Volunteer Insanity

Holy C&$p ... Its over

2009-01-05T12:16:00.002-05:00

Finally finally finally, over and done with. No more fire school...at least not until Driver/Pump Operator School (hopefully this coming september, assuming i make minimum staffing by march).

Got my spiffy black helmet and all that jazz, its definitely nice to be able to ride the engine in a supression capability rather than as "the emt" ridalong type dealy. No that there's anything wrong with EMS only providers but there's just something about hearing the tones drop for a supression call and having to hustle to the apparatus bay and gear up with the engine crew.

Rode the week before graduation with an all volunteer crew at one of the other volunteer houses in the county. Filling a slot left open by career drills. Meaning that district was left open for us to take all the calls that the career engine normally would have taken. My last couple days as a redhat, YIPEEE!! Maybe we'll actually get something good that day. Start the day by running 4 ALS Assist runs. Nothing too fancy, syncope, vertigo, diabetic crisis, and a MRSA patient, fun fun fun. Just when i was giving up hope of a supression call and had resigned myself to be "slave labor" to the medic crew for the rest of the day i sit down at the CAD terminal to see whats going on in the county, i refresh and scroll down. See an FTH (Fire in a townhouse) in waiting to be dispatched status, i click it open to see the suggested units and #1 on the list is E414B, i keep reading then it sinks in WE'RE E414B!!!! Holy crap, i jump up and i think my voice actually cracked as i kinda screamed townhouse!!!! Everyone gallops (yeah thats the best term i can use to describe 6 highly eager vollies charging to the apparatus bay) to the engine and gears up, i think we're dressed, buckled down, and on the road in record time...at least it feels like it. We're barreling down the road all the fun of lights and sirens and i look down to grab my helmet, DAMN RED HELMET!!!!!! means i'll be throwing ladders and basically anythign thats not inside, i remind myself one more week and then the sound of the radio chatter and sirens kinda wakes me up again, we're on our way to a real fire. Or so we thought, we get to the address and its kinda like hearding cats, there's engines everywhere, the truck and tower are sitting on teh side of the road waiting, in and out of office complexes looking for any sign of the reported fire. Nothing, a giant case of blueballs, as my officer on the day put it "a giant goat rope". Someone thought it would be fun to call in a false report of fire i guess. Oh well, pack down and head back to the station. Roll in and not 10 minutes later we're toned out again for an inside gas leak, kind of a big deal, more so than an outside leak since its a confined space and depending on the size of the leak the atmosphere in the space can become explosive fairly easily. Get there and well turns out to be really kinda nothing, a stove knob barely left on all day ... a little stinky but no real gas leak. All in all a good day 2 supression calls, one a letdown the other i actually dressed and charged a line and well did real firefightery stuff for the first time.

I've ridden a couple shifts with the career guys too, ran anther inside gas leak last night as well as an investigation for an acetylene cylinder left on the side of the road. Interesting times, slowly working my way up to my 30-40 calls to get minimum staffing status where i don't have to ride as an "other" and can fill a required slot on an engine shift.

I'll update either later today or tomorrow about some more interesting calls since fire school

Last weekend in fireschool....

2008-12-19T10:49:00.007-05:00

So the last weekend of fire academy is coming up this weekend. I can't tell you how excited i am, i'll be able to get back into the caddy scene, have time to concentrate on friends and family. Oh and the new girlfriend thing, yeah thats gonna become a lot easier (shes an amazing girl btw, lets me run into burning buildlings for fun AND SHE COMES TO WATCH!)
Well anyways, i figured i'd start a thread because a friend of Coelle's is a professional photographer and took some pictures from our live burn last weekend and she'll be taking more this weekend from our days of incident simulations.
This class has been an amazing experience, i have learned so much, matured so much, gained so much respect for both my fellow students, but other firefighters and for myself. I never thought i could complete this, from a panic attack the first day of SCBA to being one of the top students in the class.
The first night of class they had us don our SCBA bottles and crawl underneath the parked fire engines to show us how small a space we could fit in (they got smaller as the class moved on) but to gain confidence in our gear and ourselves they started us slow. I however freaked out, i hated having something around my throat, fealt like i couldnt get a full breath of air. I've gotten over that and moved on. Its really not that bad once you learn to trust your gear and know that you're never really "out of air".
Next hurdle was ladders, man i hate heights and its even worse when you're wearing an extra 65 pounds of gear and you're all off balance and top heavy because of where the gear sits on your body. The ladders bounce and sway and drag and dip its not a very comfortable situation. But i got over that, now i'm fine on ladders. Its even quelled a bit of my fear of heights, especially if its with a purpose. I don't clam up and sweat nearly as much when i'm up high now.
Last huge hurdle was just general fitness and grip strength, a fire hose has 150# of pressure at the nozzle, you're basically just holding onto a wet linen tube with your hands thats trying to fly backwards and kick yoru ass. I spent a lot of time working on technique and grip strength and now its like second nature. Its a lot of little things that i never expected to have an issue with.
So without further adue my first batch of pictures courtesy of Susan Solo and Susan Solo Photography.
Mike and Dan hitting the eves to keep fire from spreading to the attic space

Students in the Red Helmets are always under the control of an instructor or an officer (black/yellow or white helmets)

I couldnt Help but ham it up a bit

My station mate and partner Josh and I exiting the structure after our second burn of the day. (we're the two in the center...i love this picture for some reason, makes it look like we actually worked hard)

The hot stuff

you can see more pictures at susan's website

http://www.susansolo.com/blog

I'll be posting again more often now that i'll have free time without 32 hours of class each week!

Just because nothing all that exciting has happened recently

2008-10-14T14:15:00.002-04:00

More pictures... from our open house

photos from carfire day

2008-10-09T14:53:00.002-04:00

Whoa...

2008-10-07T14:37:00.002-04:00

Ok, that was out of the frying pan and into the fire. Right out of FF I testing and into the unit on Auto Extrication and Car Fires. Spent last week learning about tactics for car fires and safety on vehicle fire scenes. An interesting lecture, not things i would have thought about. Like bumper struts, high pressure "shocks" that cushion the bumper during low speed collisions, never would have thought to watch for them heating up and exploding. Lots of new things to think about as opposed to structure fires.

The more i think about it the more i have come to consider auto fires/accidents some of the most complex scenes we operate on. My asst. trainign coordinator put it best when he said we have to worry about patients, vehicle stability, passing traffic, crew integrity, and a myriad of other variables.

Also had a lesson and practicals for auto extrication, pretty cool thinking about shoring, cutting, and extrication. Never would have thought to think about the exercise as removing the car from around the victim, my thought process would be to cut the victim out of the car. Its just a different way to think about it. Basically a 6 hours lesson on Anatomy and physiology of cars. Pretty cool.

Last weekend was auto fires and extrication practicals, got to respond to 2 car fires bust up some hoods/windows and play with the crosslay some more. Definitely getting more confident with that one. Also got to play with elevators, never really considered the whole complexity of the ELEV incident, how to open doors, move cars, remove victims from stuck cars. things like that.

Well tonight is electrical utility control, and thursday is controlling gas utilities. So it should be interesting, get to interface with people from the respective utility companies.

PASSED!!!!!

2008-09-28T17:10:00.003-04:00

Well today concludes the second day of Firefighter I testing. 'Round these parts to be a firefighter you need to have Pro-Board Firefighter I and Firefighter II. So yeah, right now i'm a glorified door chock with a helmet. No harm in saying i'm useless right now, lol. For the most part I am, as a firefighter that is. We've learned the basics, PPE, SCBA, Search and Rescue, Ladders, Hoses & Nozzles, Ventilation, and Forcible Entry. Tested out on all of those today, it was a very very long 2 days asleep by 9 type days. But i've done it and now its just headlong into the intense stuff.

Next lecture on tuesday is Car Fires, yeah big burning buckets of gasoline and airbags hellbent on killing firefighters. SEE INTENSE SHIT! Next saturday is actually live car fires. Now i'm not saying i'd jump on the hoseline with everyone in my class right now... definitely not. But i'm confident that the instructors won't let anything unsafe happen. Bring on the carfires!

This coming thursday's lecture is auto extrication. Cuttin' junk up, breaking parts doin the cool stuff, so yeah its headlong into the breech.

Write again soon.....

YEAH FIREFIGHTER IS OFFICIALLY HALF OVER!

Well hello there!!!

2008-09-22T16:06:00.005-04:00

Been almost exactly 11 days since my last entry, not because i've been lazy but because i've been too damned busy.

Its coming up on skills testing for my FF I/II class, so its getting a little more intense, the only class we really have left before testing is Incident Command System/Rapid Intervention Team lecture. Basically the meat and potatoes of how to run an indicent and what to do when something goes real bad real quick.

RIT should be fun. For those of you who arent fire- service-ish RIT or RIT Team if you want to be reduntantly redundant, its the we save the firefighter firefighters. Say one team goes into the house to advance a hose through the house to the back of the garage to push a housefire out the front door, the garage door colapses on them and poof, bad shit all around. The RIT team is the group of firefighters that goes in to save their collective rear ends from the "oh no shit went wrong situation". We've practiced a little with the hardware but this is the lecture where you learn what that stuff is good for and really how to implement it.

Overall besides that school has been difficult but fun. The majority of the time since my last entry has been focused on Hoselines and Forcible entry.

As far as hoses i know there's a few little things i've got to work on but there's nothing that isnt really common sense. Its a little misleading, you think oh its just a hose, how hard could it be to control. And in all honest it isnt all that hard to control its the intervening circumstances that make it difficult. The fact that its like the garden hose from hell, 100# of backpressure on a straight stream, a little less on a solid stream and its downright easy on fog pattern. Combine that 100# force with slimy gloves, slick floors, and being tired (all real life conditions) and you've got one hell of a different task than it looks to be. The nozzles are pretty easy, little technical things and nitpicking things when it comes to deploying the hoses the right way (how you lay out the hose in front of the entrance, the process for calling for water, the order in which you have to do things, and even how you pull it down off the engine, its racked a certain way to make it easier but there is still a lot of technique in doing it right.

Now its on to Forcible entry, Ventilation, and Power tools, the first real class where you stand a chance of maiming/killing yourself outright. Lecture was good, not all that boring and we actually learned why we do certain things, and some easier way to do stuff in the field. Cutting a hole in a roof, sounds stupid right? but its got a purpose. Fire is A) HOT! and B) makes a lot of smoke, both of them want to go up, so why not let them, cut a hole right over the fire and you've now let the heat out of the room, and you've given it a palce to go other than sideways and spreading. All pretty darned simple when you think about it. But, now you've got to get someone on the roof with a chainsaw, yup ON THE ROOF! with a CHAINSAW!

Here's the part that amazes me, a chainsaw is a loud dangerous looking tool, how then, is it possible to not have a built in amount of respect/fear of this thing. The way some people fling it around amazes me, some people this weekend almost lost legs/arms/heads this is gonna take some practice. I've used them before so i was a little more comfrotable than most but still had some issues to deal with.

The real fun this weekend was the Forcible Entry day. I've got a few pictures so i'll let them do a little bit of the talking. Our lead instructor got us access to a house someone was going to have demolished anyways, perfect! An opportunity to really practice breaking down doors, punching through walls, breaking out windows...all the fun stuff. We also got to get up on a real roof using a real roof ladder. This was a monster roof, a lot of people had a hard time cutting through it. But i got it done in good order and on to the next task. Our other stations were Hooking (pulling down ceilings and busting out windows), Breeching (punching holes in walls big enough to crawl through without bringing the wall down around you, oh and floors too, holes in floors are fun), Forcible entry (busting through doors in different ways, in, out, through, around) and then ... THE FINAL BREACH!!!

Our instructor picked a nice sturdy wall and said, ok 2 teams!!! BUST A HOLE AND GET THE "F" OUT!!!!

then this happened:

Jim in the Officer's Seat on the way there

Yup, tiny little holes in the side of the house, crawled through these in full gear. We had to MAKE these holes, that wall is cinder block on the inside with a brick veneer, the only things we had were a sledge and a haligan.

FUN FUN FUN

Seven years ago today...

2008-09-11T14:28:00.002-04:00

Seven years ago today I was sitting in the student lounge at the University of Maryland skipping Fluid Dynamics class like i ususally did. My friend Elizabeth comes in trying to find a TV that worked, evidently a plane had just hit the World Trade Center in NYC. Like everyone else i think to myself oh it must be one of those small one engine jobbers and its an accident. Then as soon as we get the TV working we see the first images of the tower, then the anchor comes on as a second plane slams into the tower. Now we know its not an accident. Students in class know nothing yet, why would they. People start filtering out of dorms to congregate at the union, on the mall, anywhere there were other people or TV's. Just as everyone is finding out about the twin towers, the campus police start coming around campus telling us that there is something going on in DC that we should return to our dorms and they will make an announcement abotu what is going on.

As we're returning to our dorms we see the column of smoke rising from DC. We have no clue just yet that the Pentagon has just been struck. The campus is only 8.5 Miles as the crow flies from the pentagon grounds.

I lost a couple friends that day, all either marines or army, and one who was a contractor working at the pentagon for just that day making a presentation. The room he was in was in the outer ring on the side where the plane struck.

That day was one of the reasons i joined the fire service, seeing the heroism and knowing that i can make a difference, a small one but one none the less.

NEVER FORGET!

NOT the best night ever

2008-09-10T16:54:00.002-04:00

Started doing testable evolutions tonight, first try through at pulling a crosslay off the engine out of the bucket. Textbook until i realized that i'd forgotten to don my scba completely and wasnt on air...automatic failure. At least this wasnt the actual test but rather test prep. Saving grace is I did it right the second time and in really good time.

We get through water supply and the instructors call the class early...uh oh!!!!

We get a talking to from our instructors for not having our hearts in the class...totally baffled by this as far as my personal effort, but can see the instructors point overall, there are some people in the class who need to step it up.

The most complicated part of class is coming up, how to confront the "problem children" in class without fracturing class unity.

Weekly update ... number... um... whatever!

2008-09-09T10:39:00.003-04:00

Ok been a while again, i suck at this blogging regularity thing...

Since my last post we've finished ladders, and moved on to hoses. Wheeee HOSES!!! I can feel the hurt!

We learned about coupling hoses, uncoupling hoses, draining hoses, charging hoses, carrying hoses, rolling hoses, unrolling hoses, nozzles, appliances, pumps, commands and all that jazz. I guess this is the meat and potatoes of the fire service, at least when it comes to suppression activities.

The last two days and the next two should be filled with fun and excitement ranging from you guessed it hoses to ... um hoses. Kinda monotonous and repetative but its all about muscle memory.

Not much to blog about yet other than you really don't realize how much backpressure these things create. Nearly threw a couple people across the room the first time they flowed water.

I'll post more later in the week when we've done more exciting stuff, tonight is testing evolution night so we'll see how people are doing.

...and the other shoe drops...

2008-09-09T10:35:00.000-04:00

shes right though... we are a sweaty bunch

See, i knew someone out there thought this way...

2008-09-04T08:48:00.002-04:00

Too bad its a cartoon character...

Addendum to When Rhino's Fly

2008-08-25T17:04:00.002-04:00

This is the 14 up a 35 that I mentioned in the last entry....

This is a photo of my friend Jeff, he was in the last class to go through academy.

When Rhino's Fly, and Other acts of Sheer Stupidity

2008-08-25T11:27:00.007-04:00

Since the last update we've begun (and recently finished) the ladders section of the fire academy. Learning about laddering a structure for access, roof access, egress, and rescue. Its more complicated than i'd realized. And finding out that fire department ladders really are very very different than homeowner ladders, both in construction and function. Oh, and damn can they get HEAVY, ok all aluminum construction, its a light metal, usually. But 180 pound ladders ... thats a beefy piece of equipment, and unless you've got a really good crew you wind up basically doing a three person raise with 2 people. So long story short i have aches and pains that have aches and pains and i think i've chipped a groove into my shoulder from lugging around the 35' extension ladders all weekend. At least there wasnt a church raise (50' ladder sticking straight up in the air balanced by 4 stay lines and 2"tormentor poles" and you climb up and sit on top to "build teamwork" ) and we don't have any bangor ladders (45'+ ladders that require up to 8 people to raise). The hardest ground ladder based skill we learned was definitely something affectionately referred to as the "14 up a 35", we have 35' extension ladders which are the largest extension ladders carried in my jurisdiction, and 14' roof ladders so called because they have hooks that will hold them onto the slanted surface of a roof. So as the name would suggest you carry the 14' ladder up the 35' ladder and place it on the roof while you're leg locked into the extension ladder. It's not THAT bad but that 25 pound roof ladder gets REALLY heavy about 1/3 of the way up, and keeping your balance on the 35' ladder while its bouncing and swaying and creaking and bouncing and oh yeah BOUNCING while you climb is excedingly difficult. Got that done, nearly barfed the first time doing that one. that was fun!!!

