Jim Eaton has been a medic with the Waldoboro EMS since 1980, first as an ambulance attendant, then as an EMT and now as a paramedic. At 77 years old, this is one of the only times in his working life that he’s held a single job – at one point, years earlier, he was logging 100 hours a week, running two shifts with Waldoboro, another two with Delta in Augusta, and one more with Windsor Ambulance, all in addition to his full-time job. Jim holds a PhD in chemistry. Most of his career he worked for the Maine Health Lab in a variety of disciplines. On top of this, he served 12 years on the RUD40 School Board. Once a New Yorker and a Midwesterner, he’s lived in Waldoboro for over 40 years, these days in a geodesic dome with his wife.
You can run all day from the moment you get in the ambulance truck at 7AM until the end of the day. Or, you might not turn a single wheel and spend the hours checking trucks, equipment and supplies instead. But both of those days are rare. It’s more like last week, when I walked in at 6 AM and out we went, boom, to a car accident in Friendship. Or, a few evenings ago at shift end, when we got a call about a possible overdose in Waldoboro.
Some of the time we’re transferring patients to higher care facilities. But mostly, we’re answering 911s. These could be from someone who doesn’t feel well and is vomiting; or has taken a bad fall; or Alzheimers. Or has chest pains.
Or, we get a call like this, a husband afraid for his wife who’s been drinking and then taken a bunch of Ibuprofen. But when we get there, she doesn’t want to go. She wants nothing to do with us and nothing to do with her husband either. At some point, the police arrive. Then the hospital finds out, and they call me to see when she’s arriving. Alcohol and ibuprofen together are a big risk for liver damage. So we’re all standing in the driveway watching her stagger around upstairs, but she’s still upright. I tell the hospital I don’t know when we’ll be there…maybe when she passes out? And they say I have to get her in now. So I look at the cop and say, you got to arrest her. A lot people don’t know this, but we can’t take someone against their will. Arresting her was the only way to get her to the hospital. She didn’t like it, but the four of us strapped her on the cot and into the truck. We got her to the hospital.
But it’s the problem solving in emergency medicine that keeps me coming back. And these are the kinds of things they don’t teach in class. Say you have a large woman in a narrow trailer and she can’t walk. How do you get her from the bedroom in back to the front door when you can’t use a wheelchair? You put her on a blanket and drag her. People might say, That’s horrible. No, it’s not. It’s an expeditious solution to the problem. You get her to where you can safely move her.
A bad day is when calls go south. Like when it’s a life or death situation. And the really bad days are when it’s kids.
Another bad day is when I have a patient who’s fighting me. Or when the patient tells me what I need to do, like give them meds because they’re looking for a narcotic. Or here’s one that happens a lot: a husband calls us concerned about his wife. When we get there, they’re both sitting there. So I ask the wife, What’s wrong? And the husband jumps in and tells me because he’s so worried. Okay, I say. But I need to hear it from your wife. I’ll get a better sense in her words, and I also can assess her mental abilities. I turn to Doris and ask, What’s wrong? And the husband answers me again. I explain that I appreciate his help but that I really need to hear it from her. And that’s when he gets upset because he’s frustrated that we’re taking so long. And he feels we’re not taking his word that his wife is sick. But we’re the first medical people seeing her. And it’s our first impressions that we’ll be conveying to the ER staff. And that could impact the type of treatment she gets.
Here’s a good day. Yesterday. We were transferring a guy who had symptomatic chest pains, and I sat in the back and talked with him all the way to Portland. Nothing went sideways. And believe me, sometimes halfway in, something does. But it didn’t yesterday. That was a good trip.
There is so much divisiveness right now. It’s what keeps me up at night. Neither side trusts the other. But in this job, I have to trust the folk I work with. I trust they’re going to do their job and at the same time, look out for what I’m doing. If things get critical, we have to ask ourselves, Did I miss something? Did you miss something? I work with someone with whom I’ve had some heated discussions. Politically, we’re opposites. But when we get in the back of the truck, we completely trust each other. He’s got my back. I’ve got his.
Leave a Reply