The Insanely Long Shift – Notes from a forced insomniac

I am currently on an insanely long shift.

Call me irresponsible, call me crazy, call me whatever… but between my two EMS jobs, I am currently working a less-than-two week stretch with 178 scheduled hours.

Yea… 178 freakin hours at work.

I don’t get to sleep at home this week with Gkemtb at all. Not one night between last Thursday and next Monday night. I miss her… And don’t get me wrong here. I’m fully aware that this is probably irresponsible for me to work this many hours. I’m also fully aware that while I can do this job in my sleep out of necessity, and have many, many times over the years… I probably shouldn’t.

So I’ve decided that since I cannot get my brain started to write long, entertaining posts with my current insane work schedule (See my pitiful attempt to write something for The Handover below), I’m going to relate funny things that happen to me during the shifts. Yes, these shifts include both EMS only and Fire Based EMS shifts, so there’s some BRT calls mixed in there too (BRT = Big Red Truck).

Like this one:

I’ve been in the game for over a decade, so my adrenaline isn’t nearly as powerful as it used to be when I was a younger young medic, but the first night fire shift that I worked in this crazy tour did something to me that hasn’t happened in a long time. Our dispatching system is set up so that a really loud, annoying bell rings when the 911 center calls our department’s dispatcher to notify us of a call. Our dispatcher, who sits in “The Fishbowl” in the front of our apparatus bay, sets off the tones after getting the call. Effectively, this gives us a 30second or so “Head’s up” to get up, get dressed, pee, and be ready to be right out the door when the tones drop. (yea, we’re quick lil’ pissers). This bell, (think: Old telephone with mechanical bell but really really loud) is located in three spots in the station. One in the apparatus bay, one in the bunk room, and one up in the administrative offices, the one in the Bunk room did it to me. Dumb me, I chose the bed right under the bell to fall asleep on. I’m so freakin tired from working all these hours, that once I hit the pillow, I was out.

Or I was till the bell rang… Geez that thing is loud. Wow, jolted me bolt upright outta the bunk and dang near gave me a heart attack.

This job’s gonna kill my heart I think.

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Update: Ran a buncha calls. Just took a nap to a show about comic book superheroes on the TV. Weird dreams.