I recently went for an ambulance ride. I was accompanying a
paediatric patient to Sick Kids hospital in Toronto from Orillia Soldiers Memorial hospital in Orillia, which is approximately
90 minutes away, depending on how fast you want to drive. Now, I hadn’t been on
such a trip in five years, the reason being that I get sick in the ambulances. I
can usually convince other nurses to take my patient transfers for me, but this day I
had no such luck. I had avoided it for five long years, so I figured I really
couldn’t be too upset about it, but I really wasn’t looking forward to it
either. When I’m in an ambulance I can’t sit facing backward and I can’t sit
facing sideways, I have to face straight ahead. The first time I went on an
ambulance run I was just finishing up my consolidation, which is the last
semester of nursing school where you have a preceptor and actually work their
shifts with them. I had never been on an ambulance run before so it was a great
opportunity for me to see how this process worked. The patient was a baby who
was being transported down to Sick Kids hospital for an appointment with a
specialist and then was being brought back to the Orillia hospital again. I was
fine while we were on the highway, but once we got into the city I started
feeling queasy. Also, I must have gone a terrible colour because that was when
the paramedic told me I didn’t look well and tried to put the oxygen mask on
me. I had never experienced anything like that before, had never been carsick
before, and I was incredibly embarrassed of all the fuss being made over me by
the (really, REALLY cute) paramedic.
Fast forward to the next year and I have another patient
that needs to go to Sick Kids. But first, I have to explain a bit about the
whole transfer thing. If the child is so sick that it is beyond our scope of
practice at our hospital, they go to the city. If they are REALLY sick the paediatric
transport team comes to get them. If they are marginally sick a nurse from our
hospital hops into the ambulance with the child and takes them down. The part
that bothers most nurses is that you could take a patient to Toronto, but that
doesn’t guarantee you a ride back home again. Ambulances are for urgent and
emergent issues, and taking a nurse back to her home hospital just doesn’t
qualify. You could get left at the hospital you dropped the patient off at, or
you could get dropped off at the Tim Horton’s on the side of the highway with
all of your equipment. My biggest peeve isn’t getting ditched, it’s the
possibility of barfing because really, who likes barfing? So this time I came
slightly prepared with a vomit bag, although the situation itself was probably
made worse because I was so dreading the experience. Yaay! I actually got down
there without the paramedics trying to put oxygen on me! I took the patient
into the hospital and to her floor where a nurse was waiting to admit her. As
the nurse took the patient’s paperwork out of my hands I snatched the (unused)
vomit bag back from the top of the pile of papers and scolded, “That’s mine!!” She
just gave me a really weird look and walked away with my patient. You’d think a
nurse would be more understanding.
So back to this last ambulance run. Again I went prepared,
with two vomit bags and an emergency Gravol pill. I say an emergency pill
because I couldn’t very well take it when I had a patient, as it puts me
right to sleep. And I couldn’t take it when I didn’t have a patient because if
I ended up getting dropped off somewhere I would, once again, be asleep. It was more like a
little security blanket. (I’ve since found out that there are non drowsy Gravol
tablets made with ginger!) Of course, we had to go to Toronto on a holiday Monday.
For anyone not familiar with this, Toronto is south of Orillia and with a
holiday Monday all of the cottagers from up north are travelling back south at
this point, trying to get back to their homes in the city. The highway is usually bumper to
bumper traffic for a great many kilometers. So here I am prepared with my
emergency sickness kit, and I tell the paramedics I have to sit facing forward
or there will be a problem. The captain’s chair in the back of the ambulance
only has the capacity to face front in some ambulances, and this wasn’t one of
them. Fortunately I had a really wonderful crew who somehow made the chair
swing around to face front because they felt pity upon me and my story of woe.
So as we are driving down the highway
all lights and sirens….the bumper to bumper highway that is, where the
ambulance is speeding up and slowing down rapidly, continuously shaking up my
insides……I have to assess my patient. To do this requires me to stand up and
take a few shuffling steps. Inside the jerkily moving ambulance. Facing
backward. As I was standing up, facing toward the back of the ambulance, leaning over the head of the stretcher to listen to my patient's chest, I felt
nausea overcome me. My first thought: “Oh fuck, I’m gonna barf!!” My second
thought: “Oh fuck, I wonder if this kid will wake up from his really peaceful
looking sleep if I barf on him??” My third thought: “Oh fuck, I wonder if I’ll
get fired for barfing on a patient??” I quickly assessed that my patient was
just fine and quickly got back to my seat so that I could stick my face in the trusty
vomit bag. I held my lunch of pizza and Diet Dr. Pepper down….barely. I wasn’t sure
if I was nauseated from the motion of the ambulance itself, or from the fact
that my body was revolting from the terrible lunch I had consumed before
embarking on the trip. I was able to get the child to their destination without
any medical intervention, however the child’s mother did ask me (several times)
if I was okay. I was very lucky that the crew didn’t have to ditch me at the
destination hospital, however we did have a slight hiccup in our plans. When
we were about one kilometer away from the Orillia hospital, they were diverted
to a call. It turned out to be very minor and I eventually got back to my hospital without
mishap.
Next time I’m sent out, I plan to be fully prepared. My
sickness kit, or perhaps it should be coined as an anti-sickness kit, will be equipped with vomit bags, and
ginger Gravol. Hopefully I won’t have to put my plan into effect for another
five years!
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