What was your first day on the job like?

I came in pretty green. All my ride alongs were duds. Nothing too exciting or scary so my first day shocked me even though you might not find it shocking.

  1. Had a patient that we were taking to hospice. She had been found on her floor after three days covered in ants. I had to hold the seat belt off of her body because she was so frail that she made this scream like noise from the pain of its weight when it was on her. I doubt she could see based on the ways her eyes looked but I could see the suffering in them none the less, and it was horrifying. She had the death rattle going on, but would bite down whenever you tried to suction and squint in pain. She screamed the whole way, but quietly and gargled from the fluid in her airway. She had black ant bites all over her body, which weighed about 70 pounds. Her teeth were rotting and mangled. I knew it was bad because every person we passed in the hallway on the way down looked stared at her with the same horrified look. My partner looked scared and he had been there over a year. I was alone with her in the back and knew next to nothing useful. She was DNR but they didn't have a copy (and therefore we couldn't honor it) so I remember praying (I'm not religious) to God that she would keep breathing so that I wouldn't have to do CPR on this shell of a person. I doubt she lived much longer than a few hours after we dropped her off.

  2. At the end of this shift (which was my first double, I was exhausted), my partner, who seemed to be pretty important at the company, made a move on me. I made up an excuse because I was exhausted and was still trying to wrap my head around the mind fuck that the day had been. I remember driving away wondering if he was going to fuck with my reputation if I didn't text him back or seem interested/flattered that he was into me. So i did. Gotta feed the egos. Luckily he became interested in a different newbie soon enough and left me alone. But I remember walking away from the day and thinking was this real? Did that really happen? That feeling stayed with me for a while.

/r/ems Thread