It’s a slow morning, and my partner, Bronson, pops a Grateful Dead cassette into the ambulance’s tape deck. It’s one of those endless bootleg jams, with lots of acid guitar riffs and spacey lyrics.

I look at him wide-eyed. “You’re a Dead Head?”

He grins sheepishly. “Some of their songs are pretty good.”

I’m amazed. “Who woulda thunk it, with all your physics textbooks?” He still moonlights as an electrician for his dad’s company and is always reading up on complex circuitry.

“Hey, physics is very trippy stuff.”

I’ve taken a few bewildered peeks at his textbooks. “I wouldn’t know.”

He turns up the volume. “Check out this guitar riff.”

Fortunately, its monotony is interrupted by a call for a “Sick.” I sigh: A wild card. But it beats 20 minutes of “Truckin.’ ” Bronson shifts the ambulance into gear and we’re off.

We pull up to an apartment building where a man is waiting outside, a tall, lanky 30-something with long hair and glasses, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. “Hurry up,” he says, lethargically.

“What’s wrong?” Bronson asks.

“My mother.” He leads us into a dimly lit first-floor apartment. “She’s been throwing up.”

“What else?” I ask.

“She’s diabetic.”

“Insulin-dependent?”

“Yeah.” He sits on a sagging couch as a 200-pound woman in her late 60s emerges from the back bedroom, unsteady on her feet.

“Ma’am?” Bronson says. “How are you feeling?”

She yells, “I don’t feel well!”

The son slurs, “Ma, you gotta go to the hospital.”

“No!” she shouts back.

Bronson faces the mother. “Cool your jets.” Then he puts on a calm voice. “Did you take your insulin this morning?”

“Last night.”

“Eat?”

“Not since last night.” She looks around. “I’m thirsty.”

She tells us she woke up at 4 a.m. with an upset stomach and has thrown up five times since then. “Just liquid. Clear. I didn’t want to take any insulin if I knew I couldn’t eat.” She’s alert and oriented. And smart about her insulin therapy.

“When did you last check your blood sugar?” I ask.

“Last night. It was 370.”

“That’s very high.”

The son lights a cigarette. “It gets high sometimes.”

The mother says, “I took the insulin and ate a bowl of soup and some bread. Then I went to bed. Next thing I know, it’s 4 a.m. and I’m throwing up.”

“Do you take any other meds?” I ask. “Besides insulin?”

“Methadone,” she says. “This morning. But I threw it up.”

We’re amazed. “Methadone?” Bronson says.

“Been taking it since 1972.”

I check her pupils. Sure enough, they’re pinpricks. “Do you still use heroin?”

“Not since 1972.”

“Take any other drugs?”

“Nope.”

The son pipes up, “I smoke pot.” This confession comes out of the blue.

“So what do you want, a medal?” I say. “I asked your mother.”

He looks at me with glassy eyes. “I gave her a drag. For the nausea.”

The mother shouts, “Shut up!”

“Listen,” Bronson tells her, “we’re EMS, not the police. We just want to make sure you get treated properly.”

But I’m annoyed. The pothead son is apparently also an idiot. The chemical in marijuana – effectively used to treat the severe nausea and loss of appetite associated with chemotherapy – is not to be used indiscriminately.

“You have a stomach virus,” I tell her. “Marijuana won’t help.” I take a breath and start again. “You really shouldn’t use pot without medical supervision.” I take out my pen and paperwork. “Now, how much did you have?”

“Just a few tokes.”

Under medications, I write down: “Pot, from son.”

We ask her to get dressed and walk her out to the ambulance.

“You coming?” I ask the son. He shrugs, shoves his hands deep into his front pockets, and follows along. “Why not.”

Bronson drives, while faint strains of the Grateful Dead waft into the rear compartment.

“Cool,” the son says. He sits on the bench seat and checks out the interior of the ambulance. He lets out a long whistle of awe. “You could go out West in this thing.”

I strap his mother into the stretcher and give her an emesis basin in case she needs to vomit. “Believe me, I’ve thought of it,” I say.

En route, I fill out my paperwork while the son checks out the cabinets full of medical supplies in clear plastic packages. He picks things up, turns them over, and says, “Cool.”

When I get to the point in my paperwork where I have to note any medical interventions and their possible effects, I look up and ask the mother, “By the way, did the pot help your stomach at all?”

She closes her eyes and rests a forearm against her forehead. “I haven’t thrown up since.”

Ms. Klopsis is an emergency medical technician for the FDNY.This column details her observations and experiences on the job. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of patients.