Frequent Flyer

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My very first ambulance call, ever, was to what eventually would be tagged as a frequent flyer's house. It is early in the morning and I received my fire pager a day ago. It was over the summer, so I had my windows open and awoke to the sound of sirens. A few seconds later, my fire pager goes off. I leap out of bed and run to my car, tripping over any and every obstacle on my way downstairs.

I don't care.

I break all sorts of laws as I make my way to the firehouse for the first time. I forget to slow down and wind up overshooting. "Shit." I screech to a halt and reverse, and park outside the ambulance bay, crooked and blocking 2 spots.

The ambulance is pulled out and waiting. The driver is sitting inside. Feeling new and stupid, I knock on the passenger window and motion towards the rear. The driver nods and I get inside. He is looking at a map, but takes a moment to introduce himself to me. My heart is pounding so hard I swear it is going to fall out onto the stretcher in front of me. Little did I know it, but I would experience most of my "firsts" with this particular EMT.

We get to the house. The house is dilapidated. It reeks of urine and sweat. Our patient is lying naked on his bed. He is an elderly man, but is not disoriented. He answers all of our questions and his vitals are within normal range. He doesn't want to go to the hospital, he just wanted help getting up. There is no emergency here. Our patient hit the emergency call button he wears around his neck when he fell out of bed and thought he couldn't get up. In fact, the operator is still on the speaker phone when we get there. No wonder it came across as an unknown medical.


We call Med Control and inform them of the situation. We aren't comfortable leaving this man alone, but he's alert and oriented and can technically make his own decision. While the EMT is on the phone with Med Control, we scan the patients home in an attempt to find a phone number of a relative. On one of his walls, posted in yellowed index cards, are emergency contacts. We call his son. His son tells us that he wants us to take his dad to a hospital 45 minutes from our district. We tell him we can't do that. His son says to leave the patient where he is, and he will come get him. We say, okay.

Our patient fell off the bed because he had urinated in the middle of it, and didn't want to be wet. Our patient spends most of his time on that bed. Our patient was alone with no one to take care of him when he needed it. I wanted to change the sheets on his bed, at least, before we left.

But that's not what we do. We leave.

This particular patient calls us often, always different ailments and always the same result. He never wants to go to the hospital. I think he might just be lonely.