Ya, Yellow Kitty, Yaaaa!

I went on the most distressing call that I have been on in a long time.

Thursday night is my night, and most Thursdays I am out there meeting people and doing something I really enjoy and that - surprisingly - is often fairly easy. Being an EMT means that the 99% of the calls that one has are very mild to somewhat serious and are all practice for the 1% that are bonafide, honest-to-the-gods emergencies and someone's life may be in the balance.

This Thursday night was surprisingly busy - two calls in two hours with a total of five patients. It is not as impressive as it sounds. The first call, occurring at approximately quarter to 19h00, was an MVC (motor vehicle collision) with three people. The one patient with his/her son was fine and refused any medical treatment. Both seemed to be fine and I went through all the steps and had them sign off on RMAs. The other participant needed to be boarded and collared (although some idiot woman who was a witness to the incident and told Bob that she was a doctor pulled our patient out of the car... One can get a Ph.D in many, many subjects so I was curious as to what she was a doctor of, but I never did find out. Clearly not a medical doctor!

Well, we took our patient to the hospital, placed the patient in Fast Track as we were instructed and got out of there. We were heading back to the squadhouse when the second call came out. It was for a person with a laceration from an animal attack. My immediate and first questions were what kind of animal and was it contained? We arrived on scene and Bob radioed dispatch... it was a house cat and no, as far as she knew it was not contained. Oh, OK.

We headed into the complex's square and walked the distance to the apartment. There was one person waiting for us and he was sporting some small lacerations - until I pulled his sleeve off and there were four parallel scratches down the length of his inner arm! Yikes... what is in there, a mountain lion?!

Well, the local constabulary made it - I am not sure of his name, but I find him very likeable... although I laughed at him when he suggested that maybe I would like to go in first. Not a chance, hot spur. You are paid the big bucks to do this... you go! He had to - our primary patient, as it turned out, was up there on the second story balcony, terrified and unwilling to go inside to go through the apartment to get downstairs for medical assistance. She was very obviously upset and kept saying that their house cat just snapped and attacked them.

The very nice officer got her down to us and we were immediately galvanised into fast action. The one person had lacerations that were clotting and looked far worse than they really were... but she was bleeding profusely from multiple deep lacerations on both arms, her right ear and her right leg. It was frightening to see scratches and bites like that made by a house cat... that must have been SOME cat... And scratches that deep... I thought it had to have been a mountain lion...!

Well, we did get them both to the hospital in fairly good shape. I don't know what happened with the cat... animal control was on its way to deal with that. I doubt its future was long or rosy. The two people... well, I know he was fine. Not sure she was, but I think it all turned out okay. I doubt she will gravitate to getting another cat for a long, long time!

Ya, yellow kitty, YA!