Whole Again

"Nothin but a dead body up there." The man on the porch referred to his brother, an active alcoholic who has been fighting a losing battle with his disease for years.

It's over, I thought. No more late night calls for an unconscious male, no more arguing with him, convincing him to go to the hospital and get some help, no more carries. Though saddened by his demise, the remaining family must have felt some relief, this day was long overdue. There is a distinct difference between living and existing, he had crossed the line a long time ago. His existence came to an end the day after Thanksgiving.

I entered the home, probably for the last time. Some familiar faces milled about, making room for me as I slowly walked up the stairs. A woman stood outside the room at the top of the landing, tears running down her face.

"I'm sorry," I said and walked past her into the bedroom. He was lying on his back, eyes open, dead. Forty five years on this earth done, not all of those years as poorly lived as the most recent. His mother sat next to him, holding onto what was left. She remembered the baby, the boy, the young man. Once there was hope and a promising future, now just a dead body and remorse.

The body finally joined the spirit in death.

The Two Towers

Tower Ladders 1 and 2 operating at a house fire in South Providence. The second and third floors were fully involved prior to my arrival.

Scrooge!

As Ruler of this Blog, King of this Post and Undisputed Heavyweight Champion of all that is good and decent I hereby decree the Holiday Season underway! I also proclaim that the 1970 Musical adaption of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol starring Albert Finney, Scrooge! to be the greatest Christmas Movie of all time.

So says me.

And one more thing, while I'm feeling omnipotent,

I hereby outlaw any heart healthy feasts on or around the holidays from this day forward until the end of time!

Our World

I had no idea what I was getting into when I started this blog. What I considered a marketing tool to promote my book became bigger than the book I intended to promote! Through this little project I’ve gotten to know some great people. Bernice who offers heartfelt encouragement through her darkest moments, Sam, whose writing brings out the best in my own, Epi from Michigan, (or Ohio, I’m really not sure.) Rich in the UK, Walt in Manchester, Ted in Worcester, Ambulance Mommy from Connecticut and of course, Chrysalis who I think was the first to read the blog. Erin, Susie, Rookie Bebe and everybody else who is part of this have opened my eyes and heart. It has been a rewarding experience to say the least, and I am richer for it. I even sold a few books!

There are hundreds of EMS. Firefighter, Nursing and related blogs. I read a lot of them. I link to a lot of them, and those links lead me to others and so on. I’m honored to belong with these folks, their stories are inspiring. I’ve improved my skills through reading these blogs, learned to care more, and appreciate those around me. There is real camaraderie on these web pages, people truly care about each other, and that is great stuff. It is something we all should be proud of.

Enter Rescuing Providence. I’m proud of this little corner of the Internet. My heart and soul are here, my words, thoughts and feelings written for the world to share. I’m happy if these words entertain you, enlighten you or make you laugh, I enjoy it more than you would believe, so I have found out by trying to stop. By sharing my world with you I have lightened the burden I thought I carried so well. Just knowing that others are aware of the cobwebs in my head keeps my mind clear. I have no intention of fading away


With barely a year on the job I participated in an Incident Stress Debriefing following the death of two toddlers who burned to death at three in the afternoon one bright, sunny Sunday. Twelve firefighters sat in a room and talked about the incident, one at a time, venting, I guess. When it was my turn, I simply stated that I did all I could, fate had other plans. Nobody pressed, the discussion went on. One guy, a twenty year veteran highly respected firefighter started to tell his story. He didn’t make it through the first sentence, broke down in tears instead. The old timers waited for him to compose himself, I fidgeted in my seat, uncomfortable and a little confused. I didn’t understand how a person with so much experience could be so devastated by something that had only a minimal effect on me. That firefighter never made it back to the trucks, he retired soon after. I haven’t seen him since. Some people leave the job and never look back; others hang around for a while before quietly disappearing from station life.

It has taken nearly eighteen years, but I finally understand. My mind stores everything, whether or not I choose acknowledge what lies lurking in the shadows. Horrific memories become a part of my subconscious mind, left to fester and decay but never go away. The only way to free myself is to let those images out of their prison, talk about it, let them go. Problem is, I have a hard time talking about these things.

As you may have noticed, I have no problem writing about them.

Typealzer

What kind of blog is this, anyway?

http://www.typealyzer.com/

Business as Usual

She sat in the Amtrak Police office at Providence Station, blood dripping from her lip onto the front of her jacket. Two Amtrak Police officers and a Providence cop asked questions while I waited to transport her to the emergency room.

