the day the paramedics made me cry

[Sliceanddice]

i was thinking about this last night and didn't know if i had ever posted this story on here. So i thought i would share. a small warning their is going to be some potty talk but it is no graphic.

so first the background.

for a short period of time i lived with my father. this was back in like back in 2010 to early 2011.

before i move into him for the short i had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes which i was managing fairly well. i was diagnosed with PCOS at age 14 and have had a few incidents where i was sent for testing after some stomach pain to make sure im not suffering from a burst or about to burst cyst,

and the winter of 2010 in the phoenix area was unusually cold, we are talking during the day sometimes being lucky to get past the 40s and at night lucky to get past 25. there had been hard freezes every night since November and it had ever rained it would have been snow. the night in question i believe the temp bottomed out at about 18

the story:

so new years eve 2010. My big big plans are this- watch dvr-ed walking deads and eat a pizza (papa murphys) until midnight then fall asleep. Now i really am not a pizza fan i get it once a month at most but it was new years i wanted something easy and at most i wanted to cook a pizza not a whole meal.

now for the last few weeks i had been having some stomach problems. mostly indigestion, a few stomach pains after a heavy meal and some other issues i just blamed on my diabetic medication because they are fairly common side effect of them.

for the last few days i have been running a pretty low grade fever. we are talking about 99 at its highest. so i think i just suffering from a little cold. since this had only been going on for a few days (withe stomach problems happening over about a month or two) i was already planning to see my doctor in a few days just to make sure all was well.

so i eat a few slices of pizza watch walking dead say happy new year to the dog at midnight and drag my half asleep ass to bed and drift off to dream land.

2 hours later i wake up quiet suddenly. i have a bit of pain in my stomach and suddenly really have to use the bathroom. i stumble to the bathroom but am unable to go after a few minutes the pain in my stomach gets a bit worst and im suddenly about to vomit. so i change positions and puke thinking i just ate to much. after a few minutes of emptying my stomach i go back to my bed to lay down but as i lay their the pain in my stomach is getting worst and worst and i suddenly have to throw up again and i return to the bathroom. I am also feel uncomfortably warm.

now when i say stomach i mean it started out as a general pain in my stomach and morphed into a shooting stabbing pain located on my right side between my ribs and my pelvis.

after about 20 minutes of this: trying to lay down, having to vomit and the pain just getting worst and worst i go knock on my dads door. he wakes up all confused and i tell him in a much weaker and more pained voice than i expected that i am in a lot of pain and have been vomiting and i think i may need to go to the hospital cause it seems to be getting worst.

my father asked if i needed and ambulance or if i wanted him to drive, and touched my forehead. he immediately pulls his hand away and tells me im burning up. since by now i have thrown up every thing i had to eat that night and im only dry heaving when thee urge to vomit comes he has me lay back down while he calls for an ambulance.

once he gets one he starts looking for clothes and shoes for me. im too out of it to be any help so he grabs me a sleeveless house dress barely any warmer than my nighty and some flip flops and has me change so that if its nothing i dont have to drive home with him in my nighty. so i struggle into this dress with all the strength i have left and get the shoes on just in time for the paramedics to get there.

they do the whole checking me to get an idea of the situation thing, walk me to the gurney as im not incapacitated take my blood pressure temp (which was about 100.2) and the whole shebang then load me up into the ambulance to take me to the er. as they do my dad tells me hes calling my mom and nana (who is the type of lady who you want to call at 3 am new years eve if your being taken to the hospital, or are on the side of the road with your brother who has a broken hand after you've been t-boned by a woman who didnt think to look left to check before makign a left turn) gets into his car and drive off to the hospital they told him im going to.

now i mentioned its really cold that night? i didnt tell my dad where any of my sweaters where and he didnt think about it or my hoodie so i am in the gurney in my thin dress with only a thin cold blanket over my legs below my knees which i think was only put there because i was wearing a dress and they wanted my to have some sense of coverage for my girl parts. the moment they took me out of my place i was shivering, so bad i could hear my teeth chattering. when im put into the back of the ambulance it isnt that much warmer because apparently if they had the heater on on their way to me the heat had already dispersed and its a tiny poorly insulated box. and all the paramedics are wearing heavy duty winter jackets.

so im loaded into the ambulance and they start to drive away after my dad and just before we get out of the complex they stop pull over open the back door and once of the paramedics comes around and.... start lecturing me.

he lectures me on my weight, on my eating habits on my apartment (not yes not the cleanest but the worst of it is a table we dump stuff on some dirty dishes i haven;t had a chance to wash yet some dirty clothes half falling out of my laundry basket and a plate next to my seat in the living room with half a slice of then cold pizza on it that i couldn't finish cause i was full and tired.) he going over all this and keeps telling me i am going to die by the time im 25.