So come sunday and we're thinking we're going to have another difficult but not impossible day. Then we're informed that we're just going to go do some rescues out at the burn structure. We do a couple conscious and unconscious rescues, practice the pregnant lady carry and some drags, and its getting a little later on in the day so we're thinking we're going to break for lunch. We all kinda do a double take when we hear a jake brake and a diesel engine. Sure enough they had pulled a fast one on us, they had brought in the 105' straight stick aerial ladder. We knew we'd have to do it eventually, go up that monster ladder but not sunday, it was scheduled for this coming thursday. I don't think i was mentally prepared for this very well.

They put out the outriggers and give us a tour of the truck showing us all the capabilities and tools the county truck crews have. And then the most disastrous words of the day. "I guess we should put the stick up and have you guys climb." OH C**P!!!!

Luckily i had my camera with me so i've actually got photographic proof that me, the one probably most afraid of heights in the entire class made it all the way up. To tell you the truth it wasnt that bad, i mean it wasnt the most fun i;ve ever had but i wouldnt hesitate to try it again. I know now that they're not as wobbly as you would think. I'll stop blabbering now and show you all some pics that we took .

From left to right: Arnab, Chris, and lil' 'ol me as you can see not too excited about this whole thing.

Kevin at the top of the ladder, oh look, its the moon too!

Proof I made it, yup thats my tubby butt all the way at the top!

Made it back down safe!

Just for scale, thats Rahil at the top of the ladder, And Jim kneeling about 75' in front of the truck. Yeah its really F'ing high!

Sidelined & Back In Service

2008-08-21T16:00:00.003-04:00

Its been a while since my last entry, my appologies.

My last weekend of Search and Rescue went exceptionally well. We were able to finish our planned objectives before lunch. One of our classmates had been out doing something important like fixing submarines, and had missed some classes so the entire class volunteered to stay longer to help him catch up, an extra 4 cylinders and 5 evolutions, not too much work but a good afternoon of helping Dutchboy catch back up. 3rd out of 4 cylinders my partner and i were tasked with a primary search of the 2nd floor with another engine crew, we're to go left hand and engine 407 to go right hand. We get the exterior wall with no rooms so we're buzzed across that floor in no time. I come to a void in the floor, wound up being a "pit" down 2 floors, could have made a mess out of it. Tried to sound the floor and found the staircase down, much better idea to take the stairs than the express elevator down. On the way down my partner hits low air alert (vibra-lert for those with Scott-Air experience) meaning he's got about 900-1000 pounds of air left, enough for about 9 minutes of work at the most. Somehow he gets lost on his way out of the building despite my yelling to him that he's outside and doesnt need to be on air. He's off re-finding side baker of the building. Oh well, i figure the instructor is going to let him just run out of air and panic thinking he's still inside. Blah blah blah, well he's down to about 200 pounds of air when i hear those wordsi don't like so much, BUDDY BREATHE AND GET OUT THE WAY YOU CAME IN. I've still got about 2200 pounds of air left how i had so much left i'll have no idea, i know Ahab (my partner) doesnt smoke or anything but he sucks air like none other.

So we get our buddy breather hoses out and connect up, i'm still oriented to the building despite the blackout masks we're wearing so i know where the landing and the staircase are. I head in all the while telling Ahab to follow me, i'm the one who's got the air and i know 100% where my stairs aere and where my egress is. I head in and up the stairs, thats when i hear Ahab scuttling around on the bottom floor, not where he's supposed to be, one last yell to get up on the stairs and to follow my voice then WHAM!!!!! I'm flying down the stairs and in the process twisting my ankle because my boot got stuck. Well i feel it wrench, feel the pain so i just go down and yell to my instructor that my ankle is for s**t and that i need out. Long story short i come to find out Ahab had lost his way, decided he knew where the stairs were and thought he WAS following me. the buddy breather had gotten taught around the railing because he had passed the stairs, and instead of stopping and trying to figure out what he was "caught on" he turned around and grabbed the EBSS hose and yanked on it, in the process flinging me down the stairs. Big no-no, so now i'm out for an undetermined period of time with a bum ankle.

**SIDE NOTE, LEARN GOOD SPLINTING TECHNIQUE AND KEEP IN PRACTICE!!! the emt's that splinted my ankle did a wonderful job of imobilizing my leg for a tib-fib injury but left my ankle flopping in the wind. oh well!!***

Trip to the hospital, xrays, a trip to the orthopedist and the occupational health center, i'm on crutches for a week with an achilles "strain" not too bad, but enough that the doc wants no weight on it for a week. So here's me looking like a baby giraffe flopping around on crutches. Good stuff!

I miss my first day of ladders, which i'll make up this weekend. But all in all the class learned not to break their partners and to always maintain situational awareness. I guess its ok if they learned something, but man did i want to smash Ahab's head in for a couple days, i thought i was going to get kicked out of class because he didn't know what was going on around him .

Thats pretty much it for the weekend. but I'm now clear for duty and all that jazz so its all good.

Fun times on tuesday as the instructor just plain didn't show up for class, no clue where he was so the class just went to Friday's and "bonded" over wings and dinner.

Tonight we get 2 nights worth of building construction and a good naptime lecture. This weekend is the last weekend of ladders, and we get to do the 14' up a 35' extension ladder. I'll post pictures later but this drill has me pooping my pants.

Next week we have the Aerial Climb and i get to climb a 95' tower ladder and transition the bucket, so we're absolutely messing ourselves over that as a whole in the class. No one seems to be a fan of heights.

Last weekend of S&R...

2008-08-15T12:51:00.002-04:00

Ok tomorrow is the last day of Search and Rescue Training, and as usual i'm in my "why the f**k am i doing this phase that i get in every friday about lunchtime. Oh well, can't quit now the really mentally tasking part is almost over, its not physically going to get any easier but hell, it can't get much worse.

The one thing i'm not looking forward to is tomorrow they said they are going to ramp up the emergency procedures on SCBA, which means messing with our air supply which always stresses me out A LOT. Like i said, Oh well, whatcha gonna do. Just gotta go with it.

I finished this week with flying colors, we did a "rope tying relay" in the spirit of the olympics, we had two teams, each with a charged hose line, a dry hose line, a pickhead axe, a pike pole, a rotary saw, and a ladder. Each one set on the ground in order. We had to proceed down the line and tie each oen and prep it for hoisting. I got the fastest split time of the day, 4:00 flat. It was good to finally be really good at something, I'm kinda in the middle of the pack when it comes to keeping my cool. I still have some minor freakouts when it comes to my air supply, i'm ok being in the dark again, but when they start messing with my air i might lose it again.

Moving on will be interesting, still 2 weeks away from the aerial climb, i've gotten some good tips on how not to freak out, but i'm sure i will, its inevitable, I HATE HEIGHTS!!!!!!!!

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

2nd Weekend at Fire Academy

2008-08-11T11:07:00.002-04:00

Well thus concludes my second week in the fire academy, feeling not as bad as i could but not as good as i'd hoped. My body aches, but i'm in good spirits about the whole process. At this point we're getting to the end of our Search and Rescue segment of class and so passes that so passes the most mentally draining segment of class. The high stress environments, the blackout masks, the yelling, at least for a little while. I'm getting to thepoint where i'm drowning out a lot of the yelling and the banging and the screaming, even blacked out the head comes up you start looking around even though you can't see, your movements become much more deliberate, the tool swings become more of a feel than an all out swing, you have a much better feeling of how much of the room has been searched, and you begin to communicate a lot better with teammates and other crews.

I learned that i can do a lot more than i thought i could, fit my body places i didnt think i could especially with an SCBA on. I know that there's things i need to improve. I know that i need to work on keeping calm when i come upon a new challenge.

This coming week is Utility Rope & Knots, low stress classroom lessons plus practicals off air in a low stress environment. Should be a good week, a good recoup before one more day of search and rescue then its off to ladders and forcible entry.

5 Down, 61 Left to go!!!

2008-08-06T16:11:00.002-04:00

Ok ... 5 class days down, only 61 left until i can call myself a firefighter.

There's really only one class that i'm messing myself over, thats the aerial climb. We'll get one of the county pieces Out of service for the afternoon and have them stage up at the academy and we'll climb the stick. I'm kinda positive that i know i definitely hate heights, so this is gonna be tricky.....

My body is staging a revolt!

2008-08-04T12:23:00.002-04:00

Ok, so here i am after just 4 days in fire school. Worn out, sore neck, a raging cold/cough. What am i doing to myself? Oddly enough i'm looking forward to pretty much everything except the aerial ladder climb, especially not after the pictures that DM posted on her blog. Wow am i afraid of heights, but...balls to the wall gentlemen/ladies....balls to the wall.

SO far we've done, SCBA training, TONS of 2 minute drills. Lots of blackout mask work. I absoltuely despise being compressed into confined spaces but i'm slowly getting over it, slowly realizing what i can make my body do. We did confined space exits yesterday and i can only imagine what it looked like from the outside, probably some sort of alien baby birth, my big blubbery butt squeezing out this tiny little opening in the wall.

This coming week is a little break after the first rush of practicals, then next weekend starts search and rescue techniques, then on to ladders... mmm mmm good!

I'll write more when i get my laptop back up and running at home and i'm not blogging on the company dime.

Day 1: PPE/Firefighter Safety

2008-07-30T13:25:00.003-04:00

Well, day 1 wasnt so bad. Just a few donning and doffing drills and a quick but boring lecture. Its a wierd experience overall. Being a small community of volunteers i'm pretty comfortable with most of the instructors, seeing them around and on calls and at functions, now having to call them "Instructor Blahdiblah" or "Sir" is just a little strange. I know its completely neccessary and goes with the territory, but its just an odd dichotomy.

Plus i'm trying to finish up my precepting at the same time i'm in academy....

I know... boring first day ... SUE ME!

Sometimes i'm just amazed....

2008-07-29T13:36:00.002-04:00

at the human condition, what some people have sunk to. Or what some people consider neccessary in the course of their daily lives.

Just a thought for right now, i'll talk to that more later.

First, as some of you may know I was released as a preceptee for ambulance officer just recently. My only issue is that today starts my ProBoard FF I/II academy through the county. So i've been taking any and every opportunity to put up a shift as OIC recently. Usually i hate to give up my friday nights but hey, one night isnt going to kill me. I put up a shift with our Operation Chief as my driver and our station president as my third set of hands. Its a normal slowish night, one dehydrated baseball player with leg cramps, and then .... quiet....which, to tell you the truth is kinda the norm at our station recently. Being only the second time i've ridden the seat to a call i think i did pretty damned well, the CAD was handled quite well, we arrived on scene in good order, radio traffic was professional and well stated. I'd give myself an 8/10 on the precall. Get on scene assess the patient get him in the back of the unit take a good set of vitals and yep, just as i thought everything is good except for his hydration. He'd been outside playing baseball all day, didnt remember the last time he had something to drink and didn't remember the last time he needed to use the restroom. Just a simple transport to the hospital of his choice and then its back home for what we hope is the usual quiet night at Company X. Pick a bunk, pick up a good book and settle in for the evening..... zzzzzzzzzzzzzz....snore...zzzzzzzz....snore.....

HONK HONK BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPP... the tones drop at 0248. Engine 30, Engine 2, Medic 2, Ambulance 2 respond to the local hole in the wall divebar for a stabbing. HUH?!?!?!? what? who where? Oh, ok.... lets go... i add us on to the call and out the bay doors we go, unsure exactly whats going on, this place closes at midnight, has for the past 50 years. So whatever is going on can't be 100% kosher. Luckily its directly down the street from the station so we're on scene in about 40 seconds. We stage since the po-po had just arrived themselves. We're cleared in, and we find the victim soaked in blood, he'd been given a "second smile" from clavicle to clavicle. Blood everywhere, ytou could see it pumping out of his carotid, mmmm tastey, you could smell the irony gamey smell of the blood hanging in the air. The vic speaks no english and none of us speak any usable spanish. Wonderful. Well i give up my driver, move my third to driver and let both ALS providers and our Volunteer BLS provider stay in the back to keep this dude alive on the way to the hospital. So much for sleepy little town. Evidently it wound up being gang related and was one of 4 such incidences that night in the general vicinity. Well, i know we got there promptly and found the man alive, he left alive, and we delivered him alive, score one for the small town vollies. GO US!!!!!!!!

Back home to sleep!

JUUUUUST drifting off to sleep.... HONK HONK BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPP!!!!!!!!!! Tones drop again! We can't get a call to save our lives usually and both night's i've ridden as OIC we've gotten 3+ calls. Oh well, we don't need sleep!

Dispatched for an 82YOM with high fever, vomitting, and incontinence. Pretty average BLS type stuff, figure its just pick the dude up change his clothes and get him to the hospital for some quick meds. We roll up and this poor gentleman's wife has cleaned him, changed his diaper, tried to get him situated in bed so we can pick him up and he starts vomitting again. I get in there and ask the third to take a full set of vitals while i grab a temp and check some other things. 104* pink and completely dry, still vomitting, i confer with my chief who is my aide preceptor and we upgrade the call to ALS, really the only thing i would have done differently is pack his underarms and groin and the back of his neck to cool off his core. But hindsight is always 20/20. The medic's get there and determine he's on the verge of septic shock from surgery he'd had (yes we knew about the surgery, got a good history from his wife). Got a line in him pushed saline, got him rehydrated and last we heard he was on serious antibiotics and still in the hospital.

Well things might get a little more exciting in this little corner of the blogosphere, i'll have a lot of good recruit school stories staring tonight.

Talk to ya'll later!!!

Who's the Boss????

2008-07-18T15:02:00.002-04:00

No not Tony Danza, ME!!!!

Yup, first night officially riding the seat on a shift, our deputy chief was confident enough in my skills that he rode as my driver, he's pretty selective about who he rides with. So! All in all a good night, nothing too crazily interesting but we did get three calls.

First call came out while we were at dinner, 2nd due BLS so we got the engine from the 1st due with their medic, they showed up just before us. Found a wonderful gentleman sitting in his kitchen cheif complaint "I can't control my arms" ... eh pretty mundane, he knew what it was related to just a little scared about the effects, he had spinal stenosis of both the lumbar and cervical sections of his spine, he'd been in the hospital recently for the same type of thing. I did pretty good, probably could stand to be a little more assertive with my turnover report at the hospital. Rather than let the nurse ask for each bit of info, be one step ahead and feed her the info as shes getting to that part of the report.

Next call just happened to be in the middle of no where, it was in the one area in our 3rd duethat our map books don't cover, isnt in the GPS, and didnt have its address marked on the street at both entrances. So we flew right past it the first time. Wound up being more of a public service but since we had to bandage her arm we got to do a refusal of transport. So all in all quite boring from a blogging perspective but i covered a lot of different possibilities in the paperwork, saw a couple different call types, interfaced with career staff quite well if i do say so myself, and can honestly say i'm comfortable being in charge. Got the stamp of approval from the Deputy Chief too, said he'd ride with me again... a sign of trust i'd guess.

Alrighty then, i'll try and come up with some more interesting stuff soon, but i'm limiting the number of shifts i'm riding in the next week since i'll be in the Fire Academy 4 days a week 10 hours a day for 22 weeks starting on July 29th. I think i'll have to squeeze at least a few EMS shifts in there so my skills don't get rusty over those 5 months.

You'll be getting a lot of posts about fire school coming up, i know it will bore most of the EMS type readers, but hey its my blog and i'll post if i want to!

VERY SAD DAY

2008-07-02T10:11:00.000-04:00

i log into google reader as is habit, first thing i do every day at work. Pop up my new posts window and start clicking through.

To my dismay i've found that Epi's blog has gone private??????? gal dernit!!!

2008-07-02T10:04:00.002-04:00

Ok, so, i know this is starting to sound like a rollcall of things Odie has done. well right now thats the mode i'm in. Getting myself squared away as far as certifications and qualifications before i disappear into the bowels of the fire academy for 5.5 months.
Passed my EVOC class with flying colors, second fastest time of the day, zero cones hit. I'm proud of myself as i did this in a unit i'd never driven before, different airbrakes, different steering box, etc etc etc. It's quite disconcerting driving a new vehicle sometimes. But, i'm now in the pipeline for my EVOC II release, just 9 more hours of drive time, a roads test and i'll be good to go for emergency responses.
Next, oooooooh drumroll please. Some doofus put me in charge, thats right i'm now a probationary OIC for our BLS unit. Yeah, someone thought it was a bright idea to let Odie ride the seat. I guess its a good thing, i've worked my butt off to get here this fast. I realize i've got lots of learning to do, but i've put in tons of hours on both the BLS and ALS units to better my skills. Now its my time to prove that all this learnification has dones its wurkz. I want to ride at least 10 or so shifts before the end of the month to get some under my belt as OIC.
Been busting my hump trying to get back into good enough shape for fire academy, RUNNING stairs instead of the leisurely climb i'm used to. Doing 2 minute drills at the station, farmers walk with kettle bells. All the fun stuff. I plan on losing between 30 and 50 pounds by the end of fire school, which will be good for me. Not that i'm not fit now, i can get up and run a competative 5k time but i'd like to be skinnier, makes it easier to slip into the turnout gear:-p
No big calls since the fire from the last post, just your basic BLS here and there, some bloody poop, a little coffee ground emesis, some C-diffy stinkers, but nothing huge. Although my streak of obvious deformity injury calls has successfully remained intact. Tennis player tripped over his own foot and dislocated his other foot, twisted out of alignment about 80* it was a great injury. The ALS unit called for us to transport so they could go back in service, under normal circumstance i wouldn't complain about that but the patient was severely dehydrated, rated his pain as a 10 out of 10 (which i know is suspect at best). I would have liked to see the medics start a line get the guy some fluids and maybe .5 of morphine, just something to take the edge off so he wasnt as much of a cranky bastard. I understand the pain was bad, but we were literally 5 minutes from the hospital and he started bitching that we were transporting priority 1 lights and sirens to the hospital for his dislocated ankle (yes, good distal pulses, no nausea no LOC) so yeah had to find a policitcally sensitive way to tell him his injury was non life threatening and we can't go running intersections for every BLS emergency out there.

