Get comfy, this is long

If you have been reading for a while, you have probably heard me say it before. I will say it again. Sundays are unpredictable. Usually Sundays are our one chance to be lazy. To come in to work, cook a huge feast, eat till we are sleepy and sleep till we are hungry. I was fully prepared to do that yesterday, but it didn't happen. I didn't update this thing at midnight of my shift either like I usually do because we were busy. We were run-around-in-circles-till-you-get-dizzy-and-throw-up busy. It started soon after I got to station. My Lieutenant decided that we needed to do some work around the station, and he was right- partially. The work needed to be done, but "we" didn't need to be the ones doing it. I wanted to be lazy. Instead I had just enough time to inhale half of a cup of super hot coffee and grab a broom. The inside of our bay (the area where the trucks park) has tile ceilings. Since the station itself is older than God's grandmother, those tiles are discolored from dirt, dust, diesel exhaust, pollen, smoke, cobwebs, and possibly a few stray animals. Our mission was to clean those tiles. We climbed on top of the ambulance and fire truck and went to work, scrubbing as best we could to get the grit and grime off each tile. The tiles are made of a Styrofoam type material, so as we scrubbed bits and pieces of all that crud came snowing down on us. It got in our hair, our eyes, our clothes, all over the trucks, the floor, and everything else at the station. It looked like someone had dropped a bomb in the center of it all.

Looks like we had a leak at some point.

Getting there. Wow what a difference.

We have some accumulation on the windshield of the engine.

"Shouldn't you be working instead of taking pictures?"

But look, I did suck it up and do my share of the manual labor.

I showered and got cleaned up when the ceiling was done. As I put a new uniform on our tones dropped. We started running calls and didn't stop until after five this morning. I was absolutely exhausted. I still am. As I sit here thinking of all the calls we ran, I can't help but think just how weird Sundays really are. There is no rhyme or reason, no predictability, no nothing. At five this morning, as we pulled back into the station for the remaining two hours of our shift, my partner commented that our station was merely a place to park our cars. I giggled, adding that we should put up a "park and ride" sign, like one of those carpool parking lots.

Most of the calls were decent. We had several chest pain calls, but nobody having an apparent heart attack. We had a couple falls. Then we got called to a 22 year old with a stomach ache. He lived in the nastiest mobile home park in our county. We arrived at his house and got out of the truck. We were met by his mother outside. She wore fuzzy slippers, dirty jeans, and a tee shirt. It was obvious she didn't have a bra on, and could have scratched her breasts with her toes. Images of "National Geographic" magazine flashed through my head. She began telling us what was going on with her son, but she spoke like someone who was hearing impaired, so it was difficult to understand her. I couldn't focus on what she was saying because I couldn't stop staring at her teeth. All three of them. There was so much slime and crust coated on them there was only a smidgen of actual tooth showing. As we stood in the yard talking, a noise caught my attention. It sounded like an animal in distress, and when I glanced over, I noticed about a dozen stray cats and kittens eating fly-infested food from a paper plate. Well, I take that back- they were trying to eat, but a rooster kept pecking the kittens away from the food. Yes, a rooster. I don't know why that shocked me, but it did. (I can hear you asking "but don't you live in Georgia?" well yes, but that's besides the point- I live in metro Atlanta. Civilization, or so I thought. ) We went inside to meet her son, who was complaining of constipation for six months. Her son spoke with the same speech issues she did, and the inside of the trailer was absolutely disgusting. I seriously tried to hold my breath in there- partially because of how bad it smelled, and partially because I really didn't want to breathe in anything that might be flying around in there, and I am NOT usually that squeamish. This place was gross. We were helping the son out of the trailer when a chicken came into the living room and made itself at home on a dirty shirt thrown on the floor. Gross. We helped the son to the ambulance and my partner climbed in. Before I could get in and drive, his mother came out and wanted to ask me a million questions. She explained that she was HIV positive but that her son didn't know. She wanted to know why she had diarrhea all the time. I suggested she talk to her doctor about that (since I couldn't tell her to go buy some bleach and trash bags).

Several calls later we were trying to get things wrapped up for the evening so we could go to bed. Tones dropped again and dispatch advised "person down. CPR in progress". We were instantly wide awake again. Police got on scene within a matter of seconds and took over CPR. The firefighters pulled up just before we did, and we all went into the apartment. We found a 46 year old lady lying on the floor. Her husband was watching in disbelief as we tried in vain to change her condition. He said she was getting ready for bed, went to take her pills, and just stopped talking. She was in asystole (flat line) the entire time we worked her. She still had her vitamins on her tongue. Her husband said she never had any chest pain or warning, she just dropped down. As we worked, we heard voices screaming at each other outside and expletives were flying. The officer went out to calm the lady's kids, who were understandably freaked out. They were young teenagers and had gone to bed, probably thinking about school the next day. They awoke to their dying mother laid out in their living room. We did everything we could for her, but it was hopeless, and she was pronounced dead when we got to the hospital. I hate seeing the family's devastation on calls like that.

While we were running those late night calls, several other ambulances and engines were out on a hazmat scene. Someone had a container of strychnine and had poured it out in a carport, then hosed it off. Strychnine is a poison (even the fumes), and seven people had come into contact with its gasses. At four in the morning my truck was at the local gas station getting fresh donuts and some milk, and meeting with the supervisor for more drugs and a new needle for our bone gun. (On another note, the bone gun is a great tool. It is basically a big drill that puts a needle into the leg bone or anyone we can't get an IV on and we had used it on the lady in cardiac arrest). The supervisor's phone rang and someone affected by the spill was in need of a car seat because it had been ruined, so we went to our station and picked one up. I am one of the few car seat technicians in our county, so we drove out to the other station to put it in the lady's car. The lady was there with her three small children. They had nowhere to go. The red cross had said they couldn't help them since it wasn't a fire or a natural disaster, so the children were sleeping on the couch of our station. It made me feel really good to see the firefighters helping out like they were. Some of the guys said that the baby wasn't even wearing a diaper when they came, and the guys went out to buy diapers and formula for her. They were all taking turns walking the halls with the baby who wasn't sleeping. Sure, I would have loved to have been nice and cozy in my own bed, but I really felt like we as a department were pulling together to help this family in need. That is what they trust us to do. We finished up there and drove through the silent streets to park our truck and find our beds.

It was after five when we pulled back in, and my eyes were impossible to keep open. I fell asleep putting a report into the computer. I came home after shift change and crashed hard. I still need some more rest, but I am ready for another crazy, busy shift.