This week I received in the mail special glasses I ordered from the back of an old comic book.  They enable me to see COVID.  He is a tiny little green monster with a coat of suction cups.  He is not just one fellow, but an army of millions of little green monsters. I sit […]

Adamis pharmaceuticals is seeking FDA approval for ZIMHI™(naloxone) Injection, a 5 (FIVE) milligram intramuscular (IM) dose of naloxone for use in suspected opioid overdose. https://www.adamispharmaceuticals.com/zimhi-naloxone/ In EMS, we try to titrate naloxone to the smallest possible amount to reduce respiratory depression.  We have that luxury because we carry bag valve masks, which enable us to […]

Twenty-seven years ago, in a retaliatory shooting, a man in Hartford’s north end opened fire with an automatic weapon, killing his target.  He was sentenced to fifty years in prison.  He left at home a baby daughter. *** I get called for the unconscious.  I arrive first and climb windy wooden stairs to the third […]

Every morning when I report to work, I check my gear,  my heart monitor, my medic bag, and the blood cooler.  Our service has been carrying whole blood stored in a paramedic response vehicle for a couple months now, and none too soon.   In the midst of two serious epidemics — COVID-19 and the opioid […]

When I woke up Friday morning and checked my phone, there was a notification asking me to join Connecticut’s new COVID-19 contact tracking app.  I installed it right away.  The app tracks my proximity to other people using the app.  If I test positive, a contact tracer will ask if I will share my close […]

Welfare check.  The superintendent lets us in.  The apartment is a poor man’s hoarderville, open boxes and dirty clothes stacked as high as the unwashed dishes in the sink.  The man is sitting at a table with his head in his hands; a chess board in front of him.  For a moment, I fear he […]

I arrive for the unconscious patient.  That means I carry my in house bag over my shoulder, the heart monitor in one hand, and an O2 tank and my isolation equipment bag in the other.  I run up four flights of stairs.  I am wearing a surgical mask and a face shield.  By the time […]

Recently I was driving down a Hartford Street in my white red and blue  paramedic response vehicle when I saw a single black man walking on the side of the road  with a bicycle.  He raised his middle finger emphatically and stared at me without smiling as I went past. I was perturbed.  I thought […]

On the Sunday morning sidewalk Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned ‘Cause there’s something in a Sunday Makes a body feel alone. “Sunday Morning Coming Down” – Kris Kristofferson Twenty-six people in Connecticut died of overdoses on the four Sundays of this past April. Twenty-one males.  Five females.  One was aged 15-24, eight were 25-34, […]