A Dominican Ambulance Story

Disclaimer--I have changed the name/patient info in this post to keep it Hippa-compatible.  It is based on a true story though. 

Let me preface this past by saying that I have tendency to be what people in EMS call a "black-cloud." This means that when I am on shift, I tend to get a lot of calls and/or fairly serious calls. Of course, this held true when I was working my last shift of the semester.  While I was studying in the morning, I had a nagging inkling that I should charge my phone but of course I didn't. (This came back to haunt me around midnight.) After a quite first 5 hours of my shift the phone rings and my adventure starts.

At 4pm the phone rings and I have a panicked person saying they someone was hurt from playing sports.  So I call security and have them head over to the health clinic to pick me up and then we go off to pick up that patient.  We successfully get back to the clinic and start to examine the patient.  Soon I realize they have a dislocation.  The supervisor and the doctor come to the clinic and we rest the dislocation but soon realize that there might be a possible fracture.  Which means a road trip to Roseau, the capital,  in a Dominican ambulance. We had to to go to Roseau because the hospital there has the only working X-ray machine. Since I was the low-man on the totem pole, I was chosen to go with the patient.  (Thankfully the doctor gave me motion sickness medicine. Of curse the medicine didn't kick until we were 10 minutes away from the hospital).

Ambulance Journey: I walk outside the clinic and see an ambulance which looks a lot like the ones from the 1970s.  The ceiling was so low that my head touched when I was sitting on the bench in the back. ( By the way, the bench was made out of plywood held onto the side of the vehicle by a hinges.)  We got loaded up and headed on down the road.  Going lights and sirens confirmed the fact that I do not like the roads here.  At one point, I was worried that I was going to throw up on my patient because I was so carsick.  I was practically green because I was so nauseous. My poor patient was in tons of pain from all the potholes, so we made quite the team.  My favorite part of the drive was when we got stuck on a one-lane bridge because of parade (all I could see out the windows was a car covered in balloons, tons of people, and of course the odd smattering of goats).

Hospital: Whew. After an hour ride, we arrived at the hospital's Casualty Unit (aka the ER).  I consider it a successful journey because I didn't throw up on the patient and my patient didn't pass out from pain.

7pm--We are able to go to our "room."  Normal ERs have individuals rooms for the patients, this hospital had one small room sectioned off into 5ft squares by curtains.

7:45pm--We go to Xray waiting area.  I realize my phone battery is basically dead.

8pm--X rays finally get taken.  We are told to go stand in the hallway and wait for the doctor to see us.

8:15--A guy comes in covered in stab wounds with his head wrapped in a bloody sheet.  (I am beginning to realize we are going to have a long night ahead of us). We are still standing in the hallway.  One of the other patients standing there with us almost faints because of the stabbing victim.  I call the doctor back at Ross to let them know we are going to be a while.

8:45--Still standing in the hallway.  We hearing screaming from outside.  From the level of screaming, I figured this person was going to have something seriously wrong with them. Nope, it turns out they just wanted to be seen faster.  Of course it worked.  I turn my phone off to conserve battery but now the Ross Doctor can't contact us.

9:00--Still waiting and standing.  I don't know how my poor patient is surviving this ordeal. The pain must have been awful.

9:30--Go in to see the doctor.  The doctor said "well, its broken." (Now the patient and I had already looked at the X-ray. We knew it was broken.  A clear, obvious fracture straight through the bone.)  And then she asked the dreaded words..."Are those the only X-rays you had taken? You were supposed to get two others."

9:40--So we had back to X-ray.  The X-ray techs were changing shifts so we wait.  While waiting, I had a crazy guy mumbling to himself on one side of me and on the other side was a super sketchy police officer who kept hitting on me. At least there were chairs in the X-ray waiting area.

10--Get the X-rays done.  My patient is given more pain meds.

10:30--See the doctor.  She says that the patient has to come back on Monday for more x-rays and to see the head of causality unit. We ask if the orthopedic doctor will be there.  She said he might be there. If not, the patient will have to come back in 2 weeks to see the orthopedic doctor.  In the meantime, the patient was told to wear the improvised sling that I had put on earlier in the evening (it was made out of a triangle piece of fabric and an ace wrap).

11:00--Talk to the nurses about heading home and their response was "well, you have to wait for the other patient from  Portsmouth to be seen. Then the ambulance is going to take the two of you back with that patient and with his nurse".  I ask the nurses if there is any water or vending machines. (I hadn't eaten since 10am and neither my patient nor I had anything to drink.)  We were told there weren't any vending machines but they gave us a glass of tap water for us to share. We were then told to stand and wait for the other patient to be done.

11:45--Still waiting and standing. Creepy police officer comes back and gives me his number. He then goes on and on about how I can stay at his apartment whenever I come back to Roseau.  He wanted my number (There was absolutely NO way that was going to happen.) I told him that if he needed to reach me he could call security on campus.  Needless to say he wasn't too happy with that option.

Midnight--Crazy frustrated by this point in time.  I go to ask the nurses if there is a taxi to take us back.  They said our only option was the ambulance and told me to go back and wait in the hall.  They then closed to the door on us so we were stuck standing in this empty hallway.  I find an old gurney for my patient to sit on.

12:30am--Turn my phone on to try to make one last attempt to get us home ASAP--I call campus security to see if they have any idea how to get us back.  They said they couldn't come because they only had one patrol car running that night.  So we wait some more.  Remember, this whole time I am standing.  The nurses still refused to acknowledge our presence.

1:30--We FINALLY start the trip head back to campus but the ambulance situation is less then ideal.  The patient from the knife fight is in the stretcher, my patient and I are squished on the plywood bench (The nurse got the comfy front seat).  At least the drive back was relatively quick (I think I dozed off a couple times between hitting speed bumps.)

Back on campus: We get back to campus around 2:30 and I send my patient home with security   Of course, when my first patient left, I have a new one come in.  Thankfully that call was done within an hour and I could finally go home.  I got back to my apartment around 4am and blissfully fell asleep.

Moral of the story:  Always charge your phone and never ever say the q-word while on shift. Also, never turn down the chance for an adventure.  While the experience was fairly awful while we were going through it, I now have a great story to tell people and there isn't anything I like more than an entertaining story.