It's safe to say I've been downright neglectful of this blog for the past few months. A lot has happened since my last post that had any substance to it, but about 90% of it has been personal in nature, and frankly I haven't been motivated to share it with complete strangers.
So what have I been doing since May? I spent some time traveling out of the Kingdom to Turkey and Germany. I finished a three month rotation at one of our remote sites, and since returning from that there has been talk of the Powers that Be moving myself and Mrs. Road Doc to the main camp. I'm pretty excited about that, but not totally optimistic that it will pan out for us. Lately I've had renewed interest in getting myself into seriously awesome shape, so I've been paying much more attention to what I eat and I've been exercising five or six days each week. Lastly, I've started an online, live broadcast paramedic refresher, which may just save me from giving up my NREMT-P card next March.
Other than those few things, life has actually been pretty dull around here. Most people on camp take their vacations in the summer to get away from the extreme heat. Looking forward, I plan on getting back to the blog, but it's safe to say that posts will not be as frequent as they were in the first part of the year.
18 August 2011
07 June 2011
I'm not dead...
...and I didn't fall off the face of the earth. I've just been doing some traveling lately. I'm looking forward to getting back to some more regular posting soon.
30 April 2011
Public Service Announcement
Please be aware, MaddogMedic has moved his blog. It can now be found at http://www.maddogmedic.com.
Maddog is a talented writer and one of the original EMS bloggers, and his blog should definitely be on your reading list.
26 April 2011
Fire
Lately I've missed firefighting more than I thought I would when I moved here. Apparently the adrenaline junkie inside me still lives. On the bus ride home from work the other day I was thinking of some of the memorable fires I've been to in my career. This one crept into my mind, kind of taking me by surprise. It was a hard lesson about how nothing is what it seems, especially when calls start feeling routine.
_________________________
It was a hot summer day in the middle of the week. Normally I wouldn't have been at my volunteer station on a day like this, but there was something going on that day that I needed to be around for. I don't remember what it was specifically, just another joy of being an officer I guess. I had told my wife (she was my fiance at the time) that I would be leaving the station at 1700 hours to go home, and that I would stop riding at 1600. Apparently that just wasn't in the cards for the day.
At roughly 1545 our engine was dispatched to an auto fire. Nobody ever gets excited about auto fires, they are a dime a dozen in the summer. Usually some kids steal a car at night, have their fun with it, and take it to one of the local favorite dump spots and set it on fire.
As we turned the corner into a residential area and saw smoke, the driver yelled back to me that I would be pumping the engine. Normally this wouldn't happen, but he's training me to drive, and it's "just a car fire." There was plenty of other people on the engine who could run the line. One of them forgot his SCBA mask so I lent him mine, thinking that I would be at the pump panel and wouldn't need it.
The driver parked the engine, everyone piled out. I went to the pump panel, the line was pulled, I charged it, the lineman started knocking the fire. Everything was going as it should have been until the driver's side window was broken out. From the pump panel I couldn't hear much other than the engine noise, but I could see that all of a sudden everyone else became frantic. I looked over all the gauges and levers to make sure my job was getting done and the crew had water. Everything looked good there. I didn't know what was going on up at the car, but my job was getting done and there wasn't much else I could do at that point.
Everything started moving at a mile a minute for me when the driver came back to the panel. He told me "You have gear, you should go down there, I'll pump. There's a man in the car." Well, shit. In the blink of an eye this run of the mill car fire turned into a whole different scenario. I ran down to the car, where the driver's door was now open. The lineman was putting water into the doorway in a fog pattern in an attempt to cool the air where the patient was. Most of the fire was out. I grabbed for my SCBA mask to put it on real quick before I stuck myself in there to grab the patient, but of course I didn't have it because I'd lent it away less than three minutes ago. (Lesson learned there!)
I took a deep breath and held it while I grabbed the patient and pulled. He didn't budge, he was a big dude. I moved back and took another breath. I grabbed under his armpit and around his neck and pulled, dropping him onto the pavement beside the car. It most definitely wasn't the ideal way to do this, but then again carefully and slowly moving him out of the car onto a (nonexistent) backboard wasn't either. The patient was now on his back outside next to the car with his legs still in the car a little. I grabbed his shirt at the shoulders and tried to pull, but it tore off, revealing charred leathery looking skin all across his chest and back. I grabbed his elbows and dragged him back about 10 feet, but not before degloving both his arms from the elbows to the wrists.
