Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Dogs, Round Two

It was a beautiful spring day. The sun was shining, there was very little wind. We had only run a couple calls. The world was good. About lunch time I decided to make some of my special tuna fish for dipping crackers in. My mouth was salivating with the thought of that tuna. I grabbed a can out of my locker and opened it, then went to squeeze it into the sink to drain it. When I did this, for some reason, the contents under pressure squirted out and down the front of my uniform. My class "Bs" had to be changed and I had tuna juice down the zipper part of my pants. I uttered a few choice expletives and went to change my shirt. I was going to have to run home in the ambulance to get new pants though. Luckily I lived close to work.

Part way to my house the tones went off for altered level of consciousness, patient hallucinating. We went in route, so much for a change. We arrived on scene to an elderly gentleman standing on his porch yelling at the barn wall about naked people and that they needed to get dressed decently. My partner and I calmed him down and explained that there were no nudists prancing about. Then we had to figure out why he was like this. Halfway through the assessment his phone rang and it was his son who explained to us this was not like dad and he had a recent medication change. The med happened to be morphine. Well, the vitals all checked out, SPO2 was good, blood glucose was good, heart rate and blood pressure was fine and he didn't smell like alcohol. So it appeared to be a straight forward reaction to the morphine. I elected not to give him any narcan since his respiratory effort was fine and he was alert, if not oriented. Plus he had a history of narcotics for chronic pain, the last thing I wanted to do was put this poor guy into withdrawals.

We got him loaded into the back of the ambulance and my partner was doing a few things before we left so I was standing outside BSing with the volunteer firefighter/EMTs when the guys son showed up. We hadn't been able to find a list of his meds so the son went in to get it. On his way back out he let a moose out of the house. And I mean moose. The dog was an over sized great dane. The thing was huge, you could strap a carriage to it and be towed around. I felt a little nervous apprehension at his sudden release from the house but I pushed down my gut instincts and continued to BS.

All of the sudden out of the corner of my eye I see the dog running at me head on. It was at a full course gallop with me in the inevitable path. I had only a fraction of a second to respond and my body just wouldn't listen to my mind on such short notice. The dog ran between the firefighters and straight to me, he put his head down like a charging bull and caught me right in the crotch. At that point he tossed his head up, effectively lifting me off the ground and sending me flying backwards. I landed on my back with the wind knocked out of me and the next thing I new the dog was digging and licking at the tuna juice in that oh so embarrassing spot. I was frantically pushing the dog and trying to get him away, but he was too strong. Finally the guys son stirred from his disbelief enough to grab the dog off of me and started apologizing profusely. I got up, dusted myself off and looked around. Everyone of the volunteers was standing frozen in place with their mouths wide in shock. The son was still apologizing when my partner leaned out the door of the ambulance and said, "It's alright, he has that effect on all animals."

I decided it was now time to leave as it is impossible to regain your dignity after an incident like this.

1 comment:

Books of the World said...

Sometimes there are just no words other than wow. You have my sympathy.