First Shift!

Friday, June 25-10

Today was our first shift! It began with waking up at 5:45am. I thought it would be harder to wake up, but I think I was just too excited to be that tired. We tried to catch the bus since we now had our new bus cards but had no luck. Unlike the system at home they don’t tell you what time the bus is going to be at certain stops only when it leaves the beginning station, so it’s really unpredictable. Hopefully we’ll figure it out for Sunday morning but today we took a taxi since we didn’t want to be late on our first day. When we arrived we met our driver for the day and began the ambulance checks. It was exciting being t in the ambulance and going through all the bags and cupboards, restocking etc. At about 7:15am we were off. I thought we would be getting a call any minute, but I wow was I wrong. Today we were actually scheduled to be stationed in Jaffa so we drove around a bit and ended up at the Jaffa “station”. It’s more like an apartment where the ambulances that are on call in Jaffa can chill until they are called out. Waiting at the main Tel Aviv station, where we left from in the morning would be a little too far. Little did I know it was going to be a slow morning. Two and a half hours went by with no call for us, only for the נט''ן the Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance. Finally we got our first call. We headed to the ambulance and began following the GPS computer thing. To my surprise, no sirens. Apparently if the driver/dispatcher doesn’t classify it as an emergency call you just drive normally. Turns out our first call would be what we now know as a paramedic/medics worst, a transfer. It was an elderly women who needed to go to the hospital. What was wrong with her was more like what wasn’t wrong with her. Diabetes, high blood pressure, knee/leg pain who knows, we were just told all “the typical” elderly ailments. The problem was she wouldn’t help us move her. She wouldn’t put any weight on her legs and there was nothing we could do to get her into the stretcher/bed. By the time we realised we were going to need backup it had already been 15-20min and since it wasn’t an emergency it took about another 20min for a second ambulance to arrive. It took 5 of us to transfer her into the ambulance bed and we were finally on our way to the hospital. Once we got to the hospital we faced another “typical” problem. No hospital bed. Now we are not allowed to leave without our stretcher so we had to wait a bit for them to locate a bed, get another 4/5 people to move her over and then we were able to leave. But not so soon. We also had to complete the paperwork. By the time we left it had been an hour and a half since that call began. But anyways, it’s better than sitting at the station. With our first call out of the way we were waiting not so patiently for the next. Not driving more than 10min from the hospital we get a call that there is an unconscious person lying outside a building. Now I know that sounds bad, but for us, this is exciting. Our driver flicks on the sirens and off we go. It was so exciting to manoeuvre through traffic and also surprising that the sirens aren’t nearly as loud inside the ambulance as they are outside. It isn’t like home where drivers part on the sides and make a clear path for the ambulance. It’s definitely a challenge to get through. We get to the building (in under 5min) grab the essentials, leave the bed, not knowing what exactly we are going to find and to our surprise the man is standing up and talking. Apparently he fainted or something, who knows. We convince him to come into the ambulance and begin the routine vitals; bp, pulse etc. and he begins to tell us his whole life story, English teacher who fell into drugs etc. Then the driver asks if he can check the man’s blood glucose, a very routine test for someone who has passed out. The man agreed but when he learned that to do so his finger is pricked with a needle he freaked out. Like actually freaked out, apparently the drug addict is scared of needles, who knew. So the driver said that’s fine but they may have to check it as the hospital. And that was all this man needed to know. He basically ran out of the ambulance saying he wouldn’t go to the hospital and that was the end of that call. Now we back on the road headed back to the main station to replace our masaphone (hand held computer/GPS thing), we had been trying to get back to the station to replace it since our first call. Anyways we’re on our way and we get another call. Someone has fallen on floor in their apartment and can’t move. Sirens on, we rush there and arrive to the sweetest elderly lady and her husband. She’s on the floor and her hip clearly looks broken—her leg is displaced, for lack of a better word. We take vitals, determined that nothing else most probably wrong and head to the hospital, where there is a bed waiting and everything. Very easy and quick call, probably only 20min from arrival at the home to the hospital. And they were so grateful, nice way to end the day. We finally head back to the station, hadn’t been here since about 7:15am and wait out about 25min for our shift to end, our driver hoping the entire time that our number isn’t called out again. So that was the end to my first day. A little slow, maybe no “life saving” but it was a nice entry into the מד''א world. We went out for some lunch after (we realised for the first time that day that we hadn’t eaten since 6 something in the morning, it was now 3pm) and caught that bus home which was a win. We both ended up passing out for about 2.5hrs when we got home and are looking forward to having tomorrow off.