Since I couldn't figure out how to link to the post, here's my post regarding my first ambulance call. It set the scene for anything I did after that when I had to make a choice between using a machine or me.
New York. Flushing Community Volunteer Ambulance Corps. 1973. Converted hearses. Load and Go! EMT not required yet. Things were on the verge of humongous change!
Rookie as rookie could be. Just got through Basic First Aid. Showed up at quarters to hang out. One medic present. Emergency transfer call comes in. Hospital in Flushing to Columbia Pres, in Manhattan. The other guy scheduled didn’t show. Not yet trained in driving. Guess I was the patient guy!
Loaded an 80 y.o. man into the rig. Was told the transfer was to Intensive Care, Code Three. My seasoned partner helped me take BP and pulse, both WNL, though the man seemed barely conscious. Before he left, my partner took the man’s hand and clamped a clothes-pin-like device over his pointer finger. A green light on the end of it blinked on and off.
My partner, beaming with pride said, “We’re getting to test out these new devices. They’re pulse-monitors. It’s lots easier than feeling for it while we’re moving.”
Now this was rush hour. Bumper to bumper on the Long Island Expressway. New Yorkers, at that time, could give f***-all about an ambulance with lights and sirens blaring behind them. As my partner stopped and started, twisted and turned the ambulance wherever he could to make headway into the City, me and my patient were jostled around mightily. It was so bad that I had all I could do to watch the damn blinking green light!
We’re talking 68 minutes to go 15 miles. On a Highway! By the time we landed at the hospital, I had the feeling the patient wasn’t doing very well, but that light kept blinking. The Doctor was actually there to meet us. My partner opened the door and took one look at the patient and said, “Doc, you better take a look!”
The doctor got in and as he put his hand under the patient’s nose to check for breathing I noticed the patient was a lot grayer than before. Wasn't moving much, either. There was no breath. I missed something, I thought.
The Doctor paused a couple seconds and then muttered under his breath, “Expected. He’s done. It’s too bad we didn’t get him here in time to get the pacemaker electrode re-embedded properly!”
I looked at the blinking green light responding heartily to the electrical impulses that were not getting to the man’s tissue at about the same time as I noticed a squarish bulge close to the man's left armpit over his chest and under his skin. It was there I got my first critical lesson in the difference between man and machine.