I was an EMT for 10 years. I always ran with the same paramedic. He was pretty high strung and very, very smart. (He is in med school now at 50!! Already a phd in chemistry.) Anyway, we operated in a rural district, the largest township in NYS. So from the ambulance station there were calls that were up to 20 minutes away. That is an eternity in a life or death situation.

One night we had a call for a three year old child, in seizure lasting longer then 10 minutes. The call was on the furthest end of our district. It is a HORRIBLE call. People generally do not breath during a seizure.

We race off. Bob (the paramedic) is screaming at me to drive faster. Meanwhile, he is running around the back of the ambulance getting his drugs ready and setting things up.

It takes 10 minutes to get to the house. We jump out of the ambulance and run into the house. It takes a minute to figure out what we are looking at. Our adrenillian is pumping. We are hyper, terrified, and just not understanding what we are looking at.

There is an entire family backed up against the wall. Dad has the phone in his hand. Mom is crying and three kids are hysterical. In the center of the room lay the biggest rotwieller I have ever seen. And it looked like - it was having a siezure. There was a broken table and chair -- which apparently the dog had broken during the seizure.

Still, we said (at the same time) WHERE IS THE BABY??? The mother pointed to the dog.

OMG! OMG! We both just started laughing. It was awful, but who calls an ambulance for a dog. The dispatcher was so embarrassed. We breathed a huge sigh of relief......

So we leave the house with the dog. Jump in the ambulance (it is dark now) and lo and behold the headlights don't work. So Bob calls the chief. The chief says "oh just wiggle the handle." LOL! Bob looks at me and says "Wait, they KNOW the lights have a problem and this ambulance is still in service??"

And yes, folks we are the people that respond when you call 911.

Anyway, we can't drive this ambulance around like this - no headlights in the dark. Of course, right about then is another call. This time it's a car accident with serious injuries. We have no choice but to grab our jump bags and jump in the back of the firetruck that is responding. We call the station for another ambulance to meet us on the scene.

When we get to the scene it is complete chaos. There are a ton of people standing around looking, and at least 10 of those people are ambulance drivers who just drove directly to the scene to see what was going on. But not one of them BROUGHT AN AMBULANCE!!So here we were with a 16 year old pizza delivery driver with a serious head injury, a drunk driver and hysterical yet sober wife. And no way to take any of them to the hospital. It took another 20 minutes for one of the drivers to leave the scene and come back with ONE ambulance (we need THREE....three patients) It took another 30 to get the other two ambulances there....

It was quite the night.