Stones and Ice

I'm usually only up at 0545 when I have to go to work. The town I work for is just about an hour away from Manchester so I'm up at 0530 in order to get there by the start of my 0700 to 0700 tour. And today is one of my off days.
So why am I up this early?
Was there some great and wonderful surprise that roused me from slumber that was just too incredible not to blog about right this minute? Was there a recall at the firehouse? Did my pager for the hospital go off?
Nope, the kidney stone I have been carrying around for a little over a month decided this morning was the perfect time to send my right side into blistering pain and force me to take the dreaded Hydrocodone. I really don't like taking narcotic pain relievers because they make me loopy and a bit out of it.
Ketrolac, a marvelous NSAID usually works wonders buy my doctors refuse to perscribe it because of the frequency with which I am blessed with stonage. Long term use of Toridol (another name for Ketrolac) can lead to kidney dysfunction, which makes me wonder if they have missed the past three years of my life.....aren't the kidneys already dysfunctional?

But thats enough of my problems.
As I'm sure most people have seen, New Hampshire was hit by a massive ice storm over the past week. The night that it hit I was home in Manchester with my cats and not due into work for another two days. My wife was at her overnight shift at the animal clinic. I was in the middle of my Kelley Week and as such I was sitting up late after having finished watching a scary movie. I had decided to have a cup of tea and play a little bit of a Nintendo game with Navy SEAL frogmen that my brother in law, a combat medic for the 772 Military Police Company in Taunton MA let me borrow telling me "its the balls, its really fun." I had just brewed a nice cup and figgured out how to make my sniper rifle zoom in when I noticed the lights flickering.
This should have been a sign of impending fun not involving digital commandos.
Instead the entire city of Manchester and a good portion of surronding Goffstown and Bedford were plunged into darkness. My cats were immediately terrified enough to dart over and snuggle into my lap.
Because of the pension for the power to go out in NH and the fact that I learned a lot from my brief four month stint in CubScouts, I keep a MagLite by my easy chair and I grabbed it and turned it on. Everything seemed fine so I turned it back off and took a little nap, thinking the power would come on again fairly quickly. About an hour later it did and I went into the bedroom and went to sleep.
I woke the next morning at around 0730 or so to my cellphone ringing.
"Hello?"
"Nick?"
"Yeah."
"It's Captain XXXX. Come on in for a rapid recall. I know you live in Manch so drive careful. The roads suck and the entire town is without power. We also need a medic. So does Pittsfield. "
I told her I would be right in and took a quick shower and shaved. I threw on my uniform and grabbed a warm fleece to wear over my sweater and under my bunkers, layers are always good in 6 degree temperatures.
To say the roads "sucked" was an understatement. Untreated tarmac stretched from Manchester north. I joined a convoy of utility trucks with Rhode Island and Connecticut license plates and followed them up through a now dark Concord (state capitol without power is never fun.)
The scene at the firehouse was one of barely controlled chaos. A disel engine chugged in the back giving the building power and cars were parked litterally everywhere. Inside the chief and a groupd of select men designated the "emergency service committee" had taken over our kitchen table and the chiefs from several surrounding towns were there chiefing and trying to coordinate evacuations. Dry erase boards were set up with notes about road conditions and the status of various elderly residents scribbled on them.
I grabbed a cup of coffee and found the on duty LT. He gave us a briefing about what was going to occur. Apparently a lot of department members from our department and surrounding departments were out of state on vacation (it is the end of the year and all that earned time adds up) so I would be the only paramedic for three towns. We ended up staffing our ambulance, Ambulance 2, with me and a single role EMT from the town next door. I took all my bunker gear and tossed it in a back compartment. If need be I could meet the engine and ladder companies on the fireground.
For most of the morning we stayed at the station fielding phone calls from concerned residents and helping to fill water jugs with our garden hose. Most people in town have electric pumped wells and found themselves with no clean drinking water. I spent a good portion of time trying to find military cots at the local boy scout camp for a neighboring town's emergency shelter being set up in their high school.
We got toned out for a chimney fire and ended up taking care of it fairly quickly. A few elderly residents needed to be removed from their dark and cold homes. We ended up taking a chain saw from the forestry shed and I was dispatched with the Pittsfield guy, a kid named Kyle, to cut downed branches from vital roadways with highway department crews. We went to a house being run off of a generator for flu like symptoms, the people living there thinking they had CO poisioning, forgetting that they had the symptoms before they started their generator.
At about 1900 I made it back to the station long enough to have a chicken salad sandwich and a cup of stale Red Cross coffee. We spent a good portion of the night knocking on doors and helping residents get their cars out of branch choked driveways.
