Ice Girl's public thoughts.

Except for Emergency Medical Professionals

In John Oliver's segment on air traffic control a former controller said this about her job. People can't understand expect for emergency medical professionals -

Air traffic control as a Job is
95% Boring and routine
3% Exciting and routine
1% Exciting and ok this is not routine
And
1% Holy Fuck

I wanted to have this on my blog because I agree that's what being in emergency medicine is like! 💯

I will share one holy fuck moment right now!

I had this call for a roughly 500 pound person going down two flights of stairs there is only two ways to accommodate (Espically since it was a narrow area)

Put them on a variant of a sled 🛷 which we strap them to allows them to slide down the stairs and we move them after to the stretcher.

Or we use a power chair that has fold out treadmills that grip like a tank which hold the steps but the unit needs to be guided slowly as the motor and treadmill crawls along the steps.

My company has a power chair so we decided to use that. I agreed to be one of the two EMTs to guide the bottom while the other two others were at the top.

At one point the person Manning the controller at top slipped and not only let go but as he slipped kicked the chair a little and it started to tumble forward.

What would of happened if I acted like my partner who literally truned to run is we wouldn't get away fast enough and the 500 pound woman plus this nearly 150 pound hydrolic stair tank would have fallen on us anyway and we would probably be involved in a mangled crush injury lord knows what condition we'd be in.

So in a split second without regards for my safety I threw myself into the chair to knock it back from tipping forward and braced it with all my might as my foot was being slid and I was slowly falling down the stairs with the chair and women now more in a slide but my body was in the way of the stair chair pushing it back onto the steps. Yet there was already so much momentum it was like skating me of the steps all the way down the stairs.

I let out a cry for help to please catch the damn top of the chair I was panicking that if it gets to the bottom without anymore steps to slide off of I'd be crushed.

I was at the bottom step holding her as the full weight of a combined 600+ pounds was driving me into the landing.

My adrenaline held it long enough for the operator to regain control of the top get the motor to grab the steps and finally fully control the decent.

That moment which happened way faster than you did reading it could have easily been my death.

That was just one of the oh shit moments I had in the roughly 5 years of being an EMT.

Did I ever tell the patient how close we came to massive injury 🩸 of course not -didn't wanna have her live with the psychological distress bad enough she was already extremely ill.

Since then I do recommend my complicated patients with either unusual body types or high medical need to maybe consider housing that doesn't require so many steps for there own safety.

Thank you for taking the time to read one of my Holy Fuck moments.

They are the ones that live with me and I do so genuinely love having had the opportunity to assist people in there time of need. 🚑