weekend update
Friday night. Run night. Normally at least. Not this past Friday night. Marcy's cousin Preston graduated from high school this year so we went to his graduation party Friday night. Marcy tells me she told me a month ago about it but I don't remember and it wasn't on the calendar so I had to call the squadhouse on Friday and let them know that I'd be late. So we went up to the graduation party. Had food, some drinks, socialized, etc, etc, etc. FINALLY got home close to midnight. Aislyn didn't / couldn't / wouldn't go to sleep on the ride home so she was miserable. Making our trip . . . . . less then ideal. Made it over to the station shortly before 1am. No calls for the entire night so I didn't even bother putting my uniform on.
Saturday the only thing I really had planned to do was take Grendel to the vet. She's been scooting her but on the ground lately. Turns out that silly little glad on her butt needed to be squeezed. Yeah, it was kinda gross. She also has 'dry skin' so I'm supposed to start giving her these little fish oil pills. Shortly before noon (and Aislyn's nap),
"BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. West Milton Fire, Union Township Squad 1 and 2 this is your call. Respond to the intersection of SR 48 and Frederick Garland Road for a 4 [yes, that's right, four] vehicle accident. One patient complaining of neck pain." Ok, so it sounded like a fairly minor fender bender. Since I knew we only had two members on duty I figured I'd go ahead and head in for the second out unit. Now, normally it takes me all of three tone drops to make it in to the station and they are about to dispatch mutual aid for us. But I never heard any other tone drops for us on the way in. Actually, I heard no more dispatch traffic at all on my pager. By the time I got there I figured either, 1. it was a minor fender bender and Squad 1 and WMFD had it all under control, or 2. someone else came in and got the second ambulance. Imagine my surprise when I opened the door and found Squad 2 still sitting in the bay. Ok, this is odd. So I started it up, got on the radio and advised dispatch that I was on the air and awaiting crew (just as they dropped a second set of tones for Squad 2). Tried to get a hold of Squad 1 or WMFD on the radio to see if they still needed a second ambulance or what. No one answered. They weren't even answering dispatch. Took a few minutes and dispatch was just about to drop our THIRD set of tones when our newest member, Ashley, showed up. I do mean newest. She's 20 years old, been a certified for two years but ran with another department until a couple of weeks ago when she put in an application with us. This was her very first call with us, period. So we went ahead and advised dispatch we were enroute. So we get there and the only EMT's on scene are Kelly and Linda. Kelly's a paramedic and Linda's a basic. And suddenly we have 5 patients. They've got one of them already packaged so they, pretty literally, threw her in the back of our ambulance and we took off to the hospital. Needless to say, I drove since Ashley's not checked of to drive. Actually, with her being only 20, there's no way we're going to let her drive anway till she's 21. Of course she had no idea where anything was so I had to dig out the basic tools for her and we were on our merry way. Fortunately, the only issue with this patient was insurance - itis. This particular call actually ended up qualifying as a mass casualty incident for us since we had to call in several other agencys for mutual aid. By the time we got done all the paperwork for this and got everything back to where it needed to go it was close to 4pm.
So after that I came home, changed and Marcy took me out for my Father's Day Dinner on Saturday night. We went to Applebee's over in Troy, OH. Food was EXCELLENT. As a matter of fact, there was so much three cheese chicken penne pasta that I brought half of it home for leftovers. On the way home we stopped at the Goodwill and Marcy found a couple of business suits for work / court and we got Aislyn a bunch of shorts / skirts-that-are-shorts-underneath. Skorts are they called? Then we stopped at Hollywood Video for 'The Golden Compass' and 'National Treasure 2.' Not impressed with NT2. We haven't managed to watch Golden Compass yet. Didn't get to bed until after 1am because we were busy watching the movie and cleaning out the closet. We also noticed that evening that Pie wasn't looking so good. He's lost a LOT of weight and his coat just didn't look good.
Sunday started off to be a pretty quiet day. Marcy made me a delicious omelet for breakfast and then I borrowed the neighbor's lawn mower to mow the dog yard. Hadn't mowed it for over two weeks since I've been so busy and that took forever since I had to put the blades almost as high as they would go. Actually, I mowed the main part of the lawn first with the riding lawn mower and that didn't take long at all. When I came in to take my shower and clean up I found that Pie had peed in front of the shower (at least it was on the linoleum) and it looked like it may have had some blood in it. So we decided we needed to take him in to the vet's on Monday.
Monday morning, went to work, called the vet's office when they opened at 9am and told them what the problem was. They squeezed me in between two surgeries they were doing. Got to the vet's at 11am and the vet took a look at him. Basically he said he MIGHT have a urinary tract infection, or, given his age, his kidney's MIGHT be to the point where they are going to start shutting down. He gave me a prescription for an anti-biotic that we need to shoot down his throat twice a day. He also gave us a special diet kinda food that we're supposed to start feeding him for older cats with kidney issues. We'll check back with him in 5 days and see how he's doing. I'm HOPING it's just a UTI, but the vet said this was going to be a chronic issue from now on. Which leads me to believe by what he said and the WAY he said it that this is the beginning of a downhill slide for Pie.