Ok, well i have to go be productive at my real job ... time to go play with trains!

Out of Sync...

2008-06-15T12:59:00.003-04:00

Whew, that was one of those posts you go back and read later and wonder what in the world you were thinking or what altering substance you were on when you wrote it.

I was just purging. I know that things like that happen, but it was just more of an emotional experience than i think i expected. I'd seen plenty of DOA's plenty of MI's that didnt make it things like that. But running up to the front door with the grandson standing in the yard yelling "YOU HAVE TO SAVE MY GRANDMOTHER, SHE WOKE US UP AND I DON'T KNOW WHERE SHE WENT AFTER THAT!" just changed the whole temperment of the situation, then not being able to do anything for her. Just put the cap on a not so great week anyways.

Well, on to more exciting things. This weekend is my EVOC practicals, then i'll have filled out the requirements for becoming an ambulance aide. Officer in charge, kinda has a good ring to it. A small step towards department leadership roles. I never thought when i stopped by the station to apply for an admin position that i would be in the chute for a firefighter slot, and this excited about being released to ride the seat on the BLS unit and drive the ALS unit.

I've also made steps towards getting my EMT-P, I got recommendation letters from the medic officer on our C-Shift unit, Another from the Engine Medic on B-shift. Honestly i don't know what either one said, the requirements of my continuing ed program are that my "recommendation/evaluation" letters be delivered in a sealed envelope so the candidate cannot see what is on the letter. My review came down last week, and all i can say without tooting my own horn is "WOW! I didnt know i had progressed that much, no clue that i had made that type of impression on the career guys/girls at the station". Long story short is my company is going to be paying the majority of the way through my EMT-P program.

Also, i'm on the 24 month plan. 24 months of driving extra extra safe so i can finally get through the career application process. I've passed the physical requirements 10x over, i can do that test with my eyes closed now. I can pass the poly in my sleep, its just my damned right foot thats keeping me out of the department. Too many moving violations on my record. 24 months until i have 0 points left on my license. SO, we'll be on the lookout for that shift from VFF to FF.

Its sunday again, and that must mean a night with the blue hair batallion. ITS BINGO!!!!!!! so, i have to go get ready, write more later.

Sorry, no excuses....

2008-06-13T12:59:00.002-04:00

I intentionally took a break from the blogosphere, i was letting things start to irritate me. Its never a good sign. But now I'm back, yippee whoohoo and all that jazz.

A lot has happened since my last post.

I'm only a couple days away from being released as ambulance officer, I've taken my EVOC operators courses (spent last night driving our ALS unit). And i've been accepted to the Fire Academy... yeah me! Ok well back to the important stuff.

I'm encouraged to write this post more as a vent and purge than anything else, so i appologize for the lack of Medic 61 style panache, or the humor of Epijunky. its just not gonna happen with this one. Think of it as a cyber post traumatic stress debriefing....the LITE version. So, as usualy i do my thursday night at the station. Luckily i get there early enough to chip in for dinner, the engine driver on B-shift is one hell of a cook. We got pepper crusted london broil with bernaise sauce, cooked carrots, green beans and rice pilaf. So good!!! Well thats where the fun for the evening ends.

Our usual medic Lieutenant leaves on annual leave like he usually does, and we get in a new guy. New guy seems pretty chill so i keep on the unit. Unfortunately the next 2 hours are spent switching over the unit from a reserve to our normal frontline medic. Thats a hell of a task, 400 some odd items, all need to be checked, cleaned and switched from the county reserve to our normal POS. BUT, the career driver actually threw me the keys and said, you're the one in training, you drive!

I was flabberghasted. First, new guy in the seat, who's he know me from? I mean to trust me with the keys and to drive them around, pretty cool. I know for those out there who are either career or work private thats not a big deal. But to work as a volunteer and to finally breech the career volunteer divide (more on that later) ispretty cool.

Get back to the station in one piece without paperwork which must mean my driving wasnt that bad. And just as we're settling in to hit the hay a call comes out for a lady with a broken ankle, we add on our BLS ambulance and actually wind up turning the call over to them. It was a patient that our engine and medic had seen earlier that day. She had a double fracture of the ankle. The hospital had fixed her up and sent her home, she got overzealous and tried to walk/hobble to the bathroom and fell. re"broke" her ankle, and was in some pretty serious pain. FINALLY, some sleep, crawl into bed just in time for the BLS guys to get back, the tones drop for them again. 85YOM general "feel me bad" nastified cold symptoms, productive cough, ronchii and rails. Then just as they are getting back for the second time, the tones drop for a house fire.

Video here....

0430 -- the house is 4 blocks from the station, 40 second en route time. So in the time it took to call 911, dispatch us, and the 40 second transit, the house was fully involved, 40' flames etc. We were informed via CAD that there were victims trapped, 2 of them were out of the house within a couple minutes of our arrival. We set up to wait for another victim. the mutual aide unit from the city gets to the door and all i hear is that magic word on the radio Victim. Victim coming out side alpha through the front door. shes out and up on our cot, pulseless and apneic. Shes got burns to her nostrils, burns to her lips. We get her in the back of the med unit get a line, get a monitor on her, nothing...... CPR....still nothing...4 or 5 stacks and they pronounce. Shes not workable. there was nothing but pure asystole, not even a jump.

We wind up with the code 4 transport into another county because our local morgue is on body reroute, the fridge is all full up.

Get back to the fire scene in time to jump over to the volunteer canteen and keep the guys watered and fed for the duration of the incident.

Well i figure since i'm not making much sense anyways, i'll just cut it off here for now with.... as much as it pains me to lose a patient, it pains me even more to know that little things make such a big difference, and to know that she died probably trying to save her loved ones and her dog. Well she didnt die in vain. It's still hard though .

Yeah i'm making about as much sense as a japanese art noire film while on peyote, so i'm going to sign off.

I'll blog more once our PIO has cleared the total info packet and even post some pics.

Ho Hum, so bored

2008-04-02T13:29:00.002-04:00

Yup, not much going on 'round these parts recently.

Although there are some good funny moments coming out of the firehouse. I'm afraid they might be "you had to be there moments"

Here goes anyways.

Our B-Shift Medic Lieutenant, we'll call him "Baby" because thats what he calls everyone else, must have been having an off tour, he'd been all over the map the previous day, been held over for forced overtime and only gotten 12 hours off in the last 60. So needless to say he's probably a little on the groggy side.

Earlier in the day the medic unit had responded to a call at a restaurant in town. Said restaurant has one wall that is entirely paneled with mirrors. Lt. Baby, walks into the restaurant sees "another firefighter" standing on the other side of the room, so he walks over to see what the deal is. Gets closer to the "other firefighter" who must have something to say because he's walking towards Lt. Baby. Just when they're about to shake hands BOOOOOOOM, Lt. Baby walks smack into the mirror. Good god i don't think i've laughed that hard in a long time. As if that wasnt funny enough, Lt. walks around the other side of the wall just to make sure we're not pulling a prank on him. Just checking if there was anything on the otehr side. As if that wasn't funny enough. We stop back at the station to grab some dinner. Get banged out on an uncontrolled bleeding call. Little baby on the north side of town had decided to make a snack out of a metal coat hanger and gotten it lodged in his sublingual soft palate. Sounds like a good call eh? Sure, haul tuchas across town to find the house because the main artery road to that side of town is closed going north, so we have to thread the needle and cut through the back neighborhoods of our district to get there. Find the house and i grab the BLS kit out of the back storage compartment. As i'm turning around from grabbing the BLS kit all i hear is BOOOOOOOOOOM THUD. Lt. Baby had gone charging up the hill instead of taking the long set of stairs leading from the driveway. Somehow in his bold lunge forward he neglected to notice the glass storm door that was still closed. I'll concede the fact that this was probably the cleanest door glass i'd ever seen in my life, but for the second time that day Lt. Baby had given himself a goose-egg on his head (henceforth referred to as a hematomato, in honor of Big D, everyone's favorite volunteer mother).

The rest of the night was hematomato free, but my usual cloud of death held true, call goes out as injuries from a fall, big guy, easy 3 bills fell over and was probably dead before he hit the ground but he was so big his wife couldnt roll him over to check breathing or try to find a pulse. Sorry ma'am, i just hope you don't know what 10-61 means.

That and our EMS captain totally "destroying" a bathroom to the point where he had to leave, i mean its gross base humor but what else are we gonna laugh at. It was possibly the funniest thing i've seen in a while, save a 25year veteran firefighter plastering his head against a mirror and a glass door.

Approved for fire school

2008-03-18T15:53:00.001-04:00

Well its all starting to come to fruition, our training officer approved me for fire academy yesterday.

I know its a small step on a long road but now my name isnt just on the interested list, i've been approved for one of the biggest challenges of my life i think.

Here's hoping and waiting!!!!

CPAT, YOU'VE BEEN OWNED!!!!

2008-03-15T14:07:00.004-04:00

Ok, I have no idea what my nerves were all about. I destroyed the CPAT test this morning.

For those of you who have no idea what i'm talking about please refer to this post.

I talked to the guys at our HR department for the county and they are going to count this as my CPAT for career application as well. Thats one good thing.

Second, did i mention i decimated this course? Fattest guy there, one of the fastest time. Skinny, lean mofo's that look they could up and run a marathon were falling like flies.

My buddy and I were the only 2 that passed out of our group of volunteers.

10:20=failure
8:21 = Odie owned that exam!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now i just have to stop by the logistics warehouse and get my new gear and sit patiently for school to start!!!

Someone thinks i'm "special"

2008-03-13T23:44:00.002-04:00

*crosseyed glare into nothingness* THE SNOZZBERRIES TASTE LIKE SNOZZBERRIES*drooooooooool*

oh hey there, you'll have to pardon my less than stellar mental capacity at the moment, i'm all nasaly again, i guess i didn't totally kick this flu bug and it's started to rot my brain, starting at the forman magnum and working its way out. Basically the hole in my brain is getting bigger by the second.

OK, on to the point of this post.

Today when i trot my lazy butt out to the mailbox there's an envelope from the Mayor's office....first reaction OH CRAP DID I PAY MY CAR STICKER THIS YEAR???? (in the great commonwealth of VA there are town taxes on cars...durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr)

Yeah i paid.....

I open it up and its some goofy letter from the Mayor's office that reads

Dear Odie,

Congratulations! You have been nominated as an outstanding volunteer to receive recognition for your service to the community.

Your spirit of volunteerism is an essential part of the tradition of our Town and county and is appreciated by those of us who realize the time and sacrifices you must make to assist others.

I hope you and your family can join us at the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Tuesday April 8th at 2000hrs in the Council Chambers at the Town Hall so your unselfish efforts can be recognized by our members and guests. Following the program a reception will be held. Please call to RSVP.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Mayor

WOW!!!! Seems a local councilwoman and our department president nominated me for an award!!

I'm actually floored, the way i see it I'm one of the more maladjusted people in my community. I sit in a near windowless firehouse with a bunch of other sick and twisted freaks waiting around for the tones to drop letting us know someone has hurt themselves or is having the worst day of their lives. We then proceed to run out the door like a rabid squirrel foaming for a fresh walnut. We drive around in our fancy whoo whoo blinky blink mobile, then go back to the firehouse to do it all again ... WE ALL NEED HELP

Yeah I should really work on accepting compliments a little more graciously shouldn't I???

Sorry EE

2008-03-13T23:38:00.002-04:00

My last post in no way denegrates the wonderful, the exciting, the soon to be MRS!!! Emergency Em. It just so happened that you posted about how a lot of young emt's and high school EMT's are less than stellar.

I re-read my post and decided it sounded too accusitory but didnt want to edit it because people had already commented.

I just wanted to make it clear that for every bad volunteer or high school trained EMT there are those out there (i'd like to lump myself in this group) that do care, that want to give the best possible patient care.

SO, SORRY EE.....you're still awesome, keep on keepin' on sista!

I'm still alive...

2008-03-13T11:25:00.002-04:00

well mostly. Yeah i know i havnt posted anyting in a really long time. But i decided to take a little while off. I'm pretty much at the top of my department for hours committed save the few normal exceptions.

I've taken the time to read a lot. Do a lot of self study.

Emergency Em posted a little while back on her blog that 95% of volunteer EMT "SUCK!". I take comments like that to heart, and try to force myself into that 5% of at least decent EMT's. Now I realize that i'll never be as highly trained as the career EMT-P's I ride with now, at least not while i'm a volunteer in this county, but my little bit of extra reading and learning I feel improves my patient care and knowledge base so that i can buck the trend for lack lustre vollies.

I've been taking online exams on stripchart interpretation. I'm going to be attending a lecture at our station on 12-lead interpretation. Not that i will be doing any of that as a basic, but just so i can have half a clue as to what is going on when i am looking at the medic charts. I'm also looking into EMT-I/P courses at our local community college (which oddly enough is where a lot of the career guys get trained). The internship process in my county is a little too cumbersome to take on as a volunteer with my work schedule, but the extra classroom time certainly can't hurt.

I've also started logging my calls, going back and reading the ppcr narratives and writing down lists of good things and things i could have done better or mistakes i could have avoided. I'm still learning and i realize that. Right now i have a little issue with "BIG EYE" where I tend to focus on the chief complaint a little too much. Not to the detriment of any of my patients, YET. But i've identified this as a weakness so i'm aware of it and do think about it while i'm on calls.

On a little bit of a less self depricating tangent, Floody and I are taking the CPAT test this saturday so we can both go to fire academy coming up in july. I've been working for this for a couple months now, would have PWNED it back in january had i not tweaked my quad like the night before and spent the night in a cloud of IcyHot fumes.

Well, just wanted to shoot out a quick note to anyone who actually reads this to let them know what i've been up to.

Volunteer Company Ops Simulations

2008-03-03T13:56:00.001-05:00

Went to the Company Ops drill over the weekend. Good stuff.

Ran a bunch of simulated calls with one of the county's aid instructors. Got some good experience, decided i needed a bunch more calls before i was comfortable leading a crew. Although it was a higher stress environment knowing i was being judged on my care, not just being able to do it.

Ran a couple housefires with smoke inhalation victims, a car crash, and a traumatic CPR.

Good learning experience.

Killer weekend,...literally, lots of dying

2008-03-03T13:13:00.002-05:00

Mostly of braincells from coughing so much, there's this darned chest cold/flu thingy going around. Seems like everyone is suffering from it.

Rode my first couple nights as a real EMT last week. Finally got to do stuff on medic calls. Caught a couple good ones on thursday night. Night started off fairly benign with the usual workout, then had some awards dinner for the local high school's robotics team. Evidently I did something to help them, i was just having fun and came up with a few suggestions for them. They gave the dept. a neat plaque and a thank you card. Rushed back to the station after the dinner to sign on to the medic unit. There's nothing like the realization that you can actually LEGALLY cal yourself an EMT now to get your blood going about running calls.

Get signed onto the unit, get my gear stowed and not too long after that get toned out on a BLS call for a child choking. On the way in it gets upgraded to an ALS call. 11MOM was chewing on a coat hanger (the type where the hook is actually a flattened loop so its not deathly sharp at the end) and got it stuck in his sub-lingual soft palatte LOTS of bleeding. Got upgraded to ALS because the dad said the bleeding was "uncontrolled". But, by the time we got there the hanger had been removed. Bleeding had stopped but its such a sensitive area and babies will put just about anything in their mouth that our medic driver thought it was best for the baby to go to the hospital to see if the wound requiered stitches or not. Man that little baby bled a lot, or at least it looked like it, not enough to worry about shock but dad's shirt and mom's white vest are certainly stained beyond repair.

