The Blue Moon Night

It's been that kind of a week.

Intense, crazy, and a blue moon to boot on Thursday night. We are prepared for the madness that is a full moon - any full moon - but really, a blue moon on top of it? Not fair, not fair at all. I suppose it could have been worse. It could have been non-stop action... not an unheard of thing on a full moon night. It could have been even worse than that - it could have been a full moon on a Saturday night. That is the worst. First time I ever rode a full moon night was a Saturday and we had seven calls between 1900 and 0100. Horrifying. It was completely exhausting.

A blue moon is a full moon amplified.

Actually, a blue moon isn't even blue (yes, I was quite disappointed about that. I kept looking for it to change colour...). A blue moon is - for reasons passing understanding - the second full moon in a month. So we had the first full moon on 2 May and the second one on 31 May. In some countries, they did not have the blue moon - it occured on 1 June.

Why is it a blue moon? I honestly don't remember. I should look it up. I'm becoming very fond of Wickipedia - it seems to know everything... Let me see. OK...

"The term blue moon has at least four related meanings. One is a common metaphorical phrase for a rare event. Full moons are given names in folklore, and two definitions of blue moon are a name for a rare full moon that does not have a folk name. One modern blue moon definition is a result of a misinterpretation of the Maine Farmer's Almanac, where a second full moon occurs in a calendar month. The older definition of blue moon is for an extra full moon that occurs in a quarter of the year, which would normally have three full moons, but sometimes has four. Oddly, it is the third full moon in a season that has four which is counted as the "extra" full moon and named blue moon. According to certain folklore, it is said that when there is a blue moon, the moon has a face and talks to the items in its moonlight."

This only happens once every 2.75 years. It's unusual. Figure whenever there is a full moon on the first or second day of the given month, one will likely fall at the end. We had this in May 2007, so the next one will be November 2009. I love astronomy.

Anyway, Thursday night was the second full moon in May.

Which brought out the weirdness and accidents. Only two calls, but both counted (maybe for four calls...). At 1758 we were blown out for a bipolar 38-year-old male... he was really a headcase. I guess I shouldn 't say that. But he was a really troubled kind of person. He seemed a little weird but okay at first, but then on the ride it became apparent that he was not firing on all cylinders. Or maybe I should say he was firing on too many.

I have had a lot of bipolar patients before but yikes...! He kept up a steady, monotone monologue the whole 20 minute trip that would have made anyone start inching their way out of the rig... He did it with his eyes closed and he lives in what I call "Opposite World" - "I thought that they were bad people, but they are me and I am them" - stuff like that. At one point I checked his pulse and he said (eyes still shut), "Are you my mother?" Uh, no. I told him no, I'm not his mother - as far as I know, I'm not anyone's mother. He did not seem to hear that part (that was fine). He said that it felt like his mother touching his wrist. I said no, it was just me - Aislinge - you met me before. He asked me was this why he liked other women who did not look like his mother? I said that that is fine. Liking other women is a perfectly normal reaction. He began his opposite world monologue again, and quite frankly, I was happy to let him do it. I'm not up for providing the answers to life to someone who is looking at it through a very distorted lens.

Sometimes what he was saying sounded deep but most of the time it was deep in a Stanley Kubrick sort of way. We couldn't wait to get him to the hospital. Thanks to some invisible force that forms needless blockage in traffic, we were sitting there listening to someone else private Idaho for twenty minutes instead of seven...

After that, there was not a peep - for us or Squad 65 - until the thing went off at 2240. I was in bed and my eyes were finally slamming shut and BOING! Wide awake again. This one for an MVC on Route 46 and New Road. An MVC is a motor vehicle collision.

We get there and there are three cars involved, one totalled white car, one fairly scraped up red car and one black car with (from what I could see) little to no damage on it. My patient was the black car guy, Don's was the red car guy in the tacky plaid shirt and poor Bob, he got stuck with the 18-year-old girl who ran the red light and was hysterical. Don and I checked vitals and got sign-offs from our patients, Bob got the kid into the back of the rig. When I finished with my patient and got the pink transmission fluid off of my right boot (that crap is slippery), I got into the back of the rig, figuring as the only female EMT Bob might want me there. Sure enough, he did but not because of anything like that. She'd refused the collar and was refusing to go to the hospital. At age 18 she is considered an adult in the eyes of the law, just not mine. So she can refuse. Had she still been 17, she'd've been collared and boarded like she should have been.

Her parents kept telling her not to go to the hospital over the cell phone, so at one point, I held out my hand for the phone, and politely (in that dangerous way that communicates clearly "don't fuck with me") explained how the kid might wake up paralyzed tomorrow and the mother grudgingly said OK. I "accidentally" hung up the phone and handed it back to the kid, who grudging nodded (all the while still crying) and got Bob out of the rig to hurry up and get us out of here before we end up having any more distractions.

I don't know how many red lights and speeding laws those hideous parents broke to get to Parsippany from Hawthorne (an easy 40 minutes away) but they managed it in a much shorter time. We had almost pulled away twice when the plainclothes cop from the call popped in first to give the kid a ticket for running the red light (there should have been one issued for gross youthful stupidity, but I suspect there is no statute number for that). Then he popped in with her purse (which was bigger than she was...). Then we had started moving and suddenly came to a stop and the side door opened.

Some woman came in and I heard Bob say the same time as me, "Who the hell are you?!" It's the mother. Good gods. She stood there right over the stretcher. We told her she had to sit down in the Captain's chair. She said she'd stay right there. We told her that if she didn't sit in the captain's chair we were going to ask her to leave. She grudgingly sat down. Then she started fussing and we kicked her out to the front seat with Bob. Even there she managed to be a problem - she got in the front seat and immediately opened up her cell phone instead of putting on her seat belt (which means we can't leave) and Bob was yelling at her to put the damn thing on and get off the phone. I should have reached up front, taken the cell phone and tossed it out of the window...

We finally left and got her up to St. Clares (in maybe less than seven minutes!), all the while with the mother fussing and make phone calls and the kid crying the whole way up.

Turns out that the crazy mother ran across six lanes of traffic to get into the rig. I should find the cop who directed her to us and thank him personally... with a sledgehammer. Obviously I wouldn't, but really, he could have thought this one through and told her it was too late to join us! It would have been much better for us!

What a night.