By Eugenia Klopsis
The New York Sun
Copyright 2007 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC
All Rights Reserved
Editor’s note: Klopsis is an emergency medical technician on an ambulance in Brooklyn. This column details her observations and experiences. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of patients.
Bronson and I are sitting inside our warm ambulance drinking hot chocolate on a bone-cracking cold day when the radio beeps us for a respiratory distress job.
A 77-year-old man is having trouble breathing. We snap the lids over our hot chocolate, which tastes watery and lousy anyway, and speed over to the four-story walkup in Bensonhurst.
We climb up four rickety flights and knock on the door. I hear shuffling inside. It’s cold in the hallway, and it takes forever for the man to unlock his door.
Finally, the door opens, and the man in question stands there in many layers of flannel shirts, with long johns sticking out of the cuffs of his perma-press pants. He’s got wool socks on and the same fake leather house slippers my grandfather used to scuff around in.
Behind him, the small studio apartment is filthy. It doesn’t smell, but probably only because of the cold.
A thermometer nailed to the wall reads 60 degrees. For an elderly man with poor circulation, that’s cold. His hands have a bluish tinge. I lean up against a radiator; it’s lukewarm. I have conducted my initial assessment.
“What’s the problem, sir?” I ask, taking his hand to check his pulse.
“Having trouble breathing,” he says. He sounds a little breathless, but I don’t hear any wheezing.
Bronson opens the stair chair and seats the man in it. He takes out his stethoscope and listens to the man’s lungs. “Clear,” he says. “When did the trouble start?”
The man places his hands on his knees and leans forward a little. This tripod position is a classic sign of respiratory distress, but his lungs sounded clear and I don’t detect any shortness of breath; the man speaks easily, in full sentences.
“I went out for food,” he says “Very cold. My chest tightened up. I came back inside but could hardly make the stairs. Called you guys.”
It’s 20 degrees outside and windy. I head for the kitchenette.
“When did you last eat?” I ask, and open the refrigerator door. A quart of milk on a wire shelf, with an expiration date a week old.
“Two days ago,” he says. “I had tea, though.”
In the sink are six mugs with wet teabags and curdled milk at the bottom.
“Medical history?” Bronson asks.
“High blood pressure.”
“You take anything?”
“Nope.”
I sigh. We’ve seen this before. Elderly people living abandoned. “Do you have a home health aide?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Don’t want one.”
Fair enough. They’re lousy at best, and abusive at worst. “Any family?”
His voice remains steady. “My brother died a year ago.”
I don’t know if that was his last remaining relative, and I don’t ask. Bronson looks at me, and I look at him. He looks at the old man. “So, you want to go to Coney?”
The man shakes his head. “The VA.”
“Which war?” I ask.
“Korea.” The forgotten war. No one glorifies its heroes, like World War II, and no one vilifies them, like Vietnam. If it wasn’t for “M*A*S*H,” they’d be totally invisible.
We dress him in his woolen cap and coat and take a nice slow drive to Bay Ridge. The VA hospital’s ER has been renovated recently; it’s new and clean.
Once inside, the old man brightens up. “Hi, Abigail. Hi, Mary,” he waves to the nurses.
“Dominick? That you?” one of them asks.
I chat with the head nurse. “First name basis?”
She shrugs. “He shows up a couple times a week. We give him a hot meal. There’s really nothing wrong with him.”
Except total isolation. I go over to where Bronson is filling out our paperwork and whisper, “He comes in for companionship and familiar faces. Someone to talk to for a while. And food.”
Bronson keeps writing. “I know,” he says.
I need to get out of here. “See you outside,” I say.
As I pass out of the ER, I see that Dominick is already smoothing the sheets on his gurney and checking out the other patients’ tray-tables to see what’s for lunch.