Next we get toned out about 1030 for a possible stroke but its WAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY over there, like 2 districts away. Whats that all about, i know the volunteer ambulance for that district was in service and the ocuntty didnt look THAT busy on the CAD display that there were no medical transport units between us and that call. Oh, well. We get there and there's classic signs of stroke. Facial droop, difficulty speaking, lack of movement in the left arm and left sided weakness generally. Go through the Cincinnatti stroke scale (all by myself) on the way to the hospital to reevaluate to see if its a TIA, or a real chance at a bleed. Not TIA but not mega-bleed. We get her to the hospital and the stroke nurse meets us, she must have been some sort of self styled miracle worker because simply by touching the patient's forehead. Oh well, when we dropped her off she was no worse than when we found her so we did our job, and damned well if you ask me considering response and transport times. We're back at the station by like 11:30 so all in all 48 minutes on that call wasnt horrible timing.

About 0230 the tones drop again for ANOTHER BLS emergency, injuries from a fall. By the time our sleep asses had been dragged forth and made it to the unit the call was upgraded to ALSE and made a CPRF (fire unit: CPR event) the wife couldnt find a pulse or tell if he was breathing and he was too big for her to roll over and check. Our engine and medic are both called so we roll up just behind the engine and by the time i had the cot up the walk the engine crew and our liutenant are both up the stairs checking the guy. Our cot was acting up that night and i couldnt get it to go down to the loading position. oh well just one more thing to get irritated about. The call went OK at best, a lot of stuff we could have done better in hindsight, nothing that affected patient care, he had passed away before we were onscene, there was nothing more we could have done for him than we did. I attract dead people evidently. It was a shame that the wife didnt know CPR, he was still warmish when we got there, had she initiated CPR there is a chance he'd have made it, not MUCH of a chance but a chance none the less.

AGAIN DO YOURSELVES A FAVOR TAKE THE 8 HOURS AND GET YOU AND YOUR FAMILY CPR CERTIFIED AND IF YOU HAVE THE TIME TAKE A FIRST RESPONDER EMT CLASS...

a perfect example of a call where if the caller was able to start CPR we might havebeen able to do more for the patient.

PASSED!!!

2008-02-26T06:25:00.001-05:00

That is all.....yup pretty much it.

My entire little band of merry studiers passed their EMT-B exams.

Congrats to FancyPants, ReeNee, Scotty 2 Hotty, that other guy, and Knuckles.

Good times people!!!!

Tap... tap....tap tap.... tap tap tap tap tap tap tap

2008-02-25T12:56:00.002-05:00

Thats the noise my pencil is making as i click it against the desk fervently refreshing to VOEMS page waiting for results to be posted. I thought I could be more patient than this. I just want to know if i can start logging calls officially and get on my wait to becoming an aide in training.

Nothing much more to report.

Riding tonight, hope there's at least one call. Not sure if i'm gonna stick on the ambulance all night or move to the engine/medic for the overnight.

I THINK i passed...

2008-02-22T13:45:00.002-05:00

Well "Knuckles" (my partner) and I were first out of the test scenarios yesterday, meaning we either failed quickly or did really well and passed quickly. Good news is that "Applesauce" (he kinda just randomly started saying applesauce last week and i really can't think of a better alias for him) and his partner seemed confident. And "FancyPants" and "ReeNee" seem to be good also.

Thats 100% for out little study group in terms of confidence in passing.

Now comes the hard part, waiting for our names to show up on the state registry.

Fire School starts in July, CPAT test comes up in March, gotta improve my time. We'll see how that goes 24 more days to get ready.

Next small step is EVOC in may, and getting signed off as a "THIRD" so i can start my AIT training to become an aide. Also i just want to get my EVOC finished because I have started to ride the medic a good bit, and driving for them just sounds like a whole shit ton of fun.

FINALS!!!!!!!!

2008-02-21T15:16:00.000-05:00

Tonight is the Virginia State Office of Emergency Medical Services exam session. Its the 100 question test of doom followed by 2 practicals stations, my partner stopped by last night and we talked our way through the scenarios last night. I'm pretty confident but i want to avoid overconfidence because its easy to forget the simple stuff if you walk around puffing your chest out.

Drama Drama Drama Drama Drama

2008-02-21T15:13:00.001-05:00

WOW, if i had known that being in the VFD would be like going back to highschool i might never have joined. The amount of fingerpointing and yackity yacking about other people is amazing.

Its ok though, some people just have to move past it and not let it bother them.

I got thrown under the bus on a few issues but i'm just gonna let it ride. I'm going to take the high road and just make sure my farts smell like roses for the next couple months and maybe it'll highlight the other person's faults a little more.

Long day at the station...

2008-02-19T13:46:00.002-05:00

Spent the first half of the president's day volunteering bonanza on the BLS unit. Got relocated to a station on the outskirts of our county expecting a great heaping pile of NOTHING. I guess it was one of those feast or famine kinda days, because i had just finished my 3rd set in the gym when we get toned out to an accident with injury, possibly trapped. Head on Pickup truck vs. sedan. The two in the Pickup are totally greentag, the lady in the car is slightly more than a few ouchies, infact shes almost medic worthy but we do a quasi-KED quasi-Rapid extraction on her, get her out of the car with the help from the guys on the rescue squad. Man i love that piece, its gotta be hella fun to ride a rescue. We get her out and in just enough time to hand her off to the newly arrived ALS unit, so we can go attend to the 2 greenies from the pickup, nothing more than some pre-existing neck pain and a little tiny laceration on the other dude's finger. Predictably both sign refusals, the creme de la creme of modern society these two.

We head back to our detail station, sit for another couple minutes and the tones drop again, we're off to another accident with injury possibly trapped. The kicker was its all the way back in our home area (2nd due actually) an EASY 15 minute response time in good weather in mid day traffic. We get waved off literally 500 feet from the accident. No one requesting transport, man i was amped up for that one.

oh well!!! We get back from the lunch shop and the in house medic is back at the detail station so we call our uniformed duty officer and let them know we're headed back "home". Quiet for the rest of the day. But two SOLID calls especially for teh BLS side of things in our jurisdiction. We wait for our volunteer relief to get there andi switch over to the ALS unit for the night.
Here's where things get interesting. Not too exciting for the first hour or so but then we're just settling in and getting ready to set up my bunk when HONK HONK BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! Toned out on a good call. All my training paid off last night, helped save a truly sick person. Sick in the head and sick in her body. We were sitting around and goofin' on each other because some of the guys found out i'm making a baby blanket for my best friend and his wife. Yes by hand, i know how to knit. and somehow i earned the nickname snuggles, must be something about joking around in the firehouse....lol.But, i digress. About 930 last night the tones drop in the station and we get banged out on an overdose, which en route becomes upgraded to suicide attempt. Seems this address has a LOOOOOONG history of domestic disturbance calls, previous overdoses and suicide attempts. Well long story short, we show up Engine, Medic, and Ambulance just in case. Get into the house and there's a frantic husband, thank god the police are there, and the house reeks of natural gas. One of the guys off the engine gets the meter and says we must be crazy the air is fine. Lady is out COLD in her bed. Empty pill bottles all over the bathroom. Too many for me to remember even if i could tell you. One HELL of a sternal rub later (a sternal rub is when you take your balled up knuckles and give someone a "noogie" on your breastbone, trust me it hurst like a flaming motherfucker) and still nothing, hook her up to O2 and get a quick set of vitals, pinpoint pupils (which would suggest opiate overdose, but none were found) and posturing great shes been down for a while too, last time anybody saw or talked to her was 3pm....6 hours earlier. We get her in the back of the medic unit, get a TINY IV, and there's really nothing we can do except supportive care, O2, monitoring, trying to get her to come out of it. My officer tells me to expose the patient, first time with a female (choke up on the scissors and just get it done, get over your modesty issues later!!!). Get a good 12 lead, odd, she looks really good for someone who took half a fuckin' pharmacy and went to bed. Odd, slightly depressed heartrate, normalish BP, slow sonorous (snoring) breathing, hell i'd have thought she was asleep if it wasnt for the posturing and pupils. Drop her off to the docs at the hospital, they do exactly what we think they will, give NARCAN( the antidote for opiates like heroin or opium...man do they HATE it when we ruin their heroin binge) that didnt work because she hasnt taken any Opiates, but "doctor knows best". Long story short, she bought a tube, for the short term shes on life support in a medically induced coma (partially of her own doing). If we hadnt gotten to her when we did shed have probably asphyxiated and been dead in a matter of an hour. I'm not sure if this counts as "saving a patient" but she stands a chance if she can survive the blood tylenol level of 172 , the only thing we're sure of at this point is her liver is FUCKED.She may or may not wake up, but at least we gave her the chance to possibly survive.
Get her all situated at the hospital and get back to the Firehouse at about 11:30 and turn in for the night, i'm sleepinglike a baby, then the tones have me bolt upright not 2 hours later. We get dispatched to our 2nd due for an ALS emergency. Seizure activity, young woman, been seizing for approximately 20 minutes. and i mean GETTIN' IT, good solid clonic seizure activity. When we arrive on scene the engine medics are already there, prepping drugs and whatnot, its early in the morning tempers are a little high and our medics come in and probably step on a few toes getting things done fast. Not the worst part butstill not great. The hardest part about this patient was that the friends/girlfriend/boyfriend refuse to really leave the room, and with a little EToH on board they're none too helpful at all, in fact our driver is thinking of dosing HER with the versed to keep her quiet (her = definitely NOT the patient). We get her on dosed and on the reeves to get out to the unit, to get her out and down the stairs in the cramped townhome i pop open the adjacent bedroom door, next words heard in the hallway "OH CRAP! BIG DOG!" The "friend's" big ol' chocolate lab was locked away in the room, now i know that dog would have done nothing more threatening than licking and loving on my partner. But still, not too comforting you don't know how the pup is going to react, and it was BIG! I grab the bottom of the reeves so he can scoot out of the room and close the door. We get the patient outside and shes STILL seizing, wierd part is shes completely coherent through the entire thing, when shes not tensed up and seizing shes CAOx3. Textbook distonic reaction to me. Probably the new med shes on. But what do i know, not my job to dianose, just to treat what we can and get her to a diagnostician. Shes a wonderful girl, she calms down when we get her in the unit and shes only worried that shes trapped in this seizing body and crying about how she's afraid which is to be expected. I really kinda fealt bad for her, shed stress herself out so much she'd trigger another seizure every time we tried to even take a blood pressure, finally i held her hand while the cuff did its thing and the monitor checked her out. Get her on some O2 and move out to the hospital. I'm getting better at this ALS assist thing, slowly but surely, i don't feel i was in the way this time which is a step in teh right direction.
Shes at the hospital, STILL SEIZING, still completely aware throughout, oddest thing i've seen in a while. Can't really do much but reassure her and talk her though her seizures.
Get home around 3:30 and get a decent night's sleep for being woken up twice. Could have been worse, lots of good experience last night.

Now if i can only get off my butt and get over tot he postoffice and mail off Sam's letter like i've been intending to do for a week.

Sittin' and Waitin'

2008-02-18T09:17:00.001-05:00

another slow day at the station...tis' president's day no ones at work here in the nation's capital.

That just means i have extra time to get that letter off to Sam at Medic 61, sell raffle tickets for our Fire Company's Medic fundraiser....blah blah blah all super exciting stuff. I'll keep you all updated.

And continuing the wierd news story theme...

2008-02-15T13:30:00.002-05:00

Ok relax, this one is fire department related....and rescued cat related. What goes better together than Firefighters and rescuing cats, well besides oreos and milk, or salami and ketchup.

Cat Pulls A Fast One On Fla. Firefighters
MIAMI (AP) ― It was the stereotypical firefighters-try-to-rescue-cat story, but with a twist. Firefighters from the South Florida city of Weston spent a sopping hour in pouring rain Tuesday trying to extract a kitten squeezed in the undercarriage of a
stranger's Volvo.The crew tried jacking up the car and taking off a wheel,
all for naught. The feline ducked out of reach at each attempt to grab it.At
some point, the cat escaped undetected, prompting the crew to spend another
hour peering in bushes and scouring a Walgreens parking lot.They finally
gave up and headed back to the station, answering at least two more calls on
their way.Five hours after the saga began, the elusive cat reappeared: At
the station, in their fire truck's rear wheel well.This time, firefighters
used chunks of meatloaf to try luring it out. It was unenticed, so the crew
resorted to an ultimately successful three-pronged strategy: One firefighter
poked the feline in the backside with a Slim Jim, another used a hose to
force it into an open compartment so a third person could pull it out.The
feline was dirty but unharmed.

How's that for wierd.... slimjim's are so useful.

OH NO!!! ... A BROKEN WIENER!!!

2008-02-15T13:27:00.003-05:00

OH MY GOODNESS!!!! GET YOUR MINDS OUT OF THE GUTTER...

First off, not everything has to revolve around "that". Second, there's nothing that depresses me more than my lifelong favorite novelty shaped vehicle losing it and winding up in a culvert in the middle of nowhere.

As stated in the article the "27 foot long TUBE STEAK" lost control and spun off the road during the ice storm that 'rocked' the mid atlantic region last week.

I just really hate it when my wiener winds up in strange ditches. What a headache!!!!

PWNAGE

2008-02-15T10:34:00.002-05:00

Never really had a chance to use that nasty little bit of internet lingo before.

But the only really good word to describe what i did to my EMT-B final exam is PWNAGE!!! 95% Not too bad for not really studying all that much.

Not too much left. Our Mass Casualty simulation is this sunday, as well as ambulance Operations and mock scenarios for interservice communications (calling in cops, EMS Supervisors, Fire assist, etc) Then Next week we have our VOEMS Finals, 200 question test and 2 practical stations.

I'm READY for this to be over, i'm going to do great on the rest of this stuff, nervousness is GONE!!!!

Word association

2008-02-12T15:23:00.000-05:00

Took this from AD's blog

1. Beer: STRONG
2. Anorexic: WISHBONES
3. Relationships: GREAT CHRIST IN A CANOE....REALLY?
4. Purple: MOM'S CAR
5. Power Rangers: BORING --- GO-RILLA ATTACKING CITY!!!
6. Weed: THE SPINS
7. Steroids: ROGER CLEMENS
8. Cartoons: MINDLESS FUN
9. The President: THEY SURE ARE GOOD AT TRAINING MONKEYS NOWADAYS
10. Tupperware: TTTHHHHBBBBPPPPPTTT....AND SEALED
11. Best vacation: JAPAN
12. Santa Claus: YETI-CLAUS
13. Halloween: STOMACH ACHES
14. Bon Jovi: JERSEY STINKS
15. Grammar: OH FOR CHRIST SAKE LEARN IT PEOPLE!!!!
16. Facebook: THE BANE OF ACTUAL SOCIAL INTERACTION
17. Worst fear: SCREWING UP ON AN AMBULANCE CALL
18. Marriage: SOMEDAY
19. Paris Hilton: DISGUSTING
21. Redhead: HOT!!
22. Blonde: MEH....
23. Pass the time: NOWADAYS...CROCHET
24. One night stands: TOO OLD FOR THAT NOW
25. Donald Trump: MONEY CAN'T BUY EVERYTHING...INCLUDING CLASS
26. Neverland: JACKO THE WHACKO
27. Pixie dust: PLEASE
28. Vanilla ice cream: NUMMY
29. High School: MR. WILSON AND TECH CREW
30. Work: TRAINS
31. Pajamas: COMFY
32. Woods: CAMPING
33. Wet Sock: YUCK
34. Alcohol: LOTS
35. Love: NEED IT

Take it and run with it guys...

*********************************
Got some good responses
*********************************

"Frosty"

1. Beer:overrated
2. Anorexic:sad
3. Relationships:who the fuck knows don't mind me I'm bitter
4. Purple:The Color Purple
5. Power Rangers:Game and after my time
6. Weed:Hippie crap
7. Steroids:baseball players who piss me off
8. Cartoons:Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour on Saturday morning
9. The President:Idiot
10. Tupperware:Burp
11. Best vacation:A place I've never been
12. Santa Claus:Fat
13. Halloween:Macabre
14. Bon Jovi:New Jersey
15. Grammar:Kelsey
16. Facebook:Good for surfing chicks
17. Worst fear:Losing people
18. Marriage:Would be nice one day
19. Paris Hilton:Kinda cute despite everything
21. Redhead:Not my type
22. Blonde:Not my type but closer
23. Pass the time:Time is not salt
24. One night stands: More trouble than they're worth
25. Donald Trump: Ostentatious
26. Neverland: Michael Jackson
27. Pixie dust: Peter Pan
28. Vanilla ice cream: Favorite flavor
29. High School: Good times
30. Work: My old job
31. Pajamas: Kid's pajamas with feet
32. Woods: What used to be across the street from the house I grew up in... which is no longer there either
33. Wet Sock: Uncomfortable
34. Alcohol: Fun
35. Love: Pain (what? I'm Slavic...)

