One of us is lying
In his lonely bed
Staring at the ceiling
Wishing he was somewhere else instead
One of us is lonely
One of us is only
Waiting for a call*
And guess what? It came. At 2:15am dispatch reported that a juvenile had been found unconscious in ditch just outside of the main town area so we headed over. Turns out it was a 14 year old girl who drank herself unconscious and her "friends" left her on the side of the road. Now, piecing together more of the story through the night, apparently two of her friends stayed with her (both guys) and stripped her out of her clothes when she started vomiting on herself. Eventually they freaked and called one of their mothers, who called 911 and that's when we came in.
Of course, a mostly naked teenage girl who can't remember what happened gives us additional worries. Thankfully, nothing had happened on that end, and given enough time she slowly started sobering up (very slowly, she had a BAC of .172 on the breathalyzer about an hour after we picked her up). And sadly, that isn't the highest BAC we've had this week, but more on that later.
About an hour into pumping saline solution into the girl and trying to get the full story, we get a call from a concerned grandmother because her 2 year old granddaughter is having breathing difficulties. The poor kid has chronic issues with this and used the nebulizer better than most adults. There weren't really any major issues with her, but all in all it still kept us at the clinic until about 5am.
On the way home from all this, at 5:15am I get a phone call, "Hello, Crystal?" from a 727 number. Curse my Floridian cell number. /sigh
Anyways, I've been sitting on a post for well over a month now about alcoholism and I'm still hemming an hawing about posting it. On the one hand, I don't want to get too preachy on this blog, and I've been steering clear of really serious issues, but on the other hand, it really is incredible some of the alcohol related problems I've seen up here. One example would be a lady in a MVA (motor vehicle accident) from the other day. BAC of 0.53. ZERO POINT FIVE THREE. By the US scale, you're dead at anything above 0.5. Death is a very real possibility at anything above 0.3, and blacking out and unconsciousness can start at 0.2 or earlier. And yes, the girl from last night was only 14 and already drinking herself stupid. That wasn't a typo. And these two weren't even native.
Nothing against natives, but a common oxymoron and joke up here is a 'dry native village'. They start young and develop a dependence, they kill each other (even family members) over booze, and only a lucky few can escape the vicious cycle. The worst are those who sober up, suffer through the withdrawal (usually with our help. It's never pleasant for anyone involved), and then once they are finally completely dry... they just go back and start drinking all over again. bak;sndinadxf The natives have too many issues to cover here. I really shouldn't have even started on it.
*Clearly I have heard too much ABBA. Also, going without sleep for over 24 hours makes me weird. I really was just staring at the ceiling though, part of me hoping that I could fall asleep, the other part hoping something interesting would happen so I wouldn't have to just lay there patiently anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment