Saving Humanity from itself

Well, I am home now. I am back reeking havok in the moonlight with my fellow ditch doctors. Loving it again. I guess sometime you gotta let things go for a bit before you relize just how much you miss it. Yes, EMS is hard back breaking (Literally) work. But even though those steel-toed boots are ucomfortable as hell and sometimes the patients are a pain in the ass and sometime your partner sucks, all those bad things are not as bad as all the good things that make this job rewarding.

The night was uneventful. Nothing real serious or out of the ordinary. Just simple hypoglycimia, Afib, and SOB. All of the patients were patients because they had not been educated by thier primary care physican about the medications they were given or even about the disease that they had. The first guy took two doses of his insulin because he felt bad, telling up he got all dizzy and sweaty so he took a double dose of his insulin, then felt his heart "get fast up" so he took a dose or four of his Nitroglycerin spray. So when we got there his BGL was 45 and he had a BP of 80 systolic. We fixed him up with some sug'r and fluids and suprise, suprise the CHest pain and PVCscleared right up. This all could have been avoided if the prescribing doc would take the time to sit and explain in plain english when the meds should be taken. This is frustrating. In this fast-paced world can we not take the time to just explain to these people how all this medical shit owrks? But then we have patients like my last one of the night who was given a Prdnisone script for her COPD and she wont take it becasue it makes her "feel bad". Then gets Short of Breath calls us, and then asks "well, miss medic, if I took my pills whould it help?" YES, YES it will. Arg. this is my life. saving humanity from its own stupidity.