"Red"
1. Beer: NY brews
2. Anorexic: sandwich
3. Relationships: happen
4. Purple: fingernails
5. Power Rangers: headache
6. Weed: legalize
7. Steroids: small balls
8. Cartoons: classics rule
9. The President: Canada!
10. Tupperware: where's the @#$*%! lid
11. Best vacation: Maine
12. Santa Claus: Yeti Beard
13. Halloween: .Wormy pumpkins
14. Bon Jovi: New Jersey
15. Grammar: fuck it
16. Facebook: addictive
17. Worst fear: fear itself
18. Marriage: I do.
19. Paris Hilton: slut monkey
21. Redhead: unbelievably awesome
22. Blonde: out of a bottle
23. Pass the time: what time?
24. One night stands: have their place
25. Donald Trump: squirrel head
26. Neverland: peter pan complex
27. Pixie dust: pixie sticks
28. Vanilla ice cream: breyers
29. High School: was fun while it lasted
30. Work: is making me go gray
31. Pajamas: optional depending on the company
32. Woods: miss them
33. Wet Sock: give you jungle rot
34. Alcohol: good for some, very bad for others
35. Love: there's not enough

"Younger"
1. Beer: Guinness
2. Anorexic:
3. Relationships:
4. Purple: Purple people Eater
5. Power Rangers: Lame
6. Weed: Smoke
7. Steroids: Small Penis
8. Cartoons: Bugs Bunny
9. The President: Bush
10. Tupperware: Clear plastic
11. Best vacation: Australia
12. Santa Claus: St. Nick
13. Halloween: .My wife's Ringer
14. Bon Jovi: NJ
15. Grammar: Kelsy
16. Facebook: Pirates
17. Worst fear: Loosing my legs
18. Marriage: oct. 13 2007
19. Paris Hilton: Slut
21. Redhead: Read headed Slut
22. Blonde: ednolb
23. Pass the time: Stumble
24. One night stands: Married
25. Donald Trump: Dull rich guy
26. Neverland: when are we going
27. Pixie dust: Need some
28. Vanilla ice cream: needs chocolate fudge
29. High School: a long time ago
30. Work: SER
31. Pajamas: What my wife wears to bed.
32. Woods: Place to play paintball
33. Wet Sock: nasty
34. Alcohol: drinking
35. Love: My Wife

EMT-B Course Final Tonight

2008-02-12T10:50:00.000-05:00

Last Non-VOEMS test tonight. 150 questions, cumulative, multiple choice.... I GOT THIS ONE IN THE BAG BABY!!!!

Wish me luck all the same!

I now accept Paypal

2008-02-11T15:05:00.000-05:00

I've added buttons on the right so you can purchase raffle tickets directly from me online....

The top button is to buy single tickets at $3 ... the bottom button is for the "Two for $5" deal

Each will let you buy multiple units at each price...

WE NEED A NEW ALS AMBULANCE!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-02-11T13:25:00.000-05:00

My Volunteer Fire Department raffling off gaming consoles. Up for grabs are 3 Wii's and Guitar Hero 3 games . Raffle tickets are $3 a piece or 2 for $5. The items were donated and all proceeds go towards the purchase of a new ALS Medic for the Fire Dept. -- this is a piece of equipment you want functioning in case you need to be carted to the hospital. Unfortunately, ours has been acting up for quite some time, and it has several hundred thousand miles already on it. So worse comes to worse, you don't get a gaming console but you can rest assured that you contributed to the procurement of a new ambulance that will save you when blow your knee out after making the game winning catch during some hardcore frisbee.Say you can't make it to the pancakes? That stinks for you considering it's the best part. Get a hold of me and you can purchase raffle tickets anyway. You don't need to be present to win.

Everyone buy tickets, not only are some really cool games up for grabs but all your donations keep those pesky taxes away, your tickets will be accompanied in the mail by a nifty receipt to turn into Senor Taxman.

1st Place winner gets - Wii Console, Guitar Hero 3, and Mario Party 8
2nd and 3rd Place winners get Wii Console, and Guitar Hero 3

2008-02-08T09:13:00.001-05:00

Just thought i'd share

I was a good little EMT

2008-02-05T11:18:00.000-05:00

This past friday I had planned to take the afternoon off to cook chili for the "OOPERSAY OWLBAY" (since you're no longer allowed to use the term SuperBowl in any print media not officially licensed by the NFL) so i left the yard around 1pm to head to the store and get the giant load of ingredients my special brew requires.

Well, coming around a curve in the highway a guy 3 cars up from me hyrdoplanes hits the wall head on smashing the front of his SUV completely, rolling over once. Right in front of me there is a local sheriff and he's on that like white on rice, pardon the expression. I drive past and see that its a single patient, doesnt look too horrible so I feel like i need to stop and render assistance. I'm nervous though, the devil on my shoulder is saying "HEY STOP THIS WILL BE FUN YOU"LL GET TO PRACTICE!!!" then the angel on the other shoulder is saying "YOU"RE NOT CERTIFIED YET, YOU'LL GET IN TROUBLE". What can i say, the devil won. Luckily i keep gloves in the center console and my highway vest in the trunk. Nerves kick in a little bit but i'll try and give you a run down of how things went.

Things started coming back to me as i approached the car. Quick scene sizeup:

oil and gas leaking from the car, possible HAZMAT
Airbag deployment
battery is still connected (check for undeployed pyro)
no fire
car IS in the travel lanes so have the Sheriff park in a blocking position just in case.
Park my car far enough down "stream" from the accident that the medic can easily access the scene and be set for a clear exit.

Ok, good to go. Glove up. Talk to the sheriff, introduce myself tell him what i think we have here. My impression of MOI, one patient. Approach the car from the front and introduce myself, tell the patient that i'm going to grab C-spine and hold his neck because he might be hurt. Grab a good C-Spine and start going though the verbal parts of the assessment until i can get help doing the initial and rapid. SAMPLE just in case, OPQRST because he says he has back pain. So here i am in the back seat of this guy's car holding his head and talking the cop through feeling for broken bones and a rudimentary Initial and Rapid Assessment to make sure this guy isnt bleeding out or anything. FRD has been called in and there's a county cop on scene now. The guy says his back is starting to hurt him more so i'm getting anxious for the medic unit to show up. I keep talking to the guy and find out he's a federal agent, just out of curiosity since it does appear to be a response vehicle of some sort juding on the siren and light bubble mounted in the car, i ask the guy if he's got any weapons i should know about. Of COURSE he does, why didnt i think about this in my scene size up, i mean i saw the guy's little bubble light, saw his radio. Great here i am in a position where i'm committing abandonment and gross negligence if i leave because i'm worried about the guns. Oh well, i ask if its alright if the sheriff secure's his weapons, of course he agrees and hands them over.

Ok its been about 10 minutes, feels much much longer, my arms are hurting my hands are shaking, i'm wet, i'm cold. But i'm also excited because I know i've done everything right, well almost everything save the guns. I am ready to do a proper patient handover to the career medics. I explain to the patient exactly what is going to happen once the fire fighters get on scene, explain to him how a rapid extrication works, what to expect in terms of a C-collar and the backboard and straps and whatnot. The career guys show up, engine to block and assist, medic to transport. I know one of the guys so i'm not nearly as nervous before. Give a good MESSAGE transfer listing specifics where needed, help collar the guy and move for rapid extrication. EXACTLY HOW WE PRACTICED!!! It was great. I had a huge smile on my face, the guys must have thought i was on nitrous or acid or something.

The engine medic tells me i did a good job, that they really didnt need to ask the patient anything i got them all the info they needed. SCORE ONE FOR THE VOLUNTEER!!! Then the patient looks up at me and says, "how did you know these guys were gonna do all that". Just simply told him "they teach us the same stuff". His only response was a grin and he said "Cool!".

Off to the hospital a short 7 minutes up the road and he was being seen in a room by someone who could give him the treatment he needed, a few bumps and bruises, no apparent LOC, no major DCAP-BTLS issues. I'm sure he's fine, just goes to show you that anything can happen any time, and if you have the ability to render assistance my firm belief is that you should.

Incidents like this remind me how important it is for the average citizen to know CPR, to know how to use an AED, to know how to activate emergency services in their jurisdiction. The faster someone gets aide, especially in a cardiac situation the greater their odds of survival. Please do yourselves a favor and get certified in CPR, learn first aide, and if you have time take a first responder class and learn critical info that may save your life, or the life of a family member.

Correction to St. Baldrick's Day post

2008-01-31T16:48:00.001-05:00

This is the correct address for my donation page... sorry for the bum link in the last post

If that doesnt work under search for participant

Search for first name Corey...the picture with the guy eating the messy burrito, thats me

http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/shavee_info.html?ParticipantKey=200822438

ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANT LIEUTENANT ... OR CAN WE SLEEP NOW!!!!!!!!!!

2008-01-31T14:44:00.000-05:00

Wow, busy night last night.
Popped by the station to work out with my "trainer" again. Its kind of nice having one of the career guys take an interest in helping you to get ready for the CPAT, although every muscle in my leg and my core is hating Cuz today. Yeah we call him Cuz, and no its not derogatory!! This has to be the first time i've picked up a jumprope in damn near 15 years. Its a hell of a workout and i'm going to incorporate it into my daily routine as at least a warmup. But i digress.

My real reason for being at the station was to ride our career medic unit as a 3rd or 4th ....

I swear for the last 4 days our station has been on a rampage when it comes to medic calls. monday they ran 13 calls. Our station usually averages maybe somewhere between 2 and 5 calls a day. So i decided to get in on the maddness a little. Just finishing my workout and the tones drop.... and i'm in my workout stuff, sweating stinking like a pig. Engine and Medic 2 respond to Western suburbia for and attempted suicide, caller states pt has stabbed himself with a 12" butcher knife in the upper abdomen. I'm doing that double take, should i go, shoud i stay, shoud i go, should i stay. I decide its better to actually finish my workout and get clean and change into a real uniform than stink out the back of the unit with my stench.

DAMNIT TO HELL!!! Thats a great call. Wound up not being what was called in but it was a good call none the less.

I get dressed wait for the medic to go AIQ again and throw my stuff in the back compartment with the BLS bag. I settle in with my knitting, yes i said knitting (see my huge list for reference) thinking that a stabbing would cap the evening off pretty well and nothign much more would be going on that night, so i settle in for a nice night of making my ugly scarf. In my usual spot in front of the altaris terminal, PING!!!!!!! Holy crap another call? i hit the "URGENT" button to see the CAD dispatch before its voiced over the radio. CPR: CARDIAC ARREST ...WEST BUMBLEFUCK HOUSE911. Everyone charges to the units and out the door. The BLS volunteer unit adds onto the call and we're off. Flip the CAD open and see its a 96 year old patient. The chances of this being a working code just dropped, in adition to the response time to that part of the 1st due is a little longer than usual right now.

We get to the house and to put it politely "we're not needed, you can put us back in service". We hang around for the police to show up and our driver and lieutenant pronounce time of death. Its kinda wierd, the only dead bodies i've seen were family members. It was odd seeing the corpse and not feeling much emotion at all. A good learning experience, but wierd. We head back to the station and settle in for the night, i really can't sleep because i'm on pins and needles ready for another call. I want a good trauma or something!

NOTHING ... all night nothing, just the sound of my contacts gluing themselves to the undersides of my eyelids. Kind of a squuuuuiiiish splot, type noise whenever i moved my eye.

I get up because i can't sleep any more, so i figured i'd do something productive. Not realizing what time it really was i'm just milling around the station and the tones drop yet again, OUT WE GO. Young woman reportedly having a seizure. We get there and, yup, definitely seizure activity, no obvious cause. No diagnosed seizure disorder she just went down and went down hard in the bathroom. Shes not exactly dressed modestly to have a house full of male firefighters and shes just entering the postictal phase and becoming aware of her surroundings, i really kinda fealt bad for her. But, seeing as shes possibly hit her head and whatnot we decide to backboard her and fully imobilize her.

Shes perfectly calm through the entire thing, i dont think she even said more than 2 words. Her brother and sister looked like they had just seen a ghost.

Well thats about where that story ends for me, i hopped a ride back to the station in the engine to give mom room to ride to the hospital in the medic unit.

yup, thats the end of the story.... whee ... right?

Class tonight is on Pediatrics and Geriatrics, the pooping your pants years... WONDERFUL!

St. Baldrick's Day

2008-01-30T17:15:00.000-05:00

For those of you who read Movin' Meat, i have joined Shadowfax in his support of this wonderful charity and their fight against children's cancer. Actually this is my 6th year doing this. Ever since Junior year in college.

This year my goal is to raise $2000 personally, i made it to a little over 1000 last year, so i'm pretty hopeful i can get this done with your help.

Read more about St. Baldricks and help shadowfax and I in our efforts to stomp out children's cancer.

You can see my personal donation page here ... CLICK ME!

The "Bucket" List

2008-01-29T16:31:00.000-05:00

I've made some updates to my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days.

I have completed a couple tasks and have noted them in posts and in the list on the right side of the page in bold.

http://www.thehugelist.blogspot.com

Police Hunt Doctor Suspected in Organ Theft

2008-01-29T16:14:00.001-05:00

REALLY??? WHO THE HELL DOES THAT? THATS A STORY YOU TELL AT SLEEPOVERS IN GRADESCHOOL TO SCARE PEOPLE!!!!

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/01/29/india.transplant/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

The Guard Can take the floor for ....EMT TO THE FRONT FOR CHEST PAIN!!!

2008-01-29T15:52:00.001-05:00

One of the "services" provided by the volunteers within our jurisdiction's fire and rescue department is EMT and Firefighter Standby. We take a unit or vehicle to a scene and become roving EMT's who can treat patients on scene and if neccessary radio into dispatch for more qualified units.

I volunteered to pick up a shift as a standby for the local high school's winter color guard adjudication. Didn't think we'd see much action so it was some good operational hours and a chance to catch up on some homework questions for EMT class.

Well, at least i thought it would be. I guess murphy's law kicked into effect when i sat back and started to doze off a little, that little angel on my shoulder kicks me in the head and I decide it might be a good idea to walk the halls. One of the guard members comes up to me and tells me about a kid sitting in the corner "unresponsive". GREAT WONDERFUL WOW!!!! I grab the bags, and my partner and head off to check on the kid. As soon as he sees black boots and uniform pants he perks right up, answered all our questions. He was just looking for attention, i had walked past him and seen people talking to him and he wasnt answering. Just goes to show you when you're a whiney attention seeker you don't always get the attention you're looking for, sometimes you have the shit scared out of you.

Ok, a little while later i decide to walk the halls again, i come across the auxiliary gym where some of the teams are practicing, there is a mom in the corner huddled over a girl who's holding her head and shes looking a little diaphoretic. Again, call for my partner and the bags. Shes complaining of a headache, N/V, and a sweaty feverish feeling. I take her temp, tempanically its 99.5, not too high, but that means her core is about 101, enough that I suggest my OIC do a workup on her and get some paperwork. Stick her on some O2 and get a cool pack on her neck. The oxygen brings her resp rate down, her pulse slows down a bit, her BP drops and the temp comes down. I think she was just ahving a wee bit of a panic attack and a big case of the nerves. I fealt kinda bad for her, she wound up missing her performance because we had her on a NRB with an icepack on her neck. Oh well, c'est la vie, there will always be other events.

A couple band-aids here, a skinned knee there and the night is almost over so i trot on over to the aux gym trolling for trauma, waiting for one of these girl's to drop a rifle or a sword on their head/foot/neck/face/friend's head/etc. Not paying off too well, but then over the scene radio i get an urgent call to the intake area. No details just EMT to the intake area, door 11, no door 8, no door 6 , finally they make up their mind, its door 5. I haul ass through the gym across theperformance floor and into the lobby. One of the performers is sitting there, classic tripod position, complaining of chest pain. Now mind you this isnt a waifish little dancer girl, shes a bit shall we say 'girthy'. I look at my OIC and he's got that "yup, i know what you're gonna ask for" look in his eyes. He gets on the radio and rolls a medic unit. Nothing to joke about when you have a patient complaining of chest pain x3 days, difficulty breathing and crushing pain in her chest. Get her on O2 and begin a workup, one guy on vitals, another guy on SAMPLE/OPQRST, and the OIC on the radio getting an ALS unit on scene.

Before the medic's get there she says shes caught her breath and this and that and doesnt want her mom to have to drive up from 4 hours away, she also tells us her extremities are tingling (telltale signs of a panic attack). We keep her and let the medic's get a look at her, by the time they get there shes got a normal sinus but shes a bit tachy. And they get on the phone with her mom and advise her that because of the nature of the complaint and the fact that its not an isolated incident that she should probably go to the hospital. The mom authorizes an AMA refusal over the phone and says they'll go to the doctor soon.

Not much we can do to counter that, the medic's tried their best. But AMA is AMA.

A good night all in all, save the part where i forgot to switch off the CAD in the utility and the battery died.

Learned a lot of good lessons, ran a tight ship, and learned a couple people i don'tknow if i'l work with again.

Odie OUT!

Alrighty then....anyone have a stopwatch??

2008-01-29T15:44:00.000-05:00

So our last day of practice skill stations was last sunday. Its kinda sobering to think that we don't have any more practices before our evaluation. But that is setoff by the fact that one of the instructors at the academy who had previously given us a raft of crap over our assessment paid us, what i believe, is an extreme compliment.