now i scared. im still dry heaving a bit. i am in a lot of pain. im already a little teary from the pain. im running a bad fever. im in a tiny tin box with 4 men ive never meet before in my life. im shivering in a thin dress in a cold metal box with the back door open and a hard cold blanket over my knees that is almost as bad as nothing at all. and im terrified that this pain is my appendix about to burst which is what killed my great grandfather or an ovary.

so all that plus the stress of suddenly being lectured by this man who should be taking me to safety but is instead endangering my life even more, i burst out into heavy sobbing tears. I agree to what ever hes saying without listening to it cause im scared to death and i just want to get to the hospital and once hes satisfied that im scared enough he climbs back out closes the door and gets back into the front. and finally they drive off.

now this wasn't just a short lecture. this was a 5 minute lecture. i know it was about 5 minutes before my mother my father and my grandmother who lived about 5 minutes form the hospital all got to the hospital before i did.

and what you may ask is the cause of my hospital visit?

it turns out my gallbladder was full of gallstones. and we aren't talking in a you can schedule surgery and have them removed when ever your ready kind of way. we are talking in we need to get you in a OR as soon as possible because all the tests indicate that there are so many gall stones in your gallbladder that its essentially dead and if we dont remove it asap it could become gangrenous (which is what happened to my dad he ignored the pain until i was born at the hospital he mentioned it to a doctor and a quick exam latter he was in a OR and a dead and gangrenous gallbladder is being removed and the doctors are pumping him with antibiotics) and kill you. all the stomach pain was those gall stones forming and piling up and that mild fever was my gall bladder dying. it took a few slices of pizza with sausage on it to make the symptoms so bad i couldn't ignore them an more.

so essentially these paramedics risked my life because they thought it was just gas but it was really something bad.

and people wonder why i dont really like paramedics anymore.

[Catwoman2965]

Wow. Sorry you had to go through all that. Completely unprofessional of the paramedic.

[XCashier]

That was beyond unprofessional. When someone is in excruciating pain, you get them to the hospital at once, you don't stand around and lecture them. Leave the lecture (if necessary) to the doctor, after the patient is treated.

[crazylegs]

That was beyond unprofessional. When someone is in excruciating pain, you get them to the hospital at once, you don't stand around and lecture them. Leave the lecture (if necessary) to the doctor, after the patient is treated.

Actually, I'll correct you there...

You do everything you can to alleviate that pain THEN* get them to the hospital.

*Unless of course the pt is so ill they need a time critical transport then go like the wind, while providing said analgesia etc.

[wolfie]

WTF? Lecturing a patient about chronic issues when they've been called to transport the patient for an acute issue? I hope that paramedic got his certificate yanked so hard that he's not even allowed to apply a band-aid.

[Sliceanddice]

no i dont think anyone ever got in trouble cause it was dark i was scared and crying and they where strange men to me. the lecturer was a generic white dude (if you ever watched eureka think of the whole they test something on a dummy which Jack says looks like him and is then told its generic. thats how generic he is) and as for the other 3 guys? i can tell you one was hispanic. even talking to someone from the company they worked for had no idea who they where.

it wasn't the only time i dealt with paramedics during this incident. I had to be transferred to another hospital better set up for dealing with an over weight patient, the same one that did my brothers hand surgery. those paramedics where nice put a warmed blanket on my and switched it out twice when it cooled and comforted me when i wasn't that thrilled about the ride and had a bit of car sickness.

[wolfie]

Clearly a triage failure on the part of the paramedic. Some things need to be taken care of immediately, others can wait - and he tried to deal with a "can wait" while ignoring a "must be dealt with immediately". He needs to be retrained, and if he can't learn, he needs to be fired.

IANAD, but to me it's common sense that if a patient presents with a broken arm and a ruptured spleen, the arm can wait until the spleen has been dealt with.

In another field, the saying is "Aviate, navigate, communicate", meaning that in an emergency situation you do things in the following order:

1) Get the plane on a stable course (i.e. get out of the stall/spin/dive/whatever, and into relatively level flight).

2) Get pointed in the direction you're supposed to be going.

3) Let ATC know what happened.

That paramedic would be found in the wreckage with his finger jammed through the "push to talk" button.

[Marmalady]

Sliceanddice, if you'd been my child and I'd found out about that (and I would have found out, because I'd have been wanting to know why I got to the hospital before the ambulance) that paramedic would have got his ass handed to him on a plate. Having first been barbecued in molasses.