Her estranged husband had broken into the apartment that she shared with their daughter, punched her in the face then kicked her in the back of the head once she had fallen. He left then after making his point. What that point is I'll never know. The couple's eight year old witnessed the assault and isn't talking. How the two ended up at the train station I have yet to figure out.

She sat next to her mom in the back of Rescue 1 as we rode to the hospital. She smiled at me between bites of an enormous chocolate chip cookie that a police officer bought for her. I noticed that she stashed half of the cookie in her jacket pocket, maybe for later, maybe for a friend, maybe for her mother when things quieted down.

She didn't seem upset by all of the commotion. I think that made it worse.

Enough

There is talk of closing fire companies in Philly and elsewhere and adding ambulances. Budget cuts. Let's enable those unwilling to care for themselves, the looters, pickpockets and leeches of society, let's keep sending ambulances to every fool who calls 911 for a toothache, a sore throat, a mouse bite and a free ride. Let's continue wiping the asses of those people with no conscience, no scruples and no backbone. We might as well throw in the towel now folks, Karl Marx was right.

Response times apparently don't matter to those whose primary purpose is keeping the "people" happy. No matter that the mob is suffocating Independence, free will, responsibility and work ethic; keep the drooling masses happy, just continue providing services and never tell them no.

Tell that to the people hanging from their windows waiting for a ladder company to save their lives. Or their families when they claim the bodies.

Man Flu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXLHWmjA5IE

I just lifted this from UK Street Medic.

I know how he feels, men just get sicker than women!

Click the title, one of these days I'll figure out how to post video's here.

Mouse Trap

"You were bit by a mouse?"
"Right on my foot."
"Did you see the mouse?"
"No, but I know it was a mouse."
"How do you know?"
"Because my cat chased him into the box."
"Did the cat follow him in there?
"No, he didn't fit."
"Why did you put your foot into the box if you knew there was a mouse in there?"
"I didn't think mice bit."
"Maybe it was a rat."
"No, it was a mouse."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive."
"Baby rat?"
"Mouse."
"Get in the truck."

Amazing Grace

Next life I'm going to be a rock star. And not just any rock star, I'll be a Dropkick Murphy. Click the title and turn it up.

Quiet Thursday

Triple stabbing? It's Thursday afternoon for Pete's sake! Just when the minions of Providence lull me into a false sense of security with calls for "chest pains" that are actually the common cold, "severe lacerations" that have to be squeezed to get a drop of blood, "CVA's" that are two day old headaches, "unresponsive males" that are the daily drunks and "severe abdominal pains" that are actually cramps some maniac stabs three eighteen year olds in front of a middle school.

My patient had a two inch stab wound to his lower left abdomen, diaphoretic and going downhill but didn't want to go to the hospital, another rescue got a kid with truly severe lacerations to his arms and a third victim is still unaccounted for.

After explaining the severity of his injuries to my patient, something like "quit being an idiot, you've been stabbed," we carried him to the rescue and transported him to Rhode Island Hospital. He was in the trauma room last time I checked.

Sorry to cut our conversation short, Bernice, but I had to go.

Men's Health

A while ago Men's Health magazine asked their readers to tell their EMS Horror Stories, things like long waits, incompetent EMT's and the like. People in the EMS community responded in force, sending letters to the editors of the magazine, pleading our case. Apparently, they listened. What could have been an exploitative, negative article turned out to be a well researched and written story that, I think, tells an honest story of what is going on out here.

Kudos to Steve Volk and Men's Health

I had posted the article here but it occured to me that there may be some copyright infringements or something like that. Below is the link to the article. You will have to copy it to your browser because I still haven't figured out how to add links here, although some very patient people have tried to walk me through the process

http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do
?site=MensHealth&channel=health&category=doctors.hospitals
&conitem=7933ba9f6197d110VgnVCM20000012281eac____&page=0

Bookworm Award

Thanks, Chris from a blog called A Space to Rant http://rantingyorkshireman.blogspot.com/
for the Bookworm Award!


Rules:Pass it on to five other bloggers, and tell them to open the nearest book to page 56. Write out the fifth sentence on that page, and also the next two to five sentences. The CLOSEST BOOK, NOT YOUR FAVORITE, OR MOST INTELLECTUAL!


Closest book is my union’s constitution and by-laws. Here’s the fifth sentence on page fifty-six.