She flat out used us an example of how to be smooth, organized, and well patterned in a trauma assessment. Well there goes my ego, wonderful.

Got a 94 on my most recent quiz, not too horrible but HOW THE HELL DID I MISS ALL THE QUESTIONS ABOUT ANAPHYLAXIS, I was the one that explained a lot of that stuff to our study group members. And I had read the practice quizzes the night before. Oh well, we can't all be perfect all of the time,right?

Well tonight is labor and birthing, whoo hoo. Blech!!! Yeah if i had to its gonna be the only thing that might make me a little "gaggy" in the field. But i know i'll be able to deal with it.

State test is coming up quickly, i'm getting a little nervous.

Be Prepared....

2008-01-24T12:21:00.000-05:00

The motto of the Boy Scouts of America. A couple months back we got a call at the station that the local scout troop was interested in sending over a pack/gaggle/herd/brood of Webelos (evidently a rank) to work on their "Readyman Badge". The Readyman Badge is basica first aid/first responder type training for the scouts. Basically to be "ready" for emergency situations they may be presented with in the perfomance of their scouting duties and community service. The Denmaster wanted a couple EMT's from the station to help out and show the little buggers what to do in a bunch of different situations:

#1:
(explain first aid)Activity: Discussion Questions
#2:
(help list for home)Activity: Discussion and complete Help List handout.
#3:
(bleeding, breathing, poison, heart attack)Activity: play-act situation and treat the problem.
#4:
(treat shock)Activity: play-act situation and treat the problem.
#5:
(cuts, burns, choking)Activity: play-act situation and treat the problem.
#6:
(safe swim)Activity: review rules from Aquanaut badge
#8:
(fire escape plan)Homework: with family, define a plan
#9:
(first aid kit usage)Activity: disect our 1st aid kitHomework: check first aid kit at home with parents
#10:
(likely accidents)Activity: Discussion
#11:
(car safety)Activity: Discussion

Not too bad, right? WRONG!!!!! It wasnt a bad thing but i have never met a group of kids that was so interested and packed with "what if" questions. I forgot how annoying i was as a little kid, man i'd have hurt myself. It took us 30 minutes longer than we had intended to cover HALF of the material. THEY'RE COMING BACK NEXT WEEK!!!

Its fun and I love teaching, and it makes it easy that the kids are interested, but keeping them on track is a bit challenging. Oh well, they're coming back we'll play a quick recall game to see if they soaked up any useful info and get them on their way and with a shiny new badge to show for it.

I think some of the parents learned a lot too, gave out the number for poison control, told the kids about how its not a BAD thing to call 911 but never do it as a joke. Showed them aroudn the firestation and of course all the kids loved the fire engine and the ambulance.

I'll write more about when the little terror's come back next week.

COME IN FROM THERE YOU"LL CATCH YOUR DEATH OF COLD....

2008-01-24T11:56:00.001-05:00

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.....

Been a bit nippy here for the past week or so, not the usual temperate good natured .... um....nature thats been hanging around for the past month or so.

Bundled up, ready for class....oddly enough Environmental Emergencies is on the plate for tonight. I'm THIS close to being able to have a visual aide for frostbite. Although i'm convinced that if the wind picks up just a LITTLE bit it'll be freezerburn.

Well class runs extra long tonight, in comparison to what it usually does. But not a huge deal, just a little less time on the medic unit for the night. I'd been batting .000 for riding this month on the whole. I just need some time on a unit, i'm starting to get the DTs man!!!!

BUT, i digress, as usual. Show up at the station, the medic has had 9 calls that day, NINE!! i know thats not a huge deal for some of you reading this, but for our sleepy little "small town" firestation thats a lot, 2 or 3 is a normal day. PERFECT gonna be a busy night. WRONG, not a damn thing going on so i hit the sack and turn in for a good night sleep. Of course i can't find a freakin bunk to save my life so i finally wind up taking the extra bed in one of the career guy's bunkpods. Great i think i woke him up. BAH.... sets me up for a great night sleep. I finally doze off about 0245 thinking i can get a decent 4 hours before i have to head into work..... 0448 the tones drop, my contacts are cemented to the backs of my eyelids and i have to pee like a racehorse, NO TIME gotta go stroke symptoms.

Get there and the patient requests that only a few people come in the house she doesnt like a lot of people fussing over her. So i'm outside waiting with the engine crew from the station in our second due. Great, the cold weather is doing nothing but making me have to pee even worse, AND drying out my contacts even more. F*&$ i forgot my drops at the station. Damnit, now my eyeballs feel like dustbunnies.

Ok enough whining from the EMT-B...

We finally get Ms. PossibleTIA out of the house and into our unit. Get a lock in her arm 20ga by the looks of it, tiny but workable. Get the monitor on her, WOW!!! the 4 lead shows a pretty significant looking a-fib and a bunch of noise in the Sp02 curve. Ok, we should put her on some 02 and keep an eye on her. She starts to come around the left sided hemiplagia gets better, the speech comes back around, the facial droop gets better. WHEW, looks like it was a TIA, nothing too permanent.

Now i have to say, i really admire the ER nurses on the graveyard shift, they were perky upbeat smiling, and not all TOO unhappy to be awake.

Drop off this nice old lady and leave her in the hands of the ER to get her good nights rest that we so rudely disturbed.

ONE FREAKING CALL, they get 9 calls all day and only 1 while i'm riding, my black cloud of doom is losing its vigor, or its just turned its attention to me. between the drops and needing to pee for 3 hours i'd say it was doing a pretty good job

Now offering bribes....

2008-01-21T13:57:00.001-05:00

To anyone willing to take my place in weekend EMT classes. I love the course subject, i'm interested in it and all, but between the study sessions and the classes and getting in riding time i'm losing all of my weekends.

My friends are starting to forget who i am.

its funny, watching my roommate "Red" do this last time around i thought she was NUTS to be so stressed out by this whole thing. But now i kinda understand that urge to hang out with friends on a constant basis when i'm not in class.

I've even fallen out of touch with my BBC shows on the weekends.

Ack, oh well, only 3 more weeks, and one more practical session to go. Should be a freaking blast!

Then on to bigger and better things like getting signed off to be a driver and an Aide(OIC).

Tonight should be fun, i'm getting on the medic unit at our station again (ALS assist). Been hell trying to squeeze onto our ambulance this week, our station has close to if not the highest number of certified EMTs in the county and only one Volunteer Staffed Unit, maybe when we get a new medic unit, we will keep the old one as a second Volunteer ambulance that we can put in service at other stations.

Sounds like a good idea to me. right?!?!

SNOW DAY!

2008-01-18T11:09:00.000-05:00

Ok, snow day, no classes, no nothing....except LOTS of accidents.

Popped over to the firehouse to ride the BLS unit for a couple of hours before "class" and JUST missed a great call for accident with injury, possible entrapment. Yeah, key word there MISSED. damnit, i'll have to try again. Those calls come around only once in a blue moon for a BLS unit in our jurisdiction. Oh well c'est la vie.

The county wanted our brush truck and plow in service last night so we tried a little preventative maintenance, mounted the plow and the career guys set out plowing the back lot. No sooner than the engine got toned out then one of the fire guys told us the "plow wouldnt move". Great the public service call center was calling every 5 minutes to see if we could put our plow in emergency service, and now its broken. WONDERFUL.

Well "C" and I pull the brush truck into the bay and start trying to figure out what's wrong with the damned thing. We download the troubleshooting guide, pound on it, get the multimeter out and check the electric connections. No luck! Our company president took the truck and plow over to the apparatus shop last night, seems we need to take better care of our toys when we're not using them. One of the pistons rusted and locked up over the summer.

Got to run a need call on our canteen unit last night though. Started off as an odor in a building callled in by a passer-by, turned into a building fire, then a "oh my god we found a weapon" type dealy, then finally morphed into a hazardous materials call. Took a LONG time, but getting thanked by the firefighters for bringing out the canteen was pretty cool.

2008-01-17T11:58:00.000-05:00

Yeah i know sorry, no serious threads allowed, but forgive me just this once.
Every year I participate in something called "St. Baldrick's Day" which is the week before St. Patricks day and across the nation in Irish bars, police station, and firehouses people get sponsored to shave their heads for childrens cancer research.
Well its that time of year again, and i'm looking for some help. Every year i've been able to make my fundraising goal of 500 dollars and i don't want to be "that guy" this year and not make my goal. So i appeal to all you Blog Addicts to help out the kids and donate what you can, every dollar counts.
I have done a lot of research into this organization and they have EXTREMELY low overhead, more than 87% of every dollar donated makes it directly to research. Compared to 35% at the Red Cross thats pretty damned good.
Of course all donations are tax deductible, and it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. You can donate online, mail me a check made out to St. Baldricks Day with my name in the memo or just watch me make a drunken fool out of myself again. If you're in the DC area i encourage you to stop by and volunteer to shave my noggin, only an extra 25$ donation and you can BIC my melon.
h ttp://www.news.cornell.edu/chronicle/05/3.10.05/St_Baldricks.jpg

Here's the main website...
http://www.stbaldricks.org/
And forgive me for being forward but here's the site to sponsor me
http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/shavee_info.html?ParticipantKey=200822438

We the person, who write this blog...

2008-01-17T07:55:00.000-05:00

Have decided to post a little bit more liberally. I don't have something interesting everyday so i've decided to branch out into the inane and funny.

I'll still document my progress through training but i'm also going to amuse myself a little bit.

got a good email from my roommate this morning.

Lessons to be Learned First-year students at Michigan's Vet school werereceiving their first anatomy class, with a dead cow.They all gathered around the surgery table with the body covered with a white sheet.The professor started the class by telling them, "InVeterinary Medicine it is necessary to have two im-portant qualities as a doctor: The first is that you notbe disgusted by anything involving the animal body." For an example, the Professor pulled back the sheet,stuck his finger in the butt of the dead cow, withdrewit and stuck it in his mouth. "Go ahead and do thesame thing," he told his students. The students freaked out, hesitated for several minutes. But even-tually they took turns sticking a finger in the analopening of the dead cow and sucking on it.When everyone finished, the Professor looked atthem and said, "The second most important quality is observation. I stuck in my middle finger and suckedon my index finger. Now learn to pay attention. "Lifeis tough, it is even tougher if you're stupid."

The FIRE SUV

2008-01-16T15:18:00.000-05:00

Comedian Hannibal Burress wants to grow up and drive the FIRE SUV.

I nearly peed myself laughing at this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSiwoKCiy-s&feature=related

Blah, ditty blah blah blah...

2008-01-16T15:01:00.000-05:00

Maybe its just the mucous living in my throat or the annoying cough but last night's lecture on, you guessed it, respiratory distress made me phase out a little.

The 3 COPD conditions, are for those who don't know what Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder, Emphysema, Chronic Bronchitis, and Asthma. (Sorry for any EMS'ers reading this i have this up for non medical family members too)

Basically the whole point of the lecture was to reinforce getting a good set of baseline vitals and going through your SAMPLE and OPQRST very very well. The similarity of presentation between some respiratory distress cases and cardiac is eerily similar.

But our instructor is great, made everything really funny, well as funny as it can be. Shared stories about stabbing yoruself in the thumb with an epipen, Naked men on diabetic rampages, and something about how fat people and needles don't mix.

Well sorry for the lack of interesting info lately, its been a rather slow period.

This just in...

2008-01-15T14:21:00.001-05:00

AirBorne DOESNT WORK!!!!!!!!!

*cough* *sniffle*

Okie Dokie...one more weekend down

2008-01-14T12:09:00.000-05:00

Yeah yeah yeah i know been a while since i posted anything, you'll have to forgive me. It was a busy weekend.

As for class, Thursday was kinda boring, it was an introduction to CVA, TIA, and a guest "lecture" on diabetes. Interesting stuff just a LONG night, early to rise, late to bed make Odie MUSHY in head.

Thursday passed without much fanfare, except realizing that we only have another 5 weeks and 3 practice sessions left (including last sunday) until we challenge the state EMT test. Scary stuff i tell you. Me and my partner are pretty comfortable, we'll get together and study by running through multiple scenarios and writings stuff down. I'm actually really comfortable with this stuff, so much so that i'm starting to get worried that we'll get a tad overconfident and start to overlook small details that will fail us. Like PMS and ABC after every move, its so simple it takes NO time to do and we are starting to forget it on scenarios, BAD TIMES!!!

Ok enough about thursday.

Friday i show up at the station for my usual CPAT workout, and my buddy J strolls in after me, says he's putting up a shift with some friends from another station. Eh, why not, work out then hang out with some friends for a couple hours, chill and watch a movie with the career guys. Doesnt sound like a bad night to me.

One of the career guys has taken an interest in helping me pass the CPAT, so when i'm working out and he's there he'll pop his head in and yell at me to go faster or give me a certain exercise to do, then come back and check in on me. Its helping a lot. I'll DEFINITELY pass with his help. No worries at all.

I get suited up and sign myself onto the unit at about 845. We drive around for a while to familiarize our visiting driver with the response area, and we stop and grab him a frostee at the Wendy's up the street. No sooner than he had payed and we walked out the door than our Medic and Engine get toned out to a difficulty breathing right up the street from our location . We add our unit on because we basically know where it is. Jump up the street and get there exactly as the career guys are rolling up. Nothing much we can do except get the patient on oxygen and load her up in to the Medic unit and get her to the hospital. Nothing much we could do medically to improve her condition so ALS transport was the best thign we could do.

Silent for the rest of the night, i get out of there around 1:30am. Of course i miss all the fun, i stop by the station in the morning to grab my gear to head to practice our at station 21, and the ambulance is out?!?! Wierd, the guys were supposed to take it out of service at 0700, mind you this is around 0930 by the time i'm at the station. Ok, fine, whats going on? I pop into our Altaris terminal to pull up the unit history, they're out on a PSERV (public service) call, helping a gentleman to get from his car to his house (i think). The kicker is the patient has ALS, Lou Gherig's Disease, for those of you that don't know my dad died from ALS in 1997. I just like to help out ALS patients when i can, i couldnt do much to help my dad so i kinda feel i owe it to those that are suffering the same way he was. Now that i can provide that type of assistance. Thats not the really interesting part. The interesting part is why the unit was still in service. Evidently the county was in Condition 3, severely depleted of unit resources, due to a 3 alarm fire. Our county activated our Volunteer Resource System and called for any and all Volunteer Units that could be staffed to be put in service. All in all, including volunteer units that were already in service for drill coverage. Fairfax county volunteers mobilized 11 units. The incident that went to 3 alarms was kind of interesting in and of itself.

Really briefly and in SoCal surfer lingo...

Dude A has suicidal machinations
Dude A severs the gas line in his apartment
Dude A's family shows up and Calls 911
Call goes out as a SUICF, suicide attempt and GASIN inside gasleak
Dude A decides that it is go time, sparks it up and BOOM
call is now a FHOU housefire, in a garden apartment
Fire goes to a second alarm, then a third alarm
Dude A is removed from the scene via Helicopter, one of our own Volunteers is the porter that takes him to the helo. And a Volunteer Engine has control of the Landing Zone.

Lessons learned, DO NOT USE THE OVEN TO KILL YOURSELF, you'll only wind up looking like meatloaf.

That puts us at class on sunday, Good times, not quite sure what our time on trauma was, they threw some unorthodox scenarios at us. But i think we'll be JUST FINE. Really nothing all that eventful other than a masterfully handled Diabetic emergency. SAMPLE and OPQRST and the calls to medical direction just kinda came naturally. Good stuff, very happy with how i handled that.

I decide to ride our medic unit while i'm shmying around up at our weekly BINGO, nothing all night then just as i'm about to sign off and head home out of boredom and a desire to sleep, the tones drop for an ALS emergency, passerby saw a patient slumped over the steering wheel of their car up the road from the station. The location is equidistant between us ansd the station to the North, so they dispatch the North Engine and South Medic. we get there and see the engine headed the opposite direction? NO patient? No car? ok i can see where this is going, keystone cops. Here, there, up, down, far, near, we check everywhere, nothing. The funny part is whenever our medic driver passes the engine he'll stop and stick his head out the window and ask "WHICH WAY DIDDEE GO?" i just imagine something out of the old heckel and jeckel cartoons. It was one of those you had to be there things i guess. but thats really all they got all night.

As i'm packing it in off the medic our canteen coordinator, wonderful lady, sees an incident right up the street from our station in the other direction where some prize winner put his vehicle into the side of an apartment buildling, compromising the structure. Technical Rescue and support are dispatched. We call into the control center and see if the guys on scene could do with a hot cup of coffee and some snacks. Of course a firefighter will never turn down a hot cup of coffee or some gatorade on a busy night. so off we go. Its kinda chest puffing proud to hear how much the career guys appreciate the volunteer canteens and what the volunteers do for the county.

NOW its time to head home, and here we are, present day.

Planning on heading to the statoin after work to get in my run and talk to my "trainer" about what the next step i need to take is.

Oh and chcek out my 101 things in 1001 days list.

