Fire's Out, Time for a Smoke

Sunday, July-18-10

Pretty typical Sunday on the ambulance today. It was harder than ever to get wake up this morning and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the 5:45am start. For some reason the station was actually not a complete mess this morning. I was put with the slow driver from, “Glorified Taxi Service” and he is a nice guy, but seriously so so lazy. We had a busy day as most Sundays are (the beginning of the week here) and had seven calls I believe and I think he only put on two pairs of gloves all day. Our calls for the day were as follows, point form today...I’m tired.

-Old woman with a high fever who was feeling sick. She vomited all the way to the hospital, included some projection onto another volunteer in the ambulance (he is an older man who volunteers with Mda once a week). It was a great way to start the day. We saw her later on at the hospital and turns out she had a virus that spread to her heart. Not cool.

-Next was a call for a homeless man who is well known amongst the medics at our station. He was asleep on the sidewalk with his bottle of vodka next to him and someone called for an ambulance. We woke him up and that was the end of that call.

-Old man with Parkinson’s fell in his apartment. Hurt his shoulder and side. It was a simple transfer to the hospital. He was really sweet.

-We got our next call before our 20min break was up at the hospital. Our driver was definitely not happy. He wanted his cigarette. But it was a call for a fire so it would have to wait. Turns out it was a small fire where no one was injured and it was put out before we arrived. Good thing for our driver. Him, the other volunteer, and a couple of the fireman had time to chat and smoke. Yes, just outside the fire leaning on the firetruck. Only in Israel.

-Next was a 15 y/o girl who was dehydrated from throwing up. Nothing to exciting but I got to visit Dana, Ichilov’s children’s emergency wing. If I get sick here I’m definitely pretending I’m 16 and going to Dana. They have colourful walls and everyone is so nice. The family was also from Montéal so we got to be helpful with our awesome English skills.

-We also had a call for a seizure today. Didn’t do much besides evacuate to the road and hand off to the נט''ן-natan (ICU) team, but it was still a pretty exciting call to be a part of. The man was epileptic and it was the longest seizure I’ve seen so far.

-Our final call for the day was for an elderly lady who fell about 4 days earlier and now thinks she may have broken a rib. It was also an easy transfer to Ichilov.

Thinking back it was a very busy shift. I’m actually exhausted tonight since I missed my nap and went out for dinner, which was really nice. And tomorrow I get to sleep in since I only start at 11pm for the overnight so I'm looking forward to that. Goodnight!