Saturday the only thing I really had planned to do was take Grendel to the vet. She's been scooting her but on the ground lately. Turns out that silly little glad on her butt needed to be squeezed. Yeah, it was kinda gross. She also has 'dry skin' so I'm supposed to start giving her these little fish oil pills. Shortly before noon (and Aislyn's nap),
"BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. West Milton Fire, Union Township Squad 1 and 2 this is your call. Respond to the intersection of SR 48 and Frederick Garland Road for a 4 [yes, that's right, four] vehicle accident. One patient complaining of neck pain." Ok, so it sounded like a fairly minor fender bender. Since I knew we only had two members on duty I figured I'd go ahead and head in for the second out unit. Now, normally it takes me all of three tone drops to make it in to the station and they are about to dispatch mutual aid for us. But I never heard any other tone drops for us on the way in. Actually, I heard no more dispatch traffic at all on my pager. By the time I got there I figured either, 1. it was a minor fender bender and Squad 1 and WMFD had it all under control, or 2. someone else came in and got the second ambulance. Imagine my surprise when I opened the door and found Squad 2 still sitting in the bay. Ok, this is odd. So I started it up, got on the radio and advised dispatch that I was on the air and awaiting crew (just as they dropped a second set of tones for Squad 2). Tried to get a hold of Squad 1 or WMFD on the radio to see if they still needed a second ambulance or what. No one answered. They weren't even answering dispatch. Took a few minutes and dispatch was just about to drop our THIRD set of tones when our newest member, Ashley, showed up. I do mean newest. She's 20 years old, been a certified for two years but ran with another department until a couple of weeks ago when she put in an application with us. This was her very first call with us, period. So we went ahead and advised dispatch we were enroute. So we get there and the only EMT's on scene are Kelly and Linda. Kelly's a paramedic and Linda's a basic. And suddenly we have 5 patients. They've got one of them already packaged so they, pretty literally, threw her in the back of our ambulance and we took off to the hospital. Needless to say, I drove since Ashley's not checked of to drive. Actually, with her being only 20, there's no way we're going to let her drive anway till she's 21. Of course she had no idea where anything was so I had to dig out the basic tools for her and we were on our merry way. Fortunately, the only issue with this patient was insurance - itis. This particular call actually ended up qualifying as a mass casualty incident for us since we had to call in several other agencys for mutual aid. By the time we got done all the paperwork for this and got everything back to where it needed to go it was close to 4pm.
So after that I came home, changed and Marcy took me out for my Father's Day Dinner on Saturday night. We went to Applebee's over in Troy, OH. Food was EXCELLENT. As a matter of fact, there was so much three cheese chicken penne pasta that I brought half of it home for leftovers. On the way home we stopped at the Goodwill and Marcy found a couple of business suits for work / court and we got Aislyn a bunch of shorts / skirts-that-are-shorts-underneath. Skorts are they called? Then we stopped at Hollywood Video for 'The Golden Compass' and 'National Treasure 2.' Not impressed with NT2. We haven't managed to watch Golden Compass yet. Didn't get to bed until after 1am because we were busy watching the movie and cleaning out the closet. We also noticed that evening that Pie wasn't looking so good. He's lost a LOT of weight and his coat just didn't look good.
Sunday started off to be a pretty quiet day. Marcy made me a delicious omelet for breakfast and then I borrowed the neighbor's lawn mower to mow the dog yard. Hadn't mowed it for over two weeks since I've been so busy and that took forever since I had to put the blades almost as high as they would go. Actually, I mowed the main part of the lawn first with the riding lawn mower and that didn't take long at all. When I came in to take my shower and clean up I found that Pie had peed in front of the shower (at least it was on the linoleum) and it looked like it may have had some blood in it. So we decided we needed to take him in to the vet's on Monday.
Monday morning, went to work, called the vet's office when they opened at 9am and told them what the problem was. They squeezed me in between two surgeries they were doing. Got to the vet's at 11am and the vet took a look at him. Basically he said he MIGHT have a urinary tract infection, or, given his age, his kidney's MIGHT be to the point where they are going to start shutting down. He gave me a prescription for an anti-biotic that we need to shoot down his throat twice a day. He also gave us a special diet kinda food that we're supposed to start feeding him for older cats with kidney issues. We'll check back with him in 5 days and see how he's doing. I'm HOPING it's just a UTI, but the vet said this was going to be a chronic issue from now on. Which leads me to believe by what he said and the WAY he said it that this is the beginning of a downhill slide for Pie.