I'm doing ok on a couple of them. So we'll see how this keeps up.

ok this is just funny

2008-01-10T13:21:00.001-05:00

A little excerpt from ER RN's Blog

For example (exact spellings included):

Hell and hit head (I'd hit my head if I was in hell too - over and over and over and......)

here for a cathader (is that related to Darth Vader?)

cut all his finers (ummm..................where are your finers?)

turned both ankles (turned them where? Left? Right? Into the police?)

bitten twice by unknown (wouldn't you have recognized it after the first time it bit you? Or at least ran from it when it went at you a second time?)

history of vowel obstruction (good thing they weren't consonated too)
slash of gasoline (vs a dash or a pinch? Or maybe a guitar player from a rock band?)

left thigh from a dirt bike (what - did he grow a left thigh from the dirt bike? Borrow it from the dirt bike? Left his thigh on the dirt bike?)
kedney pain (apparently a new type of pain related to shoes?)

pains from having appendicitis out (this is just funny)

Fell likes passing gas (Sweet shit on a stick. Did he fall because he likes passing gas? Did we just need to know he likes flatulence? Does he feel like passing gas? Because apparently it's now OK to come to the ER whenever you feel the need to fart)

painful hemoridds (maybe they wouldn't be painful if he'd have just passed the gas)

toothpain and a bad smell (well maybe a shower would help)
ripatory dress (as compared to a non ripe............ shirt?)
sinkable episode (was this a near drowning?)

sour throat (If they watched what they put in their mouth, they wouldn't have such a bad taste in there)
dieraha (ummm...............hmmmmm......yeah)
crappy cogn (it took me a long time to figure out this was a croupy cough and not something to do with poop)

Here's a link to the whole post, i just thought this was really funny.

My Own Personal Cardiac Compromise.....Lecture

2008-01-10T09:08:00.000-05:00

Gimme a CVA, a TIA, an intra cranial bleed!!!! GOOOOOO BLOODLOSS!!!

OK, all AMI's aside Tuesday's lecture was enlightening. Really starting to understand all these ALS dispatches that come out, know what CHF is now, what AMI stands for CVA, TIA, REALLY know what an anurism is vs. a cranial bleed. The real meat of medical stuff is just starting.
Start with strokes and stuff tonight. Boring stuff that any of you medical people/EMS people already know about, but its new to me so its NEW boring stuff. We'll never get to treat any of these injuries or respond to calls WITH those injuries in our jurisdiction, that is unless we take advantage of being able to ride ALS units as a 3rd. Then we stand a chance but we're not really allowed to do anything outside of our basic medical assessment, i could tell the Medic, he i THINK they had a stroke etc.

Enough with the boring class stuff. I rode our BLS ambulance yesterday for the first time in more than 2 weeks. A decently busy day, good calls, great use of our system, good lessons all around on allocation of resources and working with career guys for efficient patient care.

Day started off a little later than our usual shifts, we like to get there at 0700 when the career shifts switch just so we're on an even playing ground, i know the guys at our station appreciate when we put the unit in service, but i like to at least keep ourselves on even footing so there is no "Well we've been here since 0700 you slobs rolled in at 0830 and bitched about how it was early." in any case, we're there a smidge late, luckily its one of the more forgiving shifts AND they are out on OARS (training drills) so we were still a benefit filling the house while they were out.

We're signed on and ready to go about 0840 and my black could kicks into effect. BOOM, 0853 the tones drop for a BLS emergency, little kid, injuries from a fall, undetermined height, supposedly unconscious at the scene. The hitch is we listen to the address and not ONE person on the shift knows where the hell it is. Its WAY outside our first due. Mind you this is a heavy traffic volume time in our 1st, 2nd, and 3rd due, headed in the direction of the call. A little confused we take off WAY up the road. Airhorns got a workout yesterday! 9 miles in 11 minutes during rushhour, not bad, marked onscene at 0904 only 3 minutes after the first due engine. NOT TOO SHABBY, great driving BOB!!! Little Mr. Bumponhead was in his kidneygarden class and just DFO'd, teacher said he tensed up and fell over and "curled into a fetal position", by the time we got there the engine crew had him isolated, the rest of the kids were out of the room and mom was there (holy fast acting phone tree, batman!!). I grab everything we could possibly need, airsplints, pediatric board splints, the pediatric backboard, restraint bag, the aide bag, the cot, ... I look like a vagrant, i have literally 6 bags and they're dragging the cot in front of me. Sir Bumpsonhead seems to be ok, Initial and rapid assessments don't reveal anything, at all really. Just because we're not taking any chances on this we package up Bumpsonhead with the ped board (completely alien technology, they should really teach us this stuff in class, not that OJT is bad.)
C-collar, spineboard, straps, this kid is a trooper, calm as a cucumber with the whole process as long as mom is holding his hand and explaining things to him. All in all a good patient. No clue why he DFO'd, our OIC thinks it may have been a reaction to a possible choking incident, or an isolated focal seizure. The medic checks him out and encodes the hospital for us since technically it was an ALS transport due to reported Loss of Consciousness, but without altered LOC or identifyable serious MOI they gave us the BLS transport with a courtesy call to the ER. No issues on the other end, we re-encode the hospital about 2 minutes out and drop Bumpsonhead off in the Ped unit. The docs check him out and take his collar off and take him off the backboard, soon enough he's running around like a madman.

The only real downside to this call is mom and lil' brother (his indian name would be Little Big Poops) came along with us, somewhere along the line lil' bro drops a big stinky mess in his pants and it gets sucked into our vent system so we're all sniffin' poop for the rest of the way to the hospital. I don't know what Lil' Big Poops was eating but DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN. HOOFAH for sure! But, if thats the worst thing that happens i'll consider myself fortunate.

Get back to the station about 1000 and are just getting settled in when our company president shows up and pulls me off the unit to drive out chief's buggy over to the county apparatus shop while he drops off our reserve engine. OK, ALRIGHT, this can't be that bad, but i get this ooky feeling in my gut that we're going to get a call while i'm OOS. Get out to the apparatus shop about 15 minutes away from the station and i hear my OIC get on our response channel asking dispatch to start him a Medic unit to our front pad for a walkup diabetic emergency. CRAP! I knew i'd missone. So i round up our president and haul butt back to our station. We get there just as the medic unit from a neighboring area is loading up the patient. ALMOST MADE THAT ONE !!!! Eh, nothign we could have done anyways guy was hyperglycemic, and we're not allowed to do much other than give him water and recheck his dexy in a few minutes. The REALLY positive side to this whole call is that when the guy walked up and our OIC realized what was going on he called our EMS Supervisor to get direction on how to handle the call. We could transport and monitor patient stability, or roll a medic and let them give fluids and transport. EMS Supervior tells us the safest thing to do is roll a medic. Silly part is they really arent going to do anything that we wouldnt other then fluids, only they'll give them IV and we'd give them orally. In the time it took to get the medic unit to our station we could have been to the hospital. But, in retrospect it was handled well, the medic unit trasporting limited our liability as a BLS only unit. The OIC on the medic compelmented our OIC for an excellent transfer of care, a GREAT report, and a generally well handled call. I think the biggest benefit from that whole experience is that one more career paramedic crew realized we're competant pre-hospital caregivers not just volunteer scabs.

Not much else for the rest of the day until about 1545, the tones drop and waaaaiiiiit waiiiiiiiit engine, medic, ambulance, rescue, police, another engine, a truck BAM huge dispatch for a car into a wall with a truck involved. OOOOH NICE CALL! We mount up and tear ass down the street tailing our academy's medic unit that was filling our house. BAM we hit the interstate, horns blaring, middle of rushour sirens wailing people scattering another great display of driving from our crew driver. Weave and dodge just the right way. Usually we never make it to the scene of accidents on this particular interstate before being put back in service. We're monitoring our interstate incident channel and we're getting excited. No service call yet, WE CAN SEE THE ACCIDENT, 1000 yards, 750 yards, CLOSER .... CLOSER 100 YARDS, BAM ... ambulance blahdittyblah you can go back in service, no need for EMS on this call. CRAP!!!!!!!!! Oh well, so close yet so far. No where near as dramatic as the dispatch had made it seem, looked like a pickup truck rear ended a van and the van swerved into and sideswiped a wall lowspeed. Oh well, such is life. It was a wild ride for a minute there.

That was about it for the rest of the day.

Got in a great workout later that night and i think i'm almost to the point where i'm comfortable going back to CPAT practice, gotta try putting a LITTLE more stress on the leg tonight and see how it responds.

Class tonight is on Altered Mental Status, Diabetes, Strokes, and using the glucometer. All stuff that should be marginally interesting.

I'll write more later i'm sure, just to keep everyone updated.

I'm contemplating riding our medic unit this coming sunday after class so we'll see how that goes.

OUCHIES!!!!

2008-01-08T11:27:00.000-05:00

Ok, maybe I overdid it a little bit....and didnt stretch well enough....and yadda yadda yadda. Long story short, I pulled a muscle in my thigh, deep muscle type pain. I walked a mile on it last night to try and work it out thinking it might be a charlie horse. Most of the pain is gone this morning but there is enough of an ache that i don't want to mess with it too much.

We'll see how i feel round about the 15th, i'll make a decision then if i want to challenge the CPAT on the 19th. I think i'll be all better by then but you never can tell.

Last thing i want to do is really hurt myself and have to wait until the last minute to take the CPAT and risk not passing in time for Fire School.

Nothing else of note for yesterday, just had our OPS meeting, went over stuff from last month, got some encouragement for the month coming up.

I'll write about class later on tonight.

Screaming Instructors and Broken Glasses

2008-01-07T10:32:00.000-05:00

Yet another weekend of classes up at the academy, nothing too off the wall this time. Our first introduction to medical assessments, "a conversation with a purpose". All in all a good 3 hours we got to shake the cobwebs out of our heads after the long 20 days we had off from class.

Thank god for my study partners, we got together a couple times over the break and worked through some assessments and got some instruction from a seasoned EMT and some valuable critiques. Another round of the instructors pointing out that they "can tell who is practicing". Now if i can only convince the other group that i study with that they are lightyears ahead of some people in the class and to get over their nerves they're doing JUST fine.

YOU HEAR THAT!!! YOU"RE DOING FINE!!!

I was thrown way outside my comfort bubble yesterday when i was tasked to lead an "engine crew and a medic crew" on a conscious trauma victim drill. Our victim for this drill is one of our instructors, a wonderful guy, lots of fun but known for his acting abilities. We had heard him screaming and hollering as previous groups were treating him. So of course when i get tagged to be "crew leader" my knees start knocking like so many woodpeckers. We are sent out of the room so we can work the scenario from the top. Scene safety, BSI, the whole 9 yards. We did a good job on scene size up. Patient was on a metal ladder found down in his front yard on a fall day. We identified the possible MOI's from electrical burns through a conductive ladder, to a mere significant fall. Successfully removed the ladder, got to the patient to discover a significant back injury with loss of sensation to the body. Conducted good assessment, good scene control, i had a great group of people to work with, especially the above mentioned group of girls i practice with, very smooth atuned to the situation, better than myself i'd venture to say, i kept looking at the instructor to see if what i was doing was right, i just was not comfortable in my own skin at all. GOTTA WORK ON THIS!!!

Here's the bad part of the day. I was playing victim for one of our rotations and the students conducting my assessment took my glasses off and put then "in a safe spot". Well they got DESTROYED, not fun. I spent the rest of the time wearing my perscription sunglasses and contacts which i don't like doing on the weekends. I'm really gonna feel like a meanie asking them to at least contribute to getting me a new pair.

Oh well c'est la vie, on we move...

Riding this wednesday during the day. Hopefully i have good calls to blog about.

See you all then!

One more day, one more "patient"

2008-01-05T11:42:00.001-05:00

Dragged my slovenly butt out of bed this morning to meet "B" shift for one last breakfast with our station captain before he retires. Killed two birds with one stone on that account, just happened to be at the same restaurant i meed a bunch of gearhead friends at for a weekly breakfast. See, now wasnt that easy?

Got in my CPAT workout today, a couple of the career guys at the station gave me some tips, and i learned to take a couple advil after you workout so you're not a cripple later that day, i learn from experience!!!!

Sat down to calm down a bit and read some blogs and everyone now has goals or anniversaries coming up. OI VEY!

I guess i have a couple milestones coming up myself, this month is my 6 month date, meaning it is the first company meeting where i am eligible to be voted in as a full member. Not too much stress but i'm chomping at the bit because i've done my best to get there, hope i don't have to wait any longer.

My state EMT-B test is coming up in 6 weeks, its not too far away but not so close that i'm getting nervous yet.

The one thing thats starting to get me worried is this damned CPAT test again, i only really have 3 chances to pass it, i'm sure i will but i like to maintain a little level of nervousness to keep me sharp and on point.

Ok, then, off to another volunteer station to meet up with some ladies from my EMT class to practice some more. YEAH FOR CONSCIOUS TRAUMA PATIENTS!

Oh, yeah i'll be un-lazy some time soon and come up with a list of goals for this year.

ok, enough W just enough.....

2008-01-04T15:01:00.000-05:00

Well there's one guy here at my Real Life job thats just a serious mess.

He's with it so far as being a great mechanic, awesome at what he does, he's just a general mess. A little smelly, a little blotchy, a LOT diabetic, and a general heap of wonderfulness.

Everyone knows he's got some health issues and well his general hygeine just isnt that great. Well today those two took a huge headlong crash into each other. When your hygeine starts affecting your health its time to take one hell of a bath.

I wasnt going to even write about this, since its pretty high up on my nasty scale and not directly related to my EMS life, but here goes anyways.

I run into W in the bathroom at work today, he's standing in front of the full length mirror in the locker room for quite a long time looking at himself. Now, no offense to W or anything but he's got nothing to be vain about and he'll be the first to admit it. I ask him what he's up to and he shows me this massive growth he's got going on oh his arm. Some sort of cyst, goiter, boil something i'm no doctor or nurse but DAMN this thing needs some serious attention.

I tell him he should have that looked at its probably infected judging by the described tenderness and obvious swelling and redness. He says "Nah, i dunna need tuh go to thu 'mergency room, I taken care uh this kinda thing before" clicks open his grody pocket knife, the same one he uses to slice his sandwich at lunch and cut open boxes and scrape nasty carbonized grease off of brakepads. He takes this wonderful gleaming example of everything unsterile and "SNIKT" flips it open and slices a little opening in the top of this mass. A little blood, a little puss and i figure thats about all thats gonna happen, its an infected pore or hair follicle and W has one of the worse whiteheads i've ever seen. Nope he gives it a squeeze and what i can only describe as an uncooked clam comes oozing out of the hole he's cut in his arm.

Reminded me exactly of the video that EmergencyEmily has posted on her blog ( Click here only if you have a strong stomach)

I can only imagine this is some sort of cyst W has just "popped".

I run downstairs and hand him a couple 4x4's out of my hip pack i keep in my trunk, and tell him he shouldnt have done that and that he needs to go to the urgent care center up the street. I finally convince him to head on up the way and hopefully he went in because damn, i know that A) had to hurt B) was disgusting as hell C) was bound to get infected.

Yup, i spent the last 2 hours gagging trying to keep down my wonderful lunch of spicy shrimp.

Gack, i must have this gray cloud of doom hanging over my head, injuries and sickness follow me wherever I go.

...On the 10th day of christmas

2008-01-04T10:41:00.000-05:00

My instructor gave to me, an introduction to Medical Assessment and general pharmacology.

Hey that ALMOST worked.

First day back in class, easy short, to the point. It was a good way to slip back into the learning mode after the holidays. As a basic there really isnt all that much we need to worry about in terms of medication. Only 6 really, 3 that we can give, and 3 that are patient assist.

*Oxygen - no med direction neccessary
*Activated Charcoal
*Oral Glucose - Glucagon
*Nitro - patient assist
*Epinepherine Auto-injector - Patient assist
*Albuterol Inhaler - Patient Assist

Yeah we're limited, but then again our BLS protocols in this state are limited as well, almost everything is dispatched as ALS. But thats neither here nor there.

Learned the basics of NOI and reinforced the importance of SAMPLE and OPQRST. How to treat an unresponsive medical patient. Suggestions for gathering information in the absence of family members or bystanders.

All in all a very brief overview.

I didn't know THAT could hurt

2008-01-03T08:30:00.000-05:00

I've been out of the loop a little too long me thinks.

Havnt played rugby in 18 months, havnt really done any really really tough workouts up until last night. It fealt AWESOME to get back into that i'm so exhausted i might hurl stage. Scary but awesome. Definitely going to go again. Its exactly what i need to jumpstart getting back into shape for this CPAT thing.

I think if i were to get a shot at the test without doing an hour long circuit training exercise first i'd have been able to get a passing time. We'll find out on January 19th though, for real. I'm sure i'll have to take another shot at it, but whats the worst that can happen this time around. Not pass? oh well, there's 3 more chances.

