Would you like pepper to go with your assault?

The trend of this tour was assaults. End of the month means free money for the people of the hood. What do people in the hood like to do with free money? Drugs and alcohol, that's what. There were 4 assaults last night alone, peppered amongst syncopal episode calls.

We just got a new unit, new design, new frustration/headache. So, the shit show call for this tour happened at 02:55 this morning. If there is a pattern in the tours, there is one shit show call and the rest are manageable. The patient had been beaten quite badly. By quite badly, I mean he only had one tooth left and it was at a funky angle, obvious internal abdominal bleeding (abdo distended and rigid), melon sized bruising on his chest (nipple line midline and on the R side) which was one of the contributing factors for a wonky ECG.

The police officer who rode in the back finally took his leather gloves off and picked up medical gloves to help out. I've not changed gloves quite as much as with this guy. He was slimy for some reason and blood everywhere. I threw an 18G in his R hand (huge veins) and he was combative, understandably with that kind of head injury and being strapped to a backboard with a collar on.

I don't know what fucking crackhead developed this new ambulance but they were obviously on crack and have never worked in the field. It had literally one of my feet between the stretcher (with my calves touching the stretcher) and the cabinets. I had to lean backwards, arching my back to get into the cabinets. The patients, cops and firefighters who were in the unit yesterday had to hunch because the roof is literally about 0.5" above my head (I'm 5'6"). I'm disgusted with whoever decided the unit was a good idea.

There is no room, the cabinets are poorly laid out... the list goes on. V. v. v. unhappy about it and I'll write a letter because I'm so ticked.

Anyway, this tour has been about tightening skills. My preceptor said I have already passed (she said D1 T3) so I'm just trying to relax and get things in order. I patched to the hospital twice yesterday and didn't do a bad job. Trauma is easy... it's the old lady/gent with a long list of medications, treatments, convoluted HxC/C, PMHx, etc that makes it challenging to remember it all plus vitals and time.

It'll come together at some point. Just hope it's sooner rather than later.