PapaBear434
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Just wondering, for all you ALS/medics out there: When you were first getting out there in the ALS realm, and you were doing ALL the procedures during a case when riding with your proctor or working in an ER, did it ever start mess up your perceptions of the rest of the off-duty world?
Today was my first day off after a grueling six day stretch of working holiday festivals and events, working regular shifts, and generally being a volunteer workhorse. Took my family out for pizza with a family friend, and I kept catching myself looking at people's arms, looking for a good IV site. The waitress had especially good veins I could park a drain pipe in, but that's besides the point.
Later, I saw a guy rubbing his chest after a particularly spicy slice of pizza, noticed he was diaphoretic and pale, and started running through my head all the things I was going to have to rule out before I would be able to treat.
I think the worst was the other morning, though. I actually got home for a couple of hours around 06:00, and fell asleep promptly so I could be at the city park around 12:00 in order to help run the med station for the estimated 50k-80k people they planned on being there (it was actually along the lines of 82k when all was said and done). My wife came in to wake me up an hour and a half before to let me get showered and see the kids before I went out, and she said I was talking in my sleep.
She's a nurse, so she perfectly understood what I was yammering about: I was running a diabetic call in my sleep, setting up a D50 and asking what his glucometry was reading.
Is this to be expected, or am I cracking up early in my career?
Today was my first day off after a grueling six day stretch of working holiday festivals and events, working regular shifts, and generally being a volunteer workhorse. Took my family out for pizza with a family friend, and I kept catching myself looking at people's arms, looking for a good IV site. The waitress had especially good veins I could park a drain pipe in, but that's besides the point.
Later, I saw a guy rubbing his chest after a particularly spicy slice of pizza, noticed he was diaphoretic and pale, and started running through my head all the things I was going to have to rule out before I would be able to treat.
I think the worst was the other morning, though. I actually got home for a couple of hours around 06:00, and fell asleep promptly so I could be at the city park around 12:00 in order to help run the med station for the estimated 50k-80k people they planned on being there (it was actually along the lines of 82k when all was said and done). My wife came in to wake me up an hour and a half before to let me get showered and see the kids before I went out, and she said I was talking in my sleep.
She's a nurse, so she perfectly understood what I was yammering about: I was running a diabetic call in my sleep, setting up a D50 and asking what his glucometry was reading.
Is this to be expected, or am I cracking up early in my career?
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