Medic 115 - End of the night shift

We started the night responding to a 69 year old female complaining of 10 days of off and on chest pain that tonight radiated to her jaw. Tonight was the worst she ever experienced and her husband, a retired ED physician, felt that it was time to go to the hospital. Her pain was waning when we got there and after some aspirin and oxygen she was complaining only of some mild nausea. Her 12 lead and vital signs were totally unremarkable. We carried her downstairs to the ambulance and had a relatively uneventful trip to the hospital after I established an IV and gave her an anti-emetic to calm her nausea. 

It truly was an uneventful call. The eventful part of it didn't start until after the ambulance dropped me off at my truck and I was headed back home. As I was driving up one of the main roads in town I approached a curve and suddenly found headlights traveling at high speed traveling in my lane. I began some evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision and so did the other driver, his car crossed back into his lane onto the shoulder of his side of the road, turned sharply back towards my lane and onto the shoulder on my side of the road, spun out, avoiding striking my paramedic unit by less than 6 feet and struck a tree with the passenger side rear corner of his vehicle.

I called the dispatcher and asked for PD to be dispatched as I just witness a crash and turned around to go check for injuries. As I pulled up to the vehicle it was spinning it's tires trying to get disentangled from the tree and rocks it had hit. I put my truck in park just as the other vehicle shot away from the tree and continued on down the road in the same direction it had been traveling prior to hitting the tree. I figured I probably should see if I could at least get a license plate number from the vehicle just to pass on to the police and I followed. We turned onto a side street and then an even smaller street off of that. I got close enough to see the plate and called it in just as the car pulled into a residential driveway. 

The young driver got out and approached me and I inquired as to if he was injured. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when he responded "What are you talking about? I'm fine.". He had alcohol on his breath and widely dilated pupils with nystagmus even when looking straight ahead. I explained to him that I he almost hit me head on and I witness him hitting a tree and he replied that I "must be mistaken". I pointed out the damage to the back of his car and he told me that it had been like that for a few months and that there was no new damage. Curious, I figure of he had been driving with the back bumper dragging on the ground for a few months someone might have stopped him and told him about it. At this point three other young men exited the vehicle, one sprinting for the trees, the other just standing at the back end of the care and the fourth disappearing into the dark. About this time the first of 4 police cruisers arrived. 

The driver still denied having any type of accident even though one of the later arriving cruisers actually brought a shorn off part that matched his vehicle. After a short discussion with the sergeant the driver was given a shiny pair of stainless steel bracelets and a trip to the police station to be processed.

I sate down in my truck to fill out a statement for the police. Several minutes later the passenger that hadn't bolted (who had also been handcuffed) seemed to realize that he was probably under arrest began complaining of dizziness. I called the dispatcher and had the fire department and an ambulance dispatched and began assessing him. His assessment was totally normal. Unfortunately he kept slipping up with his story and let slip that he had been in an accident, that he was underage, had been drinking, that none of the people in the car lived at the house where they pulled in, and that the driver was lying through his teeth (we knew this already). The ambulance arrived shortly and we boarded and collared him and he was transported by the ambulance BLS to the hospital.

At this point I went and finished my statement and checked with the sergeant to make sure they didn't need anything else from me before I left the scene. He said no and I headed back home with the idea of getting some sleep.

That was not to be. I got home and found that I was still a bit hyped up from my near miss and couldn't sleep. I took another 20 minutes and jotted down some notes on what happened since I had a feeling that I might need to refer to them at some point in the future. Nothing specific, just a feeling. After I finished my notes I had relaxed a bit and tried to sleep some more. 

I think I may have actually slept for 10 minutes before my cell phone rang. It was the crew chief from one of the two crews on duty telling me that one of the fire departments had just struck a second alarm and that they were getting ready to go for the fire standby. I glanced at my watch, 0314, ugh. Normally we should have been dispatched on the first alarm, as soon as it was reported as a working fire but for some reason it took the dispatcher another 6 minutes to actually dispatch us and do an "all hands" call for EMS personnel to report to the station.

The two on duty ambulances and I responded to what was described as a "three story wood frame fully involved". This was going to be a long night if that was indeed the case. When I arrived I deployed our EMS resources with one ambulance crew and some extra personnel setting up a rehab area and the second ambulance staging just outside the fireground to be available if we needed to transport or had another call in our response area before the third ambulance could be retrieved and staffed.

The fire department knocked down the fire fairly quickly, it was not fully involved, just heavy fire on the first floor, and overhaul took a while. All told we were on scene for three more hours, performed rehab, and dealt with no injuries. While a lot of my colleagues here like fire standbys I find them to be dreadfully boring once the suppression phase is done and they move into the overhaul phase. Come to think of it thats the way I felt when i was a firefighter too.

We were finally released just before 0630 and I gave orders for the third ambulance to stand down and retuned to the station to hand off to my relief.

I'm home now, winding down for a few minutes so I can try to get , at best, 90 minutes of sleep before I have to be up again and getting ready to go back to work at 0900.

It's going to be a long day.

Total calls for the night:  3

1 ALS transport

1 BLS downgrade

1 Fire standby

Milage for the might:  44