Pink Warm and Dry

Some Days…

…I really am just an ambulance driver.

It sure feels that way, anyway.

Take this CHF patient to Hospice.

Take this MVA patient to the ER.

Take this ERSD patient home from dialysis.

Take this hip fx patient to the ortho clinic.

Take this patient (for the fourth time this week) back to the ER for the headache that they’ve had for an hour and a half.

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Then there are the patients who make you realize that you are doing more than just driving them somewhere…  You are bearing witness to their lives.

A few days ago I had a hospice patient in the back of the truck.  My partner and I picked him up at the family homestead and we were in the process of taking him back to  the inpatient hospice facility where he had been residing for the last few months.  It was his first trip outside of Hospice, and the ride in the back of the truck was bumpy –  I knew he was in pain.  His family had begged him to take his “breakthrough dose” of morphine, but he turned them down, repeatedly.  It was the first birthday party of his first Great-Grandchild, and everyone had turned out for the event.

In an attempt to distract him from pain that the cancer that had riddled his body was causing, I asked him how many Grandchildren he had.  “Seventeen,” he answered, wincing every time we hit a bump in the pot hole ridden road.  Still, with every grimace that crossed his face, his face relaxed, just as quickly.  His smile returned, every time.

“Dad,” His daughter begged.  “Please, take your roxanol.”

“No, it makes me loopy, and I want to remember every detail from today.”  He was reclining on the stretcher, his eyes closed.  His smile huge.

“I can understand that,” I said, taking his pulse.  I scribbled down 72 on the run report before slipping the pulse ox on him.

“Besides,” He mumbled with the sun shining on his face through the side window, “I did three shots of tequila.  Probably shouldn’t take any morphine.”