What a night!

Squad 6 respond for a 78 year old male chief complaint difficulty breathing. My crew and I marked en route and were on our way. We knew this would be a very long call because our patient lived in our 4th due response area. We arrived on scene 40 some minutes later. The patients driveway was so steep that we had to put the ambulance into four wheel drive just to make it to his house. Finally at the top of the driveway we realized that there was no place that we could turn around at, but figured we would go inside and get our patient then figure out how to handle that problem later. After we got our patient loaded and out to the ambulance we marked en route to the hospital with dispatch and our driver began to try to turn around. After a good ten minutes of maneuvering the unit every way possible we finally figured that we would have to back down. It was so scary! The entire time I felt like we were falling off the edge of a cliff. We were running over things and clanging and screeching all the way down. When we finally got down to the bottom we realized that something was very wrong with the medic unit. We could not get out of four wheel drive no matter how hard we tried! Our patient was having a harder time breathing as every minute passed. Finally on our way the truck made a loud clunking noise and stopped in the middle of the road. After some checking the guys figured that the only way to continue on was to keep in in four wheel drive making it difficult to go more than ten miles an hour. We decided to call for another crew to come pick up our patient and we would call a tow truck. We didn't want to have to drive the medic unit any further for fear of severely damaging it. A few short minutes later the other ambulance pulls up. I started getting ready to transfer our patient and asked the driver of the ambulance that had just arrived what level they were to make sure I wasn't downgrading care by handing over my patient to a crew that was not Advanced Life Support (ALS). He proceeded to say, "Oh no it's just me. I will drive and your crew can ride with me." Oh wow could this night get any worse? So we did what we had to do. Eric and I climbed into the back of the other medic unit and began patient care out of a completely different truck. Once at the hospital (after an hour and a half ordeal) we wrote our report then sat there and waited on our driver to get the ambulance taken care of then drive to the hospital to pick us up. It was quite an evening! We were extremely tired after it all, but in the end the outcome was the same as any other call...you do what you have to for your patient.