First shift... success!

My first shift at the Ramat Gan station was yesterday from 11am to 7pm (the perfect time).  We didn't have the most interesting calls unfortunately, but it was nice to get into an ambulance again. 

I had the same driver from the "wedding event", Moshiko, and the medic was a hopeful med school applicant, Leah.  Luckily Leah spoke really good English, but my Hebrew is getting a lot better considering that they only spoke in Hebrew on an emergency call.  It was really frustrating at first because I would have no idea what they were talking about.  If there were subtitles in Hebrew when they spoke, I would be able to pick out words.  But Israeli's speak so fast! By the end of the day though I was able to understand more and more, or at least have some idea of what they were saying.

We had 7 calls.  3 were canceled which is very annoying.  I have a habit of putting my gloves on before arriving at a call, so I wasted a lot of gloves.  Even though there is an endless supply of gloves, it's still a waste.  The first call we had was an elderly woman who basically wanted a glorified ride to the hospital.  Even though it wasn't interesting, I love when patients say thank you (and mean it) when you bring them to the hospital.  She was really funny though because she kept talking about her granddaughter and how we should have a date etc. etc. 

The second was really strange.  We arrived to a house and the woman who called said that her friend was last seen three days ago drinking five redbulls and five coffees then going to her house and not seen since then.  The door was locked, but there was this really putrid smell coming from the room.  I can't even explain how disgusting the smell was.  Our chovesh bacir (senior medic and driver) called the fire dept. to come and try to break in. 

Lifepack

A police officer and another first responder on a motor bike also arrived.  So outside of this house we had the driver, medic, me, three firefighters, two assistant firefighters, a police officer, a first responder, and the woman who called in.  Also, by then about five or six other bystanders came by so there was a pretty large crowd.  There was a window with a grate on it above the door so the firemen put a ladder up and tried to see through there.  The policeman, being highly trained and skilled, went up there and used his iPhone to videotape the inside of the house and see if there was anyone there.  *We still did not know if there was anyone in there* and we watched the video and it didn't look like anyone was in there, but we couldn't see the bathroom.  The firemen decided to try and go in through the back, didn't work.  They tried the front of the house again, didn't work.  The back again, didn't work.  My adrenaline had worn off by then and I was just laughing in my head about this.  Then the officer made the executive decision that there was no one in there, so we all left.  Good times in Israel.

The next call was an extremely old and malnourished woman, it was really sad.  The family said she couldn't eat for the past week.  Somehow there was still a pulse, but it was extremely low.  It was a daunting sight seeing someone still breathing in this type of state.  We weren't able to use the stethoscope because she wouldn't keep her arm straight and would yell when anything would touch her, so I had to check the radial pulse and only take the systolic blood pressure.  We transported her to the hospital. 

The last call was an elderly man who LOVED to sing, and was very nice about us taking him to the hospital.


That's it!  Tomorrow I have a 15 hour shift, until then....


Yalla Bye