Awkward Ambulance.

I apologize for the blogging hiatus, ER life was busy which was followed by an exam and a practice board exam (5 hours eeek!). I would like to tell you about the world's most embarrassing ambulance ride that ever happened....yes, mine.

As a requirement for our ER rotation we have to spend a day riding along with an EMS crew and go on runs in an ambulance. It was an awesome experience and thankfully I was with the best group of guys. I got there at 7:30am and spent the morning running errands and getting coffee and breakfast. We didn't go on our first run until 11 or so, which means we just did whatever basically. Well, we decided to go to Home Depot to get a wreath for the front of the ambulance, ya know add a little Christmas cheer. I was walking through the parking lot, slipped on ice and face planted hard skinning my hands and knees....ouch/embarrassing moment #1.

Embarrassing moment #2 happened a couple hours later after we picked up an elderly woman who fell at work and hit her face on a door frame. She had some lacerations on her face and a broken hand that was pretty deformed, poor thing. She had dried blood all down her face so I thought it would be nice to clean her up a little bit before she got to the hospital, no lady wants to roll into an ER looking like chainshaw massacre just happened on their face.....well it was a nice thought but while cleaning her face I just re-opened her lacerations so instead of dried blood running down her face she had fresh blood pouring down her nose, whoops. I made that a lot worse.

Finally, embarrassing moment #3: We go to pick up a woman with terminal cancer with chest pain...so sad. It was the longest run of the day and I was riding back with the patient because we were trying to get an IV and I wanted to start it, well after being back there for about 20 minutes I was EXTREMELY car sick. We got to UK Chandler and I thought okay I just need to get out and walk around for awhile, but I never really felt better. We get back in the "buggy" as they call it and they wanted to get lunch so we go to Moe's. I figured eating something might help, but tacos are never a good idea. One taco later and I thought I was dying.... the ambulance went on diversion (meaning they weren't going on runs) because I needed them to pull over at Smash Burger for me to get sick..... I thought I was literally going to die of embarrassment. I was drenched in sweat and hanging out the back of the ambulance window going down New Circle while it was snowing. They were the nicest guys ever and were going to give an IV of phenergan and sleep in their bunks but after my day I just wanted to go home. I felt sick to my stomach for the next couple days because I had to travel a lot during Thanksgiving and just had WAY too much time in the car. Anways, I survived but was humiliated. At least I can laugh about it and actually saw all those guys again when they dropped someone off at Good Sam and we all laughed even though I wanted to hide.