Edit:

A simple list of the basics we worked on for starters

(Wearing a 50# vest throughout)
Tractor Tire flip
6" stepups
stepups on a tractor tire
weighted lunges
Wallball with a medicine ball

each for 2 minutes 2 times

Running an exercise "rack"

20' sprint
30 pushups
20' sprint + 40' sprint
30 shoulderpresses
20' sprint + 40' sprint + 60' sprint
30 alternating low rows each side
20' sprint + 40' sprint + 60' sprint + 80' sprint
30 bicep curls bilaterally
20' sprint + 40' sprint + 60' sprint + 80' sprint + 100' sprint
30 hammer curls
20' sprint + 40' sprint + 60' sprint + 80' sprint + 100' sprint + 120' sprint
30 bentover rows
20' sprint + 40' sprint + 60' sprint + 80' sprint + 100' sprint + 120' sprint

average time ~9:45 minutes to complete

its only a 30 minute workout with a break between halves but it wore me the hell out

i need to hit the gym harder

oh and in case you don't know the CPAT events are, in order
:20 warmup on stairmill @60 steps/min +75# vest
3:00 on stairmill @60 steps/min +75# vest no touching railings or leaning on legs
hose drag and pull +50# vest
equipment carry (2 chainsaws 100 feet and reload on shelf) +50# vest
ladder raise +50# vest
ladder extension +50# vest
forcible entry +50# vest
confined space drill +50# vest
dummy drag (160# dummy ~60 feet) +50# vest
ceiling breach (3x up +60# & 5x down @60 # all x4) +50# vest

all in <10:20 here's a video overview

CPAT - Candidate Physical Abilities Test

2008-01-02T10:06:00.000-05:00

Going to CPAT practice today, gotta get into fire school eh. 3rd Saturday of every odd month, that gives me 3 chances before August to get my fat butt in shape and pass this damned thing.

Been working out for it for a couple months now, just wanted to see how i'd actually fare on the actual equipment, i'll post a quick comment later to let you all know how it went.

MUD Drill

2008-01-01T16:36:00.000-05:00

Got to ride with volunteers through another station the other day. Definitely a busier station than my home station. Got to run a bunch of calls and even participated in our battalion's Multi-Unit Drill. A mass casualty incident involving an accident in the auto shop at the local high school. Got to basically manage the greentag treatment area.

"Treated" an avulsed forearm, a sprained ankle, and a dislocated shoulder. While not real injuries its always good practice. Its a bit odd treating fellow volunteers that happen to be friend's/roommates of yours.

Appologies....

2008-01-01T16:25:00.001-05:00

I know i've got like 6 posts in one day, but i have a lot of catching up to do.

Hospital Rotation

2008-01-01T12:24:00.000-05:00

Ok, so part of our EMT training is a required minimum of 5 hours of time spent in the ER. We do our rotations at the hospital closest to the Fire Academy a much slower ED than the trauma center close to my house.

Usual SOP for an EMT-B rotation in the hospital is 5 hours spent in triage taking blood pressures, pulse ox %, and random assundry other vitals. Throw in your odd rectal temperature on a croupy baby and your night is complete. As expected i get put into triage and see my share of barking coughs, dehydrated elederly patients, and the odd chest pain patient. There was only one mildly interesting case that came through triage in my time there. One lady came in complaining of numbness on one side of her body, difficulty speaking and general confusion and a pounding headache. I take her vitals and listen to the SAMPLE history and all that other stuff. They take her next door to get a 12-lead on her to rule out cardiac issues and schedule time in the CT suite and get a full set of bloodwork ordered. She was just so scared, she just kept crying and repeating how she couldnt say goodnight to her kids, it was a bit emotional but you have to maintain a certain distance and keep your emotions in control so your patient's know that there is someone in control, someone they can rely on in their time of need.

We send her from triage back to get admitted, still numb down her right side and all trussed up ready for CT scan. It was a bit sad, I talked to one of the nurses and the two real obvious possibilities that she thought were either a tumor isolated to one hemisphere of the brain which decided to assert itself in to the motor control areas of her brain, or some sort of stroke, CVA or TIA that was causing the unilateral numbness etc. Sad to consider either in the case of a woman so young.

After seeing her me and my "mentor" were asked to come back into the "pit" or the receiving section of the ER to assist on a trauma coming in with the local medic unit. No clue what it was other than a young man who was found unconscious and unresponsive at a party. The police called EMS and tried to get some information from the bystanders at the party, no such luck. No one would give any information to the police because they might get arrested.

The long and short of this patient is that I got more experience with trauma cases in that 2 hours thani think i will in MONTHS of riding the ambulance. He was RSI'ed, had an OG tube and a foley in place. I got to help move the patient, took vitals when the nurses needed, suctioned the patient's airway, helped clean the patient who was incontinent to bowel and bladder (fun stuff let me tell you, but all part of the game). This poor guy came in as a John Doe, no ID until they searched his belongings again and found out he had been into the hospital before for followup on a previous surgery the aftercare of which would have precluded this gentleman from drinking, oddly enough he came to us with a BAC of .40 (just to give you an idea the local legal limit is .08 which is about 2 drinks in a 185# man in an hour). You gotta drink a LOT to get to a .40.

They finally found our human distillery's parents, they were en route from home and would be there in about 45 minutes. Finally dad shows up and supplies our much needed information and deals with the County Police that are waiting to inform dad what the son is in for when he is capable of responding.

Dad thanks us, the cops and the ER staff over and over and over and basically keeps insisting that his son doesnt drink and that his friends must have done something to him. I really hope that case came out ok, the kid has enough going on in his life that he doesnt need to spend any more time on an autovent than absolutely neccessary. Kinda fealt bad for him in the end. By the time i moved to the next patient the docs and nurses were pretty happy with the stability of the patient and had good hopes for being able to take him off the vent and off the "milk of amnesia" (propofol) by morning. He was carted off to teh ICU for a couple more hours of monitoring.

Next patient! I told you things got good. Had a gentleman come in on the medic unit with severe respiratory distress. Thats what they told us, what we found when they showed up was so much more interesting. He was inflated like a beachball, abdomen so distended and retaining so much fluid that there's no wonder he was having trouble breathing. He was tight as a drum with fluid. And jaundiced, jaundiced like none other, so badly so that his skin matched the neon yellow sclera. Liver failure, makes sense in a heavy EtOH abuser, the doctor said most likely he has complete liver failure.

To give you an idea of what this guy looked like there is a good picture included in this post. I mean i kinda fealt bad for this guy and was almost nervous to touch him, thought he might pop. Unfortunately at this point i was called back up to triage to help the only nurse up there at this point who was slammed with pediatric cases. Odd for 3am.

I ended my night portering patients into rooms in the ER and hooking them up to monitors and giving the croupy kids cool humified oxygen tubes to help ease their coughs.

All in all a banner night for me, i was quick, i was on point, i did quite well in my own mind. I got a glowing review from the nurse i was working with and an invitation to come back and help whenever i want.

I don't know how these people do this night after night, its a lot of work. I think i might come back and do a couple more rotations just to get some more experience.

First Ride with the Career Staff

2008-01-01T11:46:00.000-05:00

Christmas Eve, decided since i'm the only one in my house home for the holidays, and there doesnt seem to be much to do around the house that i'd head on over to the firestation and ride the medic unit.

Really a quiet day, although i do have to say that a little more experience on the medic unit will make me much more comfortable with the way they operate.

A few good calls, one unknown sick, general body pain guy. Most likely the flu, no transport. Nothing much for the rest of the day. But after dinner we're just sitting down to watch the polar express for the second time and the tones drop again. Difficulty Breathing and general dizzy while sitting. Usually a good indicator of a cardiac episode. Up the street, woo woo's and blinky blinks going. Get to Mr. Bad Christmas sweater's house and get him on the monitor. His blood pressure is through the roof, no identifyable cause really, the OIC looks at the stsripchart from the Lifepak and everything looks normal except for the 192/110 BP we're getting. Not an emergent case that REQUIRES transport unless the patient wants to go. Mr. Sweater wants to go anyways just to be sure. Good move on his part, just in case. Got to watch Lt. P put in an IV lock, test dexy all the stuff we don't really do on the ambulance. It was fun. Get him to the hospital and drop him off with his family just in time to see 0001 pop up on the clock. TIME FOR BED!!!

ok back to the station. just settling in finding that one spot on the bunk where a rogue bedspring isnt jabbing me in the kidney. HONK HONK BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP Engine and Medic respond to ALS Emergency. Possible seizure patient, combative, pre-existing medical condition, feels like shes falling through space whenever shes touched. As is protocol in our jurisdiction dispatch send an engine crew and a medic crew to any ALS emergency. thats a MINIMUM of 6 people and 2 pieces of apparatus responding to this poor family's house at midnight on christmas. The whole crew rolls in stretcher, heart monitor, oxygen tanks, and its quite overwhelming for the family "OH, a whole crew here, wonderful" Not in that condecending way, but more of an expression of surprise. My dumb ass forgot to bring in the treatment bag so we're scrounging around for a penlight to check Ms. Patient's eyes. This event only further exasperated the engine crew's disdain for this call and for my "green-ness" i don't think they MEAN to dislike me but i need to learn a lot. This is that experience thing i was talking about earlier coming into play. Its ok, i get the O2 canula in place and stay out of the way of the people that KNOW what they are doing. We get into the back of the unit and the driver and OIC get to treating the patient. ABC's are good, shes responsive to painful stimulus, which is good, shes at home inside her head for the mostpart. Her existing condition makes communication slightly difficult if she were'nt twisting and thrashing feeling like shes falling. I do my best to comfort her, hold her hands talk to her while our driver gets IV access in her right AC so some drugs can be administered and get her calmed down. It gets to the point where she may hurt herself and its obvious shes very very stressed out and her current condition isnt helping her any so the Lt. decides to administer a half dose of valium to knock her down a little. OUT LIKE A LIGHT, instant reaction. Wow, is that what she needed. Calmed down and getting a little rest after quite the ordeal for her, we got her to the hospital ASAP. I kept talking to her and holding her hand trying to at least comfort a lady who couldnt express to us what she was feeling, but by the look in her eyes thats all she needed right then was a little reassurance.

Got her to the hospital where she came out of her little "happy place" as the valium wore off. No more falling, no more spinning, she was now alert and responsive to verbal stimulus. CAOx3 good vitals, save an elevated temperature. now is the exhausting part, since we administered controlled meds we have to wait for a doctor's sign ature. I just sit back and take in the buzz of the ER on a holiday night.

On the first night of christmas EMT-B got to see: (think ... tune of 12 nights of christmas kinda)
* last rights being administered (got a little choked up)
*a drunk teen and her mom arguing in the hallway
* 2 airlifted traumas
*1 bloody carwreck victim
* a couple in for the same stomach pains, acute onset ("I SHOULD HAVE REFRIGERATED THAT SHRIMP DIP BETTER")
* 1 really hot trauma nurse
* both parties involved in a head on DUI collision put foot to foot in the hallway on their cots, Ms. Car #1 is yelling at Mr. Car #2 through a clenched jaw all the while Mr. Car #2 is snoring because he's passed out in an EtOH induced beddybye time.
*Ms. Car #1's family yelling at the State Trooper because Ms. Car #1 is being charged with reckless driving and facing possible arrest.
* and last but not least the VERY relieved family of our patient finally seeing their dear sweet grandma calmed down and not flailing around anymore.

As much pain as i saw as much hate as the DUI people had, seeing that family with their grandma back to "normal" brought me back down.

I know its nothing grand but hey, i'm a lil' ol EMT-B this stuff is still new and exciting to me.

But i also got to hear from the voices of experience about the downfalls and shortcomings of our EMS system in this jurisdiction. Someone needs to make some changes around here.

Hello there...

2008-01-01T11:13:00.000-05:00

Ok, new to this blogging thing. But I guess that here is as good a place to start as any.

Back in July 2007 I finally acted on my long standing interest in becoming a volunteer firefighter. Being as our local volunteer company was less than a mile from my house, it would have been silly not to take advantage of that situation. Sent my emails went in for my interview and low and behold a couple weeks later i'm sitting in my first company meeting waiting to be sworn in among the newest group of people to join our company.

A whole new experience for me really, even the first meeting. Trying to take it all in and keep my cool being the "new kid on the block" i just kept quiet and took notes. Well now comes the time when our recruitment officer asks us to line up in front of the room and tell the group a little about ourselves. They'd introduce us by name and what we'd like to do for the apartment. Originally i was told the department was only taking on new administrative members so i relegated myself to doing the best i can in that role until some operational slots open up. I'm introduced and listed on the company website as being inline for Suppression. Fun stuff, huge grin, a little giggle (ok just on the inside, gimme a break i was excited).

A lot of red tape and jumping hurdles, and getting over a mild phobic reaction to anything near my eyes (ESPECIALLY CONTACT LENSES, which i needed to get to pass my physical) later i'm currently in class for my EMT-Basic, basically to learn about boo-boo's and band-aids. Oh there's some neat stuff to be learned and its just more motivation to get a higher level certification. But, I digress.

This is a VERY VERY brief intro to where this blog comes from. Now onto the fun stuff.

Our volunteer company puts our Basic Life Support Ambulance in-service about 3-5 times a week on average. And any member cleared by the county as physically capable, and who has fulfilled certain requirements can upstaff the unit. I figured even though i havnt passed my EMT-B yet i'd ride whenever the crew would let me to get experience and actually get a chance to practice the skills we're learning in class.

I must tow around a grey cloud behind me and i'll tell you why in a moment, but i just have to share a quick annecdote about my first call ever, back in october fall weather just starting i figured a short day shift on the ambulance was just the cure for a boring day. Show up in my fresh new uniform, bunker gear neatly stowed in the crew compartment and BAM, toned out not 15 minutes after logging the unit onto the CAD system. Call comes through as an unidentified injury to a hand on "trash". Figuring OK, Mr. Homemaker cut his hand on the tuna can making his kids school lunches. NOPE! Dispatch sends out additional info to our MCT computer in the ambulance while we're enroute. Mr. Homemaker is Mr. Irate Fingerless Gentleman who has possible amputation of digits on his hand, unknown number, hand wrapped in a t-shirt to stop the bleeding. Priority 1 response to the scene and we show up to Mr. Fingerless standing on the corner hand wrapped in a fairly filthy t-shirt. Come to find out the implement of amputation is not innocent little tuna can but GIANT TRASH TRUCK. Our ALS medic unit was also on scene and unwrapped Mr. Fingerless' hand to find a full on clean amputation of a finger, right clean through no gore, little bleeding just GONE! I went my way up the street to make sure the rest of the people on scene have the appropriate information and get people to the right hospital to meet their co-worker. Being as its my first day and figuring my patient interaction would be severely limited. Nope, i'm up there and our Medic driver points at the gaping maw of this garbage truck, looks me square in the eye and says "You're the new guy right? go in there and find that finger", gag! Ok fine, am i supposed to dig through this full sized garbage truck to find this gentleman's missing digit? Nope, Mr. Medic Driver says "It'll be easy just follow that tendon, the finger has got to be on the other end." Yup it was, about 12 inches of tendon later i find the finger, firmly lodged in a leather work glove.

So, throw the gloved finger in a suction basin and run back down to the unit to try and save Mr. Fingerless' finger. The medic gives us the transport, priority 1 to our local trauma center. Smooth transport, less smooth "extrication" of the finger from said glove. My aide and I worked as smoothly as possible in the back of a jostling ambulance to cut away the glove without damaging any tissue more than we needed to. My aide tells me to push the digit out. Nope, starts to de-glove (for the non-medical out there) the skin starts to peel away from the musculature and bone beneath. That won't work, more cutting, more cutting. POP, out comes the finger into the waiting sterile glove to be tied off and chilled for transport. We encode the hospital thinking, minor amputation at least we'll be met by a nurse. We arrive to find our unit on the board, a room assigned but no one there to meet us, 20 minutes later we get someone. Hopefully Mr. Fingerless is not Mr. Re-Attached Finger but followup we never did find out.

Good first call i'd say. I didn't even get the slightest bit queezy. We'll see how i do on my first bloody patient.

Next night riding we get a call to the local schoolyard for a possible broken forearm on a pediatric patient. Oh great, screaming little kid, and just a bruise. Couldnt be farther from the truth. Lil' Miss Severely Angulated forearm was calm, and cool as a cucumber, as long as she didnt look at the arm. Ms. Mom was more upset. That call went a lot smoother, we used the new and improved red-hat splint, a.k.a. Corey Hold this sling in place until we get to the hospital.

We get to the hospital in record time, encode her into the system and poof gone to the pediatric ER. I'm sure she had a pretty pink cast on in no time and all her friends signed it and shes off to the races ready to get in more trouble.

Now this is two shifts in a row with good calls, here comes the nickname. The driver and aide on that shift start calling me Odie, or OD short for Obvious Deformity, or the over eager little dog that that fat orange cat likes to torture.

I've ridden a lot since then, and made it through most of the Trauma lessons in my EMT-B class, but i'll keep you updated on the goings on as soon as there's something interesting to report.