(no subject)
wow, it has been awhile...
first off, to my friends and family in houston, i love you and hope you're safe. i have talked to my mom and as of this morning she and the house is fine. left a voice mail with my dad. koree, hope your chimney isn't all too fucked, and shu, hope you don't drown on the third floor.
it is only windy here this morning, and the weather peeps are saying that we may not even get rain, just a lot of wind.
but, now, to the real reason i am posting
last night was the first time in my career that i felt true fear for my own life on a call. i was scared.
we get a call at a particularly nasty apartment complex in my district (think training day, one way in/out, lots of drugs and violence). the call gets dispatched to us as an "unknown". usually means a third party caller, they see something weird and call 911. i joke to my partner that since we are going to this complex we should just put on our ballistic vests before leaving the station.
well the weird thing that the caller had seen was a man bleeding in the parking lot. the call changes to a hemorrhage. the caller states that the patient is in front of a particular building. well, when we get there, i of course make the wrong turn in the complex and can't find the building, so while circling back we see two men walking from the direction of the building and one is holding his face. they flag us down and we put the guy holding his face in the back of the ambulance.
we start talking to him, he says he got in a fight and thinks that some guy pushed his eye with a thumb or something like that. he does have some bruising to the cornea. it is my partners call, so he is examining the guy while i fill out paperwork. all 3 of us are in the back of the ambulance.
well, a crowd gathers around the ambulance and they start getting rowdy. they bang on the door and start yelling at us that the patient we have just stabbed someone else and they are bleeding on the other side of the complex. it is half english, half spanish so i cant really understand what they are saying, we just know they are pissed.
we get the patient's friend inside the ambulance and lock the doors. i call for the police and advise dispatch that angry people are beating on our ambulance in the hopes that the cops get off their asses and hurry to the call. i also tell them of the possibility of another patient and request another ambulance.
i am scared at this point. there is a crowd of people out side, yelling about the stabbing and still hitting the side door to the ambulance. my partner and i discuss the idea of one of s hopping out and running to the front and driving the fuck out of there. neither one of us want to open the doors with the crowd still there.
for some reason, the crowd kinda disperses and calms down. my partner jumps out, grabs our vests, and gets back in the ambulance, locking the door behind him. we pull our vests on. the crowd comes back and starts yelling that this guy did the stabbing and the other guy is bleeding.
once again, we seriously consider just getting the fuck out of there when two cops show up. the crowd leaves and we tell the cops we are ok and that there may be a stabbing on the other side of the complex. they head over there. after checking with my partner to see if he is cool with the idea, i grab the primary pack and walk over to the other possible patient. still have my vest on.
dispatch has sent another ambulance at this point, and they are staging until they get the all clear from APD and us. guess two dead paramedics is better than four.
i make contact with the other patient and sure enough he has a one inch puncture wound to his lower abdomen. i tell the other unit that it is clear and they head on their way. they must have been staging around the corner as they were there in less than a minute.
by this time it seemed that every cop on duty in north austin was showing up to this complex. we load the stab victim into the other ambulance and they head off to Brack, the local trauma center.
i head back to my ambulance, and by now the patient's pain level had decreased. he decided to get his buddy to take him to the hospital.
he signs the paperwork and we get the fuck out of there.
i really hope i am never in another situation like that, but i am glad that the city does provide us vests.
first off, to my friends and family in houston, i love you and hope you're safe. i have talked to my mom and as of this morning she and the house is fine. left a voice mail with my dad. koree, hope your chimney isn't all too fucked, and shu, hope you don't drown on the third floor.
it is only windy here this morning, and the weather peeps are saying that we may not even get rain, just a lot of wind.
but, now, to the real reason i am posting
last night was the first time in my career that i felt true fear for my own life on a call. i was scared.
we get a call at a particularly nasty apartment complex in my district (think training day, one way in/out, lots of drugs and violence). the call gets dispatched to us as an "unknown". usually means a third party caller, they see something weird and call 911. i joke to my partner that since we are going to this complex we should just put on our ballistic vests before leaving the station.
well the weird thing that the caller had seen was a man bleeding in the parking lot. the call changes to a hemorrhage. the caller states that the patient is in front of a particular building. well, when we get there, i of course make the wrong turn in the complex and can't find the building, so while circling back we see two men walking from the direction of the building and one is holding his face. they flag us down and we put the guy holding his face in the back of the ambulance.
we start talking to him, he says he got in a fight and thinks that some guy pushed his eye with a thumb or something like that. he does have some bruising to the cornea. it is my partners call, so he is examining the guy while i fill out paperwork. all 3 of us are in the back of the ambulance.
well, a crowd gathers around the ambulance and they start getting rowdy. they bang on the door and start yelling at us that the patient we have just stabbed someone else and they are bleeding on the other side of the complex. it is half english, half spanish so i cant really understand what they are saying, we just know they are pissed.
we get the patient's friend inside the ambulance and lock the doors. i call for the police and advise dispatch that angry people are beating on our ambulance in the hopes that the cops get off their asses and hurry to the call. i also tell them of the possibility of another patient and request another ambulance.
i am scared at this point. there is a crowd of people out side, yelling about the stabbing and still hitting the side door to the ambulance. my partner and i discuss the idea of one of s hopping out and running to the front and driving the fuck out of there. neither one of us want to open the doors with the crowd still there.
for some reason, the crowd kinda disperses and calms down. my partner jumps out, grabs our vests, and gets back in the ambulance, locking the door behind him. we pull our vests on. the crowd comes back and starts yelling that this guy did the stabbing and the other guy is bleeding.
once again, we seriously consider just getting the fuck out of there when two cops show up. the crowd leaves and we tell the cops we are ok and that there may be a stabbing on the other side of the complex. they head over there. after checking with my partner to see if he is cool with the idea, i grab the primary pack and walk over to the other possible patient. still have my vest on.
dispatch has sent another ambulance at this point, and they are staging until they get the all clear from APD and us. guess two dead paramedics is better than four.
i make contact with the other patient and sure enough he has a one inch puncture wound to his lower abdomen. i tell the other unit that it is clear and they head on their way. they must have been staging around the corner as they were there in less than a minute.
by this time it seemed that every cop on duty in north austin was showing up to this complex. we load the stab victim into the other ambulance and they head off to Brack, the local trauma center.
i head back to my ambulance, and by now the patient's pain level had decreased. he decided to get his buddy to take him to the hospital.
he signs the paperwork and we get the fuck out of there.
i really hope i am never in another situation like that, but i am glad that the city does provide us vests.