a lot about that. This kid was very nice and polite, and after talking to me, he now thinks he might want to become a Paramedic. I felt that in one way, I made a difference in his life, simply by talking to him, and showing him, that a kid who went to Billings can actually move on an do something.

3rd Call: We get called for a 32 year old woman with abdominal pain, diarrhea nausea, etc.... We show up, and the woman is waiting for us lying on her porch complaining of severe pain. One of my partners, says that this woman is a known "psych" patient and calls at least once a month. Again we check the vitals, put her in the ambulance and bring her to the hospital.

4th Call: We get a call for a woman with severe non traumatic back pain. We show up, she's lying in bed, complaining of back spasms. We bring her to the hospital, where she looks to be in pretty bad pain, when we transfer her from our stretcher to the hospital bed. We wish her good luck, and continue on.

5th Call: We get called at 5:30 am (half an hour before our shift ends) for a 62 year old woman who can't get out of bed, on a priority 3. This woman has the whole kit, known asthmatic, cardiac history etc... We show up at the house, bring in our equipment, and see a 550 pound woman half on half off the bed. She tells us she wants to sit, but she can't move, she has severe swelling and dehydration of both her feet. There's no way we can move this patient, just us three so we call for help from the firefighters. This woman is confused, and unoriented. when we ask her the year, she can't tell us what it is. She's a known diabetic, so I check her blood sugar level and it way high at 22 (Normal is between 4 and 6). We tried our best to get her on the stretcher, and bring her to the hospital as quickly as we could.