The first call I attended as an EMT student/ride along was reported as a fall at a SNF. We got it less than a minute driving out of the station parking lot. We were thinking c-spine so we brought the c-spine equipment with us inside. It was (supposedly) a 54 year old male who had a pseudosyncope. He was in a very narrow hallway, felt light headed, and just slid down to the floor slowly against the wall before 9-1-1 was called. He was very pale and he was slightly tachycardic. He had a history for schizophrenia and recently had a colectomy. I thought it was odd how he told us exactly how long ago he had his colectomy, and looking at my notes, I realized after the call that he said he was 54 years old and that he had his colectomy 54 days ago, hmmmm. I personally think he was older than what he claimed, but I didn't know about face sheets at the time, and I am not sure if the paramedic grabbed one or not. Very white hair, long beard hippi style, he was very tall. I remember his first name too. His abdomen was distended. When palpating his RLQ, it felt rigid, he denied pain at first, but grimaced whenever it was palpated. He denied blood in his stool. He refused treatment from the paramedic, but still wanted to be transported to the hospital. The paramedic I rode with was an instructor for a non EMT class I was taking, and I wanted to do well in front of her so I was extremely nervous, and fumbled with trying to get a pulse and respiration. I recall people saying that taking a blood pressure was the hardest thing to do in an ambulance, but I couldn't get a pulse for my life, and the blood pressure was easy for me to get on this patient. He later admitted that he had a little bit of pain, and the paramedic said "Andrew, what kind of questions should you ask?", and the first thing I thought was "If you don't know, be honest". I told her "I don't know", and then she started asking OPQRST questions. I felt so stupid at the time. After we got the patient onto the bed, the paramedic compared my blood pressure to the NIBP to see if I was close to what it go as a way to check if I was telling her the truth. It was about 10 higher than what I heard. She was telling me how she thinks he was experience shock, probably a leak from the surgery, and I asked her if he is experience shock, how come his blood pressure is higher than normal. She explained to me that at first, it stays around normal or gets a little higher, and that it dropping was a very late sign of shock. I then watched her type up her PCR on a computer before we cleared for our next call.
While trying to get a job as an EMT, I started volunteering at concerts (Rock Medicine). A security guard gave us a little bit of trouble returning from Starbucks to get back into the concert since all of us didn't have badges including me (usually they were a "Medical Staff" t-shirt, or one with a Rock Medicine logo on it, and then badges either with a Rock Med logo on it, or from another concert that requires passes for anyone that attends). After we got back in, we didn't get too far before the radio said "Rockmed, we need you in the smoking section." We went back to find a young male sitting on the ground and security directing us towards him. I was very confused about what was going on, and not very involved. Another girl who just got hired with an ambulance company took lead, and she asked him AO questions. She then asked him what did he take. He denied taking anything. She kept asking him over and over saying that she isn't a cop, she's there to help him. She asked for a penlight, and she checked his pupils, she said they were dialated and she knows he took something, that she's there to help, and then she was pretty dramatic and said that he could die. He started crying asking "Am I gonna die?" and admitted that he had some alcohol and smoked a little bit of weed, but nothing more. The team lead (there was like five of us) told me to get vital signs. We don't carry blood pressure cuffs so the only thing I could get was pulse and respirations. I was nervous just like ride along, and I was able to feel a pulse, but it was so fast I reported it as "It's too fast for me to count". He smirked, did it, and reported something like 180, or maybe higher (I cannot remember the exact number right now). I recall talking about this in EMTLife chat, and people were saying he probably counted wrong/it's unlikely. We got a wheel chair for him, pushed him back to the clinic, and he slept for awhile before he went back to enjoying the concert.
After several months of volunteering at concerts, I finally got a job as an EMT for an interfacility transport company. We were picking up a patient from an MRI, and he wasn't able to walk. He got an MRI because he got into a fight with his wife, his wife used a baseball bat on his back, and the MRI showed that he had a lumbar fracture. It was a very short transport, most transports in the area I was working in at the time are very short (like 0.1-0.4 miles). I didn't talk to him much, I didn't do much with him. What I remember more than about that patient was the conversation I had with my FTO about my favorite thing about working at my previous job (she asked) which was learning Spanish, and she said she's never gotten a Spanish-only speaker or never gotten one without somebody who can translate for her during transport. After that first call, every single patient I got was a Spanish-only speaker without a translator, and she said she was pretty impressed with that, but I remember struggling with getting nurses to sign, copying stuff from the chart (I didn't know where to find medications, allergies, history, ad she kept having to show me where since it was a little different for each facility). I forgot to grab things like the facesheet, forgot signatures, struggled to lift the gurney, struggled to transfer the patient to/from the bed and gurney, got lost in the hospitals, struggled to do lung sounds and get two sets of vital signs since the transports were so short, struggled to fill out the PCRs, took a long time to write very basic narratives. It was very hot so I was sweating a lot too (probably would've been sweating a lot even if it was ice cold though). I was very paranoid too since I had a (probably fake, but didn't know at the time) gun pointed at me at my previous job less than a couple of days before my first day working as an EMT, and we were driving around a city known for it's high violence and crimes (Oakland, CA).
