Back to Beit Yehuda

Thursday, July-22-10

Beware, this post turned out rather long but it does cover two days.

Yesterday we headed back to Jerusalem for the MDA tekes (ceremony) in memory of Yochai Porat. They arranged for buses to pick us up in Tel Aviv and we spent the day back at Beit Yehuda wher our course was held. It was no nice to see everyone, especially since I hardly saw anyone who wasn’t living in Tel Aviv or many of the madrichim (instructors) at all. The next group, MDA 96 was also there (their program started that same day) so I got to say hi to a friend from home who arrived and also put some names to faces that I’ve been emailing over the last few weeks. We heard presentations from Yochai’s father, the madrichim, MDA international, and our program coordinator which were all extremely well done. I also got to speak about the MDA experience which was really neat! Afterwards we got our certificates, took pictures, and then boarded the buses back to our cities. By the time we got back to TA, I had just enough time to shower, eat, and head to the station for my overnight shift.

This overnight shift was so busy! Nothing ‘lifesaving’ but we had seven calls which kept us going all night. It was just myself, another chulnik, and a youngish driver in the ambulance so it was very relaxed and fun. Our first call was to Dizengoff Centre and dispatch said it was for people stuck in an elevator. We raced there (of course with music blaring the entire time) from Ramat Gan where we were dropping off someone from the erev-evening shift and by the time we got everything unloaded and to the correct floor the call was cancelled. As usual. Straight after we got our next call. I’m not sure where we in the city exactly, but it was probably the creepiest neighbourhood I have been too. Our driver even made us wait in the ambulance until he checked the area before we got out. The call was made by a wife whose husband wasn’t answering the door. Again by the time we got up the 4 flights of stairs, he had answered and was just fine. Never mind taking a break to ‘search for the patient’, this time we got back into the ambulance and pressed evacuate asap—it was just so creepy there. Once again we got another call immediately. We arrived to an apartment and the police were already there along with some neighbours. The story was that they found this 90 y/o man outside on the steps to the apartment building sleeping. Apparently he had slept walked out of his bed and ended up there. After talking to him for a while and seeing that he wasn’t injured and didn't want to go the hospital his מטפל-caretaker ran in the door. He had gone out drinking when he wasn’t supposed to leave the man alone. So now this call kind of took a turn to social work instead of emergency services. Before we could leave we asked the man all sorts of questions concerning how his מטפל-caretaker cares for him, while the police questioned him outside. 1.5hrs later it was determined that everything was fine and we all left. Not so interesting medically but was an experience.

We finally got back to the station at about 3am for the first time since the shift began. I actually fell completely asleep and didn’t even hear the call over the intercom a half hour later. We got into the ambulance and listened to the call. Someone fell about of bed and can’t get up. Usually I’m hoping that since we are getting a call this late at night that it’s epic, but this time I was just happy it wasn’t. I figured we’d go, pick him/her up and be back in bed in no time. Well it wasn’t so easy. We arrived to a 160kg (352lb?) man sitting on the floor. It was obviously that the 3 of us weren’t going to be moving him anywhere quickly so we called for back-up and another team arrived. This ‘easy’ call turned into an hour of muscle exercise, which I probably needed—but not at 4am. Anyways the man and his wife were really thankful. Without getting back to bed we got our next call for a homeless to the side of the road somewhere. In the end it wasn’t actually a homeless person but a man trying to catch a cab home from the bars. Not very exciting. Our final call was for a man who was cokplaning of heartburn. He had taken some sort of drug that I didn’t catch the name of and our driver was not impressed. He seemed just fine but requested to go to Ichilov so we took him. When we arrived the ER staff were also not impressed and argued with our driver over why we brought him here, right in front of the patient! Not of the finest public displays by supposed professionals I’ve witnessed. This time we made sure to take our 20min, which turned into more like 40min break. Apparently there is a trick that if you press the evacuate button and don’t click ‘yes’ when it asks you, “are you sure you want to evacuate?” it freezes the time stamp. Sneaky.

We got back to the station with 20min remaining in the shift and thankfully didn’t get last minute call. When I got home I went straight to bed and woke in time to fight the internet and get into my last course for this fall, which was a success. I even made it out to the נמל-namal (port) to meet a friend in the evening, which rarely happens after a night shift so I consider the day quite a success. Tomorrow I work the morning and then I have both Saturday and Sunday off. I’m happy with a bit of a longer weekend since it will probably be my last weekend with most of my MDA 95 friends who are leaving next week, Tuesday technically being our last shifts. I’m hoping to extend my ambulance insurance and fit in a couple more before I leave on August 8th but I will wait and see what plans come up. Until then, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a CPR or a birth!