[Sliceanddice]

marmalady when i told my parent they wanted to do that too. but i was wheeled straight into the exam area and put into a robe and examined before they let them back there and by then i wa back to so much pain cant think. want to vomit so bad bad can't think. so scared cant think.

the last time i had been the ER was just before my diabetes diagnosis. i had got a spider bite on my leg. and it wouldn't heal and wouldn't heal and then started swellin and swelling and i went to the dr and was sent to the ear cause they where afraid i hd a leg clot cause it was really swollen and hot. so i was freaking out.

[Sapphire Silk]

It is not in the scope of practice for a paramedic to educate patients on long term life issues.

They can do some education on what they're doing to stabilize you, but that's it. Individual patient education is the province of nurses and physicians.

Patients in situations like the OP's are not in a place to hear what's being said, right or wrong. And in this case, he had no real idea why she was in pain or what was wrong with her, so even if he had been right he would have been wrong.

I'm sorry you were treated that way. Medics need to focus on immediate patient needs and nothing else.

[Marmalady]

marmalady when i told my parent they wanted to do that too. but i was wheeled straight into the exam area and put into a robe and examined before they let them back there

Oh I wouldn't have done anything right at that moment, hun, first thing would have been to get you seen and treated - but afterwards, first chance I got I would have (in the immortal words of TonyDonuts) taken a giant shit in that paramedic's life.

[AccountingDrone]

i can tell you one was hispanic. even talking to someone from the company they worked for had no idea who they where.

.

Sorry that is a load of prime bullshit - if you know the time you arrived at the ER, the name of the ambulance company if not the one from the hospital, you can determine the name of the crew [insurance and malpractice reasons]

There will be some indication on the intake form of at least one of the guys that the hospital got you from, there is a name trail to follow in case of a screw up - believe me. The hospital ma be reluctant to hand out names, but a formal complaint to the ambulance company going past the dweeb on the phone will generate action. Lawsuit can also get attention - and mental abuse is cause for a lawsuit.

[wolfie]

The hospital ma be reluctant to hand out names, but a formal complaint to the ambulance company going past the dweeb on the phone will generate action. Lawsuit can also get attention - and mental abuse is cause for a lawsuit.

Especially when the ambulance crew DELAYED TAKING THE PATIENT TO HOSPITAL FOR TREATMENT OF AN EMERGENCY CONDITION in order to mentally abuse the patient.

[Lady Legira]

I have only ever reported an ambulance man once.

I was my grandfather's carer while is slowly died of terminal lung cancer and the side effects of multiple strokes. He had small TIAs often and one day he fell and he was a heavy man who couldn't get up by himself due to his weakness from strokes and the fact his legs still had shrapnel in them for being blown up in the war.

We called the ambulance to help us and because we thought he might have broken in ankle due to the pain he was in. The guy who was treating him rushed us around so I forgot to pick up his medication list and pretty much told me if I didn't hurry up I'd be left behind. While we were in the ambulance he kept asking me questions I couldn't answer fully without the list and then ignored me for the rest of the journey. My grandfather was in a confused state (he didn't realise he had been out of hospital for 6 months) and had a minor blackout. The ambulance guy accused him of 'faking it' and said if he kept doing that he wouldn't get treated. I was furious specifically since he hadn't taken a proper history from me. Once he was in the hospital everything was fine and he was taken onto a ward for treatment.

I went home and then to Scotland the next morning as we were having a weekend away bookselling at a show for model railways. The manager of the show came and got my mother for a private word and I had a feeling I knew what about. Unfortunately I was right, my grandfather had died during the night. There had already been a formal complaint faxed to the Ambulance service and it was followed by a notice of my grandfathers death.

There was a investigation and I got a formal apologies from the service by the local head. I saw the guy a couple of years later as a driver for doctors.

Do complain it can get things done.

Yikes this got long.

[Seshat]

We complained about a triage nurse once.

Firstly, she told me to 'stop faking it'. Sorry, fibro patient with serious infection. At the time, I was often wheelchair bound when I was having a bad day: give me a serious infection and YES, I needed to be in a wheelchair, and NO, I couldn't talk at a normal speaking voice. Sheesh.

Secondly, Bast was crying quietly in the waiting room while we were waiting to be called. Just the week before, we'd been in the same ER for her mental illness: now she was scared silly that something bad was happening to me.
The triage nurse came and told her to buck up and stop crying. We told her that Bast had mental illness and was scared, but she just scoffed and repeated a very scolding-tone of 'stop crying', and lectured us. Both of us.

My breast was bright red, very - scarily - hard, and very very hot: this had developed in only a few hours; while I was asleep. When I finally got into the back, the nurse and the doctor who were treating me immediately put an IV in to give me fluids; and once the doctor had taken my history and allergies, shoved IV antibiotics into me. They were just as unhappy with the infection as we were.

Anyway; we had no clue of the triage nurse's name, so we just filed a complaint about 'the nurse who took <Seshat> <Surname>'s triage on <date>'.