“Section shall be provided to Local 799 within thirty (30) days of said tests. The city shall provide bullet proof vests for each rescue vehicle and develop a policy in the discretion of the Commissioner of Public Safety for providing police back-up as needed to rescue vehicles responding to rescue alarms.”

Now that was strange, the only semi-exciting words in the entire one-hundred and fifty page book!

Five blogs

http://streetmedic-coocoocachoo.blogspot.com Great perspective from the UK. It's amazing how differently we operate, but how similar our patients are.

http://centralmassmedics.blogspot.com/ This is a great blog from my neighbors in Massachusetts, I like the interviews with different people from the EMS community.

http://neumed.blogspot.com/ I think Neumed is a med student but he writes his ass off as well. Very amusing.

http://provfiredocumentary.blogspot.com/ Erin is a good friend of mine, I'm looking forward to the documentary.

http://cardiac-emergencies.blogspot.com/ Dan is another local guy with a flair for writing. I see him at the local hospitals from time to time.

Uncle Tony, Veterans Day, 2008

Thank you, Veterans for your service to our country.



He’s eighty-five and thinks his days are numbered. He felt the same way back in ’43.

I had to pick my chin off the floor when he told us about the German Luger that was missing when he returned from a ten day “kind of” unauthorized tour of Rome.

“I was a little late returning from leave,” he explained, grinning. “When I got back, my unit was gone, I had to catch up with them.”

“Where did you get a Luger?” I asked, off camera.

“Off the German I captured,” he said as if ordering a pizza.

Dennis and I exchanged glances, both of us knowing something special was taking place. We knew Uncle Tony was a World War II Veteran and hoped to talk him into telling his story on camera. Until this day any questions we asked were quickly dismissed. The subject would change and Tony seemed happy to be out of the spotlight.

We are running out of WWII Veterans. Soon there will be nobody left to tell the story. Watching old footage or a reenactment of the War staves our thirst for knowledge but will never fully quench it. Dennis’s and my fascination with the war and the people who fought it has a lot to do with our age; Dennis’s dad was a World War II veteran, my father served in Korea. When we reached an age where our dads might confide in us, tell us what it was really like, man to man, it was too late, they were gone.

Will our children, and then their children know and appreciate the bravery and sacrifice made by the people of that era? Without a link to the people who were on the ground at Anzio, Palermo, The Po Valley, Normandy, Iwo Jima and everywhere the war was fought, even the factories at home where wives and mothers worked will they care? Dennis decided that they would care.

Our kids know and love Uncle Tony, the funny, generous “old man” who shows up on holidays and family functions. They don’t know the nineteen-year-old soldier who earned a Bronze Star by crawling through the battlefields of Italy establishing communications between the front lines and the artillery. As the interview progressed, I found that neither did we.

“The Germans would shell us at night and the phone lines would get blown up. Somebody had to put them back together.”

“Did you wait until the next day when the shelling stopped?” I asked.

He tilted his head and grinned. I saw the fearless nineteen year old in his eyes then as he described running in front of the artillery to repair the broken lines.

“We went at night, followed the lines until they came to an end.

“While they were shelling?”

“While they were shelling.”

“You shouldn’t be alive,” said Dennis.

“I never expected to come home.”

A peaceful silence filled the room as we absorbed the enormity of what Uncle Tony survived.

“How did you capture the German?” I asked, not wanting to change the subject but afraid this “small” task might be overlooked.

“I needed his motorcycle.”

What started as a tense interview was now three guys in a room, one telling stories, two listening. Uncle Tony relaxed knowing his audience was putty in his hands. We would have listened all night. The camera rolled. The footage will be part of our family for generations, maybe forever.

“You captured a motorcycle?” Dennis asked, completely charmed.

“I was tired of walking. Those radios were heavy. I asked Captain Dole if it would be all right. He saw the sense in it. Not Senator Dole, I knew him too, we used to talk on the radio. His arm got hit pretty early on.”

Dennis and I sat back, speechless as the living history seated with us told his story.

“I was a little different then,” he said, his eighty-five year old eyes sparkling like I imagined they did when he commandeered a Luger and a motorcycle from a German officer in 1944.

“Wasn’t afraid of anything. My family doesn’t know it, but I was a crazy son of a bitch.”

I believed every word.

