We get sent for a premature baby difficulty breathing. Lights and sirens response. A minute later we get the update we want to hear, “Baby breathing normally.” We arrive to find a twenty-three-day-old baby sleeping comfortably on his mother’s knee. She tells us he was born seven weeks prematurely. For about a minute his head […]

230 lb guy slips in the shower, lands on his shoulder. When we get there he is in extreme pain and has an obviously deformed shoulder. It is either fractured, dislocated or both. What do you do for pain? Morphine. Okay, now here’s the catch. The location is a drug and alcohol rehab clinic, the […]

I love being a paramedic, but I periodically wonder about the future. How long can I continue in this field? Will my back hold up? Will 70-80 hours a week of work destroy my life? Will there continue to be 70-80 hours of work a week available for me? What will happen to me when […]

I’m on the Strip in Las Vegas. A volcano erupts in front of the Mirage, giant spumes of electrical lava shoot up into the night sky. Outside Treasure Island, an attacking pirate ship blasts it cannons, setting the rigging of a merchant ship on fire. I’m walking across the street when I hear a loud […]

We get dispatched for a report of a man unresponsive in a locked car, covered with blood. Priority One. My partner and I speculate as we head out lights and sirens toward the address in the neighboring town, a street lined with cheap hotels, where many marginal people rent by the week. We both think […]

A week or so ago I wrote an entry called “A Remarkably Heroic Feat.” It was about a police officer credited for saving a baby’s life by performing mouth to mouth on what appeared to be a child who had suffered a fairly typical febrile seizure, which may briefly convince a layperson that the patient […]

The following was adopted from a post I read on a poker bulletin board. Thanks to Edward Hutchinson of Mississippi for his post. I have adopted it to relate to EMS powers of observation. *** Try this psychology experiment. Go to this site: http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html Run the tape excerpt and try to count the number of […]

I drove up to Boston, left my car at my friend’s house, then took the train in to North Station, then took the T to Kenmore. Met my buddy at Boston Beerworks, and we drank several pitchers of beer while we got caught up. We do this two or three times a year. We tell […]

It was on TV, on the radio and the following article in the paper: Officer Praised In Saving Baby City police officials are praising one of their North End beat officers, saying his quick actions saved a baby’s life over the weekend. Officer X, a year veteran of the Police Department, was on foot patrol […]

15 month old not breathing. You rush out to the ambulance, buckle yourself in, and as you flip through your field guide to read the recommended ET tube size for the age and the epi dose, you wait for them to update you. Child is breathing. Child choked on some milk, but is alert and […]