Bad Injury, Good Laugh

We got called to the High School to help an injured kid. Turns out he had bumped his knee and dislocated his patella, or knee cap. I've had a few calls with this same injury and it really hurts. So to relieve the pain we let him suck down on some good ol' nitrous oxide, AKA - Laughing Gas ( Preferred drug of dentists all across America ). And hey, we told him to just suck it down hard. So that's what he starts doing. Don't worry, you can't hurt yourself with the way this drug is administered. Not to mention there are five paramedics standing there with him. I had never understood why they called it laughing gas until today. I ask him how he feels and he says he feels great with no pain in his knee. All the sudden someone says something slightly comical and he just starts laughing like he had just heard the funniest joke ever. So what do we do? We play along! We want to see him laugh again so we start saying more funny things. We all had a lot of good laughs that day. And hey, buy the time we had gotten him onto the stretcher his knee had popped back into place on it's own. We'd done a good deed and had a good laugh. So next time you go to your dentist and they need to do some drilling, see if you can't get yourself a good laugh in for the day.

When you gotta go, HOLD IT!

I was in the back of the ambulance with a man who spoke no English. He had a fever with a possible UTI and had vomited before we arrived. On the way to the hospital he tried to let me know something. It looked like he was signaling that he needed to throw up again. I quickly gave him a vomit bag. All the sudden he starts attempting to pull down his pants. "NO, NO!!" I scream. With what little Spanish I know I mumbled out, "Uno momento"! "Hospital close!" He tried still to get me to let him pee in the bag. It looked like he really needed to go. It's a tricky one because some people just don't care and will pee right there with or without the bag. But no, not on my watch. We were only 3 minutes from the hospital. Maybe if we were further and he spoke English so that I could explain to him the best way to pee in a bag in the back of an ambulance, because it has been done before, I would have let him. So lesson learned, when you gotta go, and your on the cot in the back of an ambulance, JUST HOLD IT!