Sometimes I laugh

Sometimes I laugh at the most inopportune times

I recall a transport I went on with my manager who was my partner that day. The patient had a nasogastric tube or NGT in (for lay people, it’s a tube that goes through the nose to the stomach used for things like feeding, removing accumulating gastric fluids, giving medications, etc). In the air transport environment, it is used mostly for venting the stomach so gases do not build up and cause a tummy ache. The strongest motivation for air transport crew is to prevent the tummy contents in making itself be visible.

So on this transport, we capped the NGT meaning to vent it or open it to air when we got to the aircraft. During flight, lots of stuff interfered with that plan. The patient’s blood pressure dropped, his lungs filled up with fluid, he was in pain and anxious. Needless to say, venting the NGT never got done. When we got on the ground and were en route to the receiving facility via ambulance, the patient’s stomach decided to join the fray of his other malfunctioning anatomy parts and he vomited.

I nearly fell over laughing (I tried to hold it in, believe me). I was laughing so hard that I had trouble hanging on. Remember, we were in a moving ambulance on the pockmarked streets of San Francisco. What was so funny? My manager looked greener that our patient. She was trying so hard to hold her nausea in that her eyes welled up in tears. All this while trying to grab suction and get to the patient’s mouth. Why was that so funny? I don’t know. For some reason, the whole picture was comical to me at that moment. The patient was covered in ‘yukk’, my manager was fumbling with the suction looking green and close to fainting, the EMS girl trying to hand us a square of paper towel, me examining my boots for vomit (they were newly buffed and shining).

Sometimes I laugh at the most inopportune times.

This reminds me of another call with another partner when we picked up a baby. The baby was crying so hard that it vomited. Fearing that it might seize (the baby looked like it was going to), my partner took it out of the isolette, held it, while I cleaned up. While I was doing that, the baby decided it was time to cleanse its system down below also. Unfortunately, the diaper was inadequate in holding its contents and it overflowed onto my partner’s lap (luckily, we had baby blankets covering it) and flightsuit sleeves. I know that was gross and disgusting, but the scene was, again, comical to me. Baby crying angrily after having vomited its oh-so-yummy milk, baby diaper overflowing like lava out of a volcano, my partner’s face with a worried expression mixed with disgust, the EMT up front asking if we wanted to go Code 3 (meaning lights and sirens). Flashback in my head: me explaining why we had to go Code 3 to the doctor – ‘yes, doctor, we absolutely had to rush in here. The baby crapped on my partner.’

Giggling and grinning, I cleaned up the baby, changed its diaper, and cleaned up my partner. All in a day’s work.

Come on. You gotta laugh.

Test what?

I was watching TV with my partner and our pilot tonight. Some guy got his leg ripped apart by a shark. He was testing a shark protective suit. My guess is – it failed the test. Then it got me thinking. We wear a protective suit of some sort. Our flightsuits are made of Nomex – some flame-resistant material. What if they require us to test those? The guy was wearing a shark protective suit, so he had to test it against sharks. Our flightsuits are flame-resistant, so to test it, we would have to test it against . . . that’s just not right. I am not volunteering for that. That cannot be in my job description.

Now, THAT is NOT funny.