3. Update

It's not going to be a lot what I'm writing down right now, because I'm dead tired and can only comprehend so much right now.

From starting my new profession to now, I came across a ton of really good and bad experiences. Imagining that encountering so much in such little time, one can only guess how much of life altering experiences I'm gonna get to make in my quest of finding my place on this planet in the future.

Besides that I had my first person dying under my hands performing CPR on her and wondering if her brain still could get a glimpse of my face while she was dying since she looked strait at me while I was trying to get her heart to beat again.

I had a somewhat awakening experience in one of the bigger prisons here in LA. It's called the Twin Towers. The patient was a 23 year old suicidal candidate. Upon reading his file, I also had to learn that he has homicidal thoughts as well and that he hears voices that tell him to kill.
He was big, and we had to restrain him, since he was on a 5150 hold. Whenever someone is to be considered a threat to him or herself thus a threat to others as well, they put him or her on a 72 hour hold and admit that person to a psychiatric hospital.
We have to restrain those patients per company policy, because we lost some before. The jumped out of the ambulance. Not in my term though ;-)
Anyway, that experience was awesome. To see where I would end up, if I wouldn't get a grip on myself. Believe me, I don't ever want to go to jail. The herded tons of men and women through the gangways at 5 o'clock in the morning. Men and women without rights. The treat them like cattle.

Well, after a while, I started taking to him a little more. And it turned out, that he pretty much is a very normal person. At least in my eyes. He stated that he feels so betrayed by people and that lying and backstabbing bullshit is bringing him down. He also called it the commercial cycle... that he just cannot stand it anymore. Yea right on man!!
I believe that he made that "I'm hearing voices" up to be admitted to the psych station. He said, that he just snapped and cannot take the normal madness out there anymore.

Wow... that's exactly how I feel, when I don't have anything that I would let myself getting ripped into pieces for.

I think the really crazy people are we out here, at least to some degree.....

Anyway, we could almost not get the restraints around his ankles, just with his hands he could have done some serious damage.
Although I really liked him at the end of our ride, I was still glad that he was in restraints. You never know how crazy crazy gets.

Last night, I saved, or at least I like to believe that I saved a stray dog.
We were on a call, and on the way to our destination with the patient, I saw this dog sitting or better laying on the side of the street right in the middle of a big bridge.
I said to my partner, that I have to go back there right after we delivered the patient.

Sure thing, the dog was still there. It looked like she was injured.
I stopped relatively close with the ambulance by her and got out.
But of course, as soon as I tried to get closer, she (or he, whatever you like ;-)) started barking and showing her teeth.
No way to get her into our ambulance and drive her to the animal hospital.
So we drive off and call animal control, they have those nice sling things to safely get injured animals. Believe it or not, we don't have cell phones on the ambulance.
And I thought about it to make it official and calling it over the air, but I think I'm smarter than that already. I know they wouldn't give a shit in our comm. center.

So I call animal control, but they are closed. I call the police, but they don't care. I call animal control for the city we were in, but they say they aren't covering that particular area. So they give me that line: "We'll send somebody as soon as possible"
Yea right, I think.
I insist on going back to make sure that someone shows up and takes care of that poor cutie. On the way there, I thought that I would need a tarp or something to get her with and tackle her down or something. We couldn't find a tarp. So we got back to the dog.
After 5 minutes, I knew that nobody would come anyway, I pull out some of our sterile water and a kidney basin (essentially a small kidney shaped plastic cup for our patients to spit in) to give her at least some water.
She is all scared and tries to fight me of, so I let her. But not without throwing some of the water towards her for her to be able to lick it from the ground. And I put the basin as close to her as I could get it. Next thing you know, she starts licking the water off the street and moves closer to the basin. We observe her from the ambulance.
She is thirsty like hell. After she had emptied the basin, my partner says, that he wants to try to get closer to her, and that she might not be biting at all.
It was a picture for the gods (that's what we say in Germany).
I give him my leather gloves I always have in the ambulance for traffic accidents.
Those I already had on on my first tries to get to her, but got scared shitless.
They didn't evoke any hulk like qualities in him either.
He was balancing the basin towards her and when she jumped up with her what we thought injured leg holding up, he jumped with her and spilled some of the water on the ground.
I couldn't help, but I thought it was a rather funny picture. This black dude with an ambulance uniform on and this small cup with a little puddle of water in his hands trying to get to this poor dog slowly and carefully and they both end up jumping in the air.

Anyway, our little friend seemed to become more and more lively here, and of course no sign of any professional animal rescuers. Darn.....

And the cops suck anyway. There were two cops driving by and the only thing they would do is to look at us and keep on going. Can you believe that. We were with that huge ass big ambulance with our secondary lights on stopped on a major street there in the middle of a f.... bridge.... and they didn't think it is necessary to stop and ask what's wrong.

That's why I think that the dude we brought to the psyche clinic the other day is right... sick ass world with this fu.......ass human beings.

So, I come up with the idea to pull around the dog with the ambulance and make a trail of two, three basins into the ambulance so she would get in there in order to get more water.

But I almost figured that we already gave her too much of what she needed.....Also my idea to take a sheet from our gurney and trap her was probably a good one, but now she was so lively and agile, that it was hard to believe that she is really injured.

And sure thing, after we set up our ambulance trap using almost all our sterile water supplies we had ;-), she only cared for one more basin and started trotting away from us.

It was hard to believe that a dog, only dehydrated, would voluntarily sit close to fast traffic on a bridge and not move for at least 1 1/2 hours if she wouldn't be seriously hurt. We gathered our rescue instruments together and turned the ambulance around on the bridge... I was expecting a cop pulling me over for that action now.... and we followed her off the bridge.
Now she was trotting in a fairly fast manner and didn't display any signs of an injured leg anymore.

Well, I was glad that she got of the bridge but still worried about her, but there was nothing I or better we could do for her anymore at this point.

It amazes me that nobody gave a shit about this dog on the bridge. When I drove by her the first time, she sat there with her hips to the ground, only her upper body supported on her front legs, so it was obvious, that something was wrong. Why would a dog bear sitting there for so long if everything was all right.

Nobody stopped. I hate people sometimes.

Well, I'm off racing against time here again like everyday, because I have to go to bed by 9 again for my next shift....

sick ass world... I hate to go to bed that early.... ;-)) uhhhhh and I hate to get up at 4:30am but somebody's got to do it....

Well, as most of you know, this shall all translate for me some day to do all of this in a slightly different way and that is to service some community on this world in a helicopter.
I'm well aware that it's still gonna be a long way to there.
And I guess I have to pay my dues here.
But who wants to do something easy anyway, everybody can easy..;-)))

Feel free to tell me off or chew me out for writing an impersonal email again...;-)

have a good day folks

ciao

sincerely and truly

Olli