I drove the pilot to go on strike

So, for the third time, I kept the pilot (and my partner) up all night again. At around 8 pm last night, we got called out to transport a 15-year old kid with a blow-out fracture of the eye bone. A part of the facial muscle is trapped in his eye socket. Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? It’s even worse for him if he loses the sight in that eye. His story is he was breaking up a fight at school. Why do guys always say that? Nurses know that’s crap. Anyway, his eye swells up and he has double vision for one week. His mother figured it will all get better after a while. Sounds reasonable. A week later, she has a “horrible headache” and she decides to take him along to the ER and “might as well be seen, too.” Well, he ends up having surgery. (She gets something like Tylenol.) Unfortunately, his injury is a bit more complex than anticipated and he has to be transferred to another hospital who has the capability of fixing his eye (hopefully . . . if it’s fixable). Anyway, we go and pick him up.

After we drop him off and on our way back to the airport (hoping we could go to bed since it was, like, midnight), we get another call. A 31-year old male who, for some reason, ended up with a massive blood infection and his lungs failed somehow and is now on a ventilator. Okay, young healthy people just don’t get sick suddenly and end up on life support. Something was wrong here. So, we go to this little hospital in the middle of nowhere to pick up this patient. When I get there, the nurses have run away. I can’t figure out what’s going on with the patient and my partner and I do our thing and package the patient for transport. The patient is very sick. He is on a ventilator, he has a fever, he barely has a blood pressure, and his heart is thumping like a herd of elephants in his chest. His mother is weeping like it’s his funeral, his brother keeps asking if he’s going to be okay, and the nurses are still nowhere to be found.

By the time we deliver the patient to the receiving hospital and get back to the base, it is 7 am. (Remember that I have been up since 6 am the day before). I’m tired. I’m hungry. I need a freakin’ shower. The pilot mumbles something about “crazy nurses” and “never sleeps” and “FAA rules.” So, we try to soothe him. Then he asked what was wrong with the last patient we transported. Uhm . . . really sick, I said. Sick with what? He wants to know. I look at my partner and I said, “uhm, I think they are thinking some sort of avian flu?” The silence was deafening. Then an explosion. Not like a bomb, but felt like one. It was the pilot’s thundering voice: No one told me????? Avian flu???? What???

Hey, I wasn’t having any fun either, alright? At least he didn’t have to deal with spit and crap and suction and, well, whatever. Get over it, buddy! I got a &*U(&*^(&*^ load of paperwork to do here so go . . . scrub the airplane or something!

{Counting to ten} Okay, I’m alright now. The pilot’s fine. He said if he saw my name on the schedule and he is working, he will go on strike and call in sick. Oh well . . . Have only been in this job for one month and I’m causing issues already. {sigh}

Comments

[Ivonne M]

LOL! I'm sure he'll get over it!! LOL!