Come morning I got a partner from my own town and we were promptly banged out for a difficulty breathing in a house that I could see from the pad at the firehouse. When we got there a thin version of Grizzly Adams was sitting in an overstuffed chair surrounded by a pride house cats and several small yappy dogs. His gurgling and bubbling airway was clearly audible from the front door.
With the help of the engine company we scooped him out of the house and brought him to the back of the ambulance. I grabbed a girl from the engine and we took him into Concord. Thanks to Lasix, Nitro and Morphine along with poor man's CPAP (basically bagging the patient in order to blow the fluid back out of his lungs) because I always forget we actually have CPAP, he was pink and happy by the time we got to the hospital prompting the nurse to ask "And he was status two on your patch....why?"
On the way back into town we stopped for breakfast at a Dunkin Doughnuts, grabbing bagel sandwiches and iced coffee because it was now a down right balmy 8 degrees outside.
Back in town we were sent out on ground and pound, knocking on doors and talking to residents.
An elderly couple living in a really cool German ski lodge style house complete with the gingerbread looking outside and a wood stove upstairs waved us down. I went to check on them while my partner went next door to tell the neighbors that the propane heater they were running in doors needed to not be run in doors.
The old man was sitting in a highbacked chair in a World War 2 era field coat with a combat engineer badge on the sleeve. He had a multi colored fleece stocking cap with bells on the tassels on his head and a Beagle sitting on his feet.
"I was trying to clear some ice off the roof and I felt like I was going to pass out so I came inside." A glass of milk and a shot of whiskey sit on the table next to him. "I figgured whiskey with a milk back would fix me up but the first one wouldn't work so I'm doin' another one."
I run through a quick exam and advise the man he should go to the hospital. He refuses and downs his shot and then takes a long pull from the milk. The dog licks my hand and his wife offers me a sandwich in thickly German accented English. I tell them to call back if anything changes or if he feels worse, they agree to do that much and I am back out in the cold.
After eight more hours of door to door the chief relieves us and sends the ambulance back out with another crew. My bunker gear is set up next to Engine 2 and the monitor, medic drug box and a first in bag from the out of service Ambulance 1 are thrown in the behind the cab tool box of Utility 1, a pick up truck with four wheel drive but no heat, I will be on intercept duty so long as we don't get a fire. I spedn the next 12 hours answering phones reassuring residents that all is being done to get them power, giving them dirrections to the multiple emergency shelters that are set up, and explaining that they cannot have fire department generators for their houses. Basements flood when pipes burst and they call for us to pump their basements. Years ago the fire department would do that but now they have gotten wise and refuse because the trash that accumulates in basements is murder on pumps.
I intercept with the town to our north on a chest pain. IV, O2, monitor, Nitro and Morphine. Transport to LRGH and head back to town.
Eventually I am recalled again and I spend the next day knocking on more doors, talking on more phones. In one phone call that brought the entire station into roaring laughter I had to use the phrase "No, ma'm, diahrea is not traditionally a symptom of CO poisioning." I jump on the engine for a tree on wires call. We stand around and watch the energized wires jump and dance until the power company shuts them off. The branch smolders and smokes and as soon as the lines or powered down we hit it with a water can. No sooner do we clear from that call than we need to meet the ambulance for an evacuation of a bed ridden morbidly obese woman.
Downed branches are covering her driveway so the chain saws come out and we clear a path. My turn out boots stick to her floor as we help the two intermediates covering Ambulance 2 while I'm on the Engine, wrestle her onto the cot. They transfer her to a shelter and are soon back in service.
I finally make it home to find that my wife has bought a pot roast the size of a small dog. I fall asleep without even taking my boots off in my recliner. When I wake up to my wife shaking my arm, the roast beef is warm and pink in the center, the stick of butter with a little bit of mashed potatoes around it is sitting in the meat's juices and a generous dollop of beraise sauce is waiting for me on a a plate. A very cold Sam Adams, the box is living out on our balcony, is forming condesation next to it. I wolf down the first plate and follow it with a second, cleaning both with crusty Portugese rolls. My wife's a good Irish girl who grew up on the South Coast of Mass so she knows the value of Portugese bakeries. She had also been thoughtful enough to bake up some gluten free brownies complete with chocolate chips and rum filling. After two of those I am promplty asleep again while she knits and watches Jon and Kate Plus 8 reruns.

So that was my ice storm experience. A weather alert was just issued for a severe snow storm to hit within the next 48 hours. By this time tommorrow I will be on my way to start my 24 hour tour. The snow will probably fall and cause more havoc. I might even get rapid recalled again. But at the end of it I can come home, have a nice dinner and a beer. I can sit in my chair, I can see my wife and know that I work hard but I love what I do and I can provide a good life for her and our pets.
Now I really must be going because the pain relievers have kicked in and its getting harder to type coherent sentances without typos.......