6 times in one night??!!

Ok, so, when I got to the EMS station last night, I somehow knew that it was going to be a rough night. However, I didn't think it would be that rough.

I know you're probably saying, "Whoa, really? You must have seen some interesting stuff." Man, I wish!

I got to the station I'd say around 6:50pm and immediately put my stuff down and ate some dinner. I ran into Bradley and he told me that both teams were out and that we couldn't run any calls since there was no 2nd person. They were out running a code (dead person)-- why can't I ever seem to get those kindof calls... grrr!

I did however check off the entire inside shelves and drawers without a checkoff sheet in the unchecked ambulance (which is a hard thing to do) and only referred to a check off sheet in checking off of a couple of the bags. So, in this, I felt like I had accomplished something.

Well, we were definitely slow, especially as we waited for the next call. We had an observer (you're allowed to observe if you want for up to two times a month) and he got to see the code. Of course he would, when I haven't ever seen any! LOL.

I watched some TV, we all had coke floats, and then I pretty much went to bed. This was the start of chaos. In short, someone was probably in training at the dispatch station last night. Why did they do that? Probably to torture us.

First call, we were first up. The light pops on and the tones go off. The confusion sets in. They had called both us and Morrisville. We wasted 5 precious minutes with central while they tried to figure out who's call it was. Finally, they made up their mind! It was ours. We got up for a nosebleed, though. An 11-yr-old boy had woken up with a nosebleed at 12:30am and then passed out after seeing his blood. The mom freaked out, called us, but everything was fine by the time we got there. No blood, no unconscious patient, nothing. We checked him out and headed on back to the station. That is what we call an unbillable call.

Then came 1:30amish. Call for us. We weren't up, the other team took it. Again, bright lights and loud noises waking me up.

Next interruption of my precious sleep.. about 2:30am. Call for Morrisville. The tones rang over our intercom for them and us (thus, the bright flourescent lights came on). Why? I'm not sure. But it woke us all up and it wasn't even our call.

3:15am- call for us. We had three trucks running, so we weren't up again. However, this call put us up next as the other other team took it. Again, woken up, this time during the middle of a dream. Why was I dreaming about tsunamis? I don't know, but it was kindof scary and weird. Glad for the interruption of the dream but not the sleep.

4:00am- call for us, but it wasn't in our district. Our tones rang and the lights popped on. We heard the address and then called up central and said, "Hey, that's not our call. It's Morrisville." Thanks for the wake up call (sarcastic!). They had to do the tones for Morrisville, so more loud noises.

Thus, after all is said and done, I'm not running on a lot of sleep today. Plus, when I sleep in the "guys dorm" there is always snoring. Boo. It also takes some time for us to get back to sleep after the very abrupt and unsubtle wake up calls we get. Christian had written earlier in the call log that it had been a slow day. That is always a jinx. Thanks!! I'm guilty of saying it though.

The moral of the story is: Do not train new dispatchers at night. They will mess up and make everyone miserable through their mistakes. I do appreciate them, but would prefer that they train people during the day. This way, we wouldn't have gotten woken up so many times by mistake. If that person wasn't in training, they need to be trained again.