He survived the Battle of Anzio. Fought with General Patton in the First Armored Division, marched into Rome and saw “Mussolini and his Girlfriend” hanging at Piazza Loreto in Milan. He joined the 10th Mountain Division for the Po River Valley campaign, survived when German Fighter jets “strafed” their position. A medic found some shrapnel in Uncle Tony’s “gut.”

“I told him to leave it alone, I was ready for a five day leave and didn’t want to get held up.”

Ten days later, after some “crazy times,” Uncle Tony returned to his base to find his unit had shipped out and his duffel bag was missing, along with the Luger.

“What could I say, I was late,” he smiled.

Every day since I’ve been thankful that we weren’t late, and managed to get Uncle Tony’s story recorded. When the interview ended after about an hour and a half we met our wives and kids at a nearby restaurant. Tony took us out to dinner. We talked, told stories and laughed the entire time. Tony sat next to his wife of sixty years, Auntie Rose and joined in the lively conversation. He didn’t say a word about the war.

New Friends

At five o'clock Saturday morning two women and three Providence Police officers stood next to the rescue and squad cars in front of a triple decker off Broad Street. The women, both around thirty five were dressed to kill; high heels, tight, short dresses, beautiful hair, just right for a night on the town. One of the women was covered with blood that ran from the top of her head. She had been hit over the head with a bottle. The other woman knew the person who committed the crime and was trying to relay that information to the police officers.

"I know who did it," she explained. "Why won't you listen to me!"

"Why don't you worry about your friend who's bleeding to death instead," said one of the officers.

"Come on, we have to take her to the hospital," I said, helping the bleeding woman into the rescue.

"What happened to you?" I asked her. She was all smiles between the rivers of blood that ran down her face.

"I don't speak English," she answered, still smiling.

"Get in the truck, I need a translator," I said to the other one.

"I want to go home," she replied. "My car is over there. I just want to go home."

"That's just great. Your friend is bleeding to death over here and you want to go home. What the hell kind of friend are you anyway!"

I shook my head in disgust and started to close the door. The other woman stopped me.

"I'll go."

"Nice. Unbelievable."

Jen tended to the victims wound and I started the report, one woman translating for the other. They sat next to each other on the bench seat. Slowly, the story unfolded.

They had been at a nightclub on Broad Street. When the club closed they went to a party at one of the houses nearby. Fun was had by all until somebody decided she wanted to fight. The woman who sat bleeding in my truck ended up being the victim.

"I didn't want to get involved but she needed somebody to help her," said the translator.

"That's the least you could do, that's what friends are for." I said, in my best Father Knows Best voice.

"I guess, but I don't even know her. She was with some other people who left early."

Talk about feeling like an ass. Add kidnapping to my resume.

An hour later I returned to the ER with another patient. The two women were still waiting, sitting next to each other, talking. I offered to give the translator a ride back to her car. She declined, said her new friend needed her.

That's what friends are for.

Don't Mention It

It used to be when somebody got shot we would talk about it. “Who responded, where were they shot, how many times, were they breathing, how much blood, were you in danger?”

The news was sure to follow the story for a few days, the camera crews would fight for position on the sidewalk as we tended to the wounded. Follow up stories would air for days, the patient’s condition, the police investigation, the families response.

Now, somebody has to die to get a mention, even then it is fleeting, just a word or two tucked away on the back page, a sentence read on the second segment of the local news, not mentioned again at eleven.

We don't bring up the details anymore, nobody back at the station asks about it, we just clean the truck and get ready for the next call.

A six year old was shot in the abdomen during my days off this week. I heard the story on the radio, the night before the election, third or forth story into the newscast. I quickly forgot about it until yesterday.

I was working with Mark who was working overtime on my shift. We drove past the location where the kid was shot. Mark told me, “we had that kid.” I instinctively knew what he was referring to.

“What happened?”

“Little kid got shot in the stomach and his uncle shot in the arm. The kid is still in critical condition.”

Mark doesn’t say much so I had to drag it out of him. He reluctantly continued.

“The kid didn’t even cry. We put him on oxygen and after a minute he raised his hand. He was the most polite kid I’ve ever seen. He said, I’m breathing okay, I don’t need this. His mother was in the rescue, talking to her boyfriend in Peurto Rico. Take care of your kid, I said, He needs you. She kept on talking. I held his little hand on the way to the hospital while she sat on the bench. We were getting closer to the hospital when his eyes started fluttering. I told Mike we were losing him.”

“He might not make it,” I said.

“I know,” said Mark, turning away from me. He didn’t mention it again.