Monkey See, Monkey Do

1423 hours

Truck 51, respond with engine 57 for a motorcyclist down....

The truck was canceled by engine 57 while en route to the call, but they were already committed to the canyon. They passed the accident and saw that the rider had laid his bike down but had not gone over the edge.

1712 hours.

Engine 51, rescue 42, battalion 5, respond for a motorcycle down, possibly over the side....

As we started up the canyon we verified with dispatch that an engine and ambulance were responding from the city on the far side of the canyon, just in case they were closer.

As we wound our way up the narrow road a CHP unit came up behind us. Since he was able to take the road at a lot faster pace, we let him go by. A couple of minutes later we came up on him again. He was stopped behind a group of motorcycles and cars where one guy lay out on the ground. We immediately reported what we had and the responding BC canceled the balance of the assignment.

My patient had been traveling up the canyon when he hit some gravel and spilled. He didn't lose consciousness but was experiencing neck and back pain and also pain to his left scapula. We quickly did a "strip and flip" (a quick trauma assessment where we cut the clothes off the patient and check head to toe for injuries) then strapped him to a backboard.

It was about this time that we started to wonder about our ambulance. My captain called dispatch and found out that when all of the responding units were canceled, the ambulance was inadvertently canceled as well. Dispatch then informed us that there was still an AMR unit coming from the far side of the hill. We then asked for an ETA only to find out that that unit had gotten lost and was 30 minutes out. We had another unit sent from our side of the hill.

Meanwhile, we had time to do everything we needed with our patient. We had a complete history and physical. I started an IV and offered some medication for pain management, which was refused. We still had time to kill. We started making small talk. That's when we found out that he had traveled down to our trauma center to visit a friend in the ER. His friend had been in a motorcycle accident several hours ago, about 100 yards from where he was now strapped to a backboard. He had been unable to see his friend (because he didn't know his friend's last name) and had been on his way back home.

Almost an hour after he hit the asphalt my patient was loaded into the back of an ambulance. He was headed back to the trauma center where he had tried to get in to see his friend. Maybe they shared a room.