We responded to a call for an injury to a child. They were going down a really steep hill on their bike; they then proceeded to use a poorly placed telephone pole at the bottom to stop, major ouch. If that wasn’t bad enough, their family then picked them up and brought them into their home and placed them into a rocking chair. So we had to do the extraction from that. Strangest extraction I ever participated in, the short board was too tall for them and the arms of the rocking chair were in the way and we couldn’t cut them off. Of course, the family should not have moved them in the first place, but that’s another discussion all together.

Had another call for a; personal injury to a child. As we walked up to the front door we could see a child through a picture window screaming at the top of their lungs. (Always an enjoyable ride to the hospital, won’t need the siren) Turns out the screaming toddler was not the patient but the older brother who was upset over their little brother’s injury. The actual patient was an infant and they were all smiles upon seeing us, the injury was a cut over their eye which they couldn’t see, so there were no hysterics on their part. I made the upset child a balloon animal out of a rubber glove, which cheered them up somewhat.

On another call; we were called to care for a drunk 10 year old. He apparently drank about 6 shots worth of Jack Daniels at a friend’s house and then tried to ride his bike home. All he kept saying about the bike ride was, “the ground keep getting in the way”, yea I bet. He had the biggest black eye I ever saw from the numerous impacts between the ground and his face. At one point my partner noticed the child was about to throw up, (funny fact, my partner was totally grossed out by the smell of vomit) so they picked the child up and ran him to a nearby bathroom, almost losing their own lunch in the process. My partner then insisted on driving the ambulance to the hospital with their head out the window to avoid the smell. If it wasn’t sad already that a 10 year old was getting that drunk, there was also the fact that we couldn’t locate his parents. So the police had to put him into protective custody so we could take him to the hospital.

I’ve had partners that intensely disliked working with sick and/or injured children. This of course can be a very tough and stressful situation when you have to see a child suffering; you just want to relieve their pain, which isn’t always possible. But I’ve always looked at it as they needed care and I was there to provide it. Becoming upset during the call was counterproductive to the reason we were summoned. You can get upset after you’re done. Though when I was transporting the crack babies from one hospital to another it was always sad event, but in those situations I was a glorified taxi driver since there were nurses caring for those babies. They were always so small, 2 lbs. if they were lucky and I’ve often wondered how these babies made out later in life.