An ALS unit, a BLS unit, and aviation had been requested, but we were still the only unit on scene. The engine had BLS supplies, which were brought to me. The patient was breathing at a rate of about four times per minute and had no gag reflex. I don't honestly remember what his pulse felt like, but I do remember that it was there. I assisted respirations with a BLS airway and a bag valve mask while the driver of the engine removed clothing. We estimated that he had full thickness burns over 90% of his body, including airway burns and circumfrential burns to his chest and back. I also worked on controlling the bleeding coming from a laceration to the back of his head from him hitting the pavement, and we covered as much as we could with dry burn dressings.
The two ambulances finally arrived and we got the patient loaded onto a backboard and got on our way to the landing zone for the helicopter. An IV was established and fluids were hung. The patient was RSI'd by the flight medic and was off to the burn center. I was given a ride back to the scene by one of the police officers, where all of us on the engine crew wrote statements for the fire investigators.
By the time we returned to quarters I was completely exhausted, stinky, and drenched in sweat. The drive home was tough. I called my fiance, who was pretty angry until I told her the whole story. After that she understood why I was late. I spent the rest of the ride second guessing pretty much the entire call, especially my part in causing that head injury.
I don't know how the patient turned out, but I can't imagine it was good. I would be surprised if I were told he is still alive today. I'm mostly healed from this call myself, but I can't be sure that my own healing process will ever be finished. It got off to a good start though, my fiance had a hot shower and cold beer waiting for me when I got home.
_________________________
It was a hot summer day in the middle of the week. Normally I wouldn't have been at my volunteer station on a day like this, but there was something going on that day that I needed to be around for. I don't remember what it was specifically, just another joy of being an officer I guess. I had told my wife (she was my fiance at the time) that I would be leaving the station at 1700 hours to go home, and that I would stop riding at 1600. Apparently that just wasn't in the cards for the day.
At roughly 1545 our engine was dispatched to an auto fire. Nobody ever gets excited about auto fires, they are a dime a dozen in the summer. Usually some kids steal a car at night, have their fun with it, and take it to one of the local favorite dump spots and set it on fire.
As we turned the corner into a residential area and saw smoke, the driver yelled back to me that I would be pumping the engine. Normally this wouldn't happen, but he's training me to drive, and it's "just a car fire." There was plenty of other people on the engine who could run the line. One of them forgot his SCBA mask so I lent him mine, thinking that I would be at the pump panel and wouldn't need it.
The driver parked the engine, everyone piled out. I went to the pump panel, the line was pulled, I charged it, the lineman started knocking the fire. Everything was going as it should have been until the driver's side window was broken out. From the pump panel I couldn't hear much other than the engine noise, but I could see that all of a sudden everyone else became frantic. I looked over all the gauges and levers to make sure my job was getting done and the crew had water. Everything looked good there. I didn't know what was going on up at the car, but my job was getting done and there wasn't much else I could do at that point.
Everything started moving at a mile a minute for me when the driver came back to the panel. He told me "You have gear, you should go down there, I'll pump. There's a man in the car." Well, shit. In the blink of an eye this run of the mill car fire turned into a whole different scenario. I ran down to the car, where the driver's door was now open. The lineman was putting water into the doorway in a fog pattern in an attempt to cool the air where the patient was. Most of the fire was out. I grabbed for my SCBA mask to put it on real quick before I stuck myself in there to grab the patient, but of course I didn't have it because I'd lent it away less than three minutes ago. (Lesson learned there!)
I took a deep breath and held it while I grabbed the patient and pulled. He didn't budge, he was a big dude. I moved back and took another breath. I grabbed under his armpit and around his neck and pulled, dropping him onto the pavement beside the car. It most definitely wasn't the ideal way to do this, but then again carefully and slowly moving him out of the car onto a (nonexistent) backboard wasn't either. The patient was now on his back outside next to the car with his legs still in the car a little. I grabbed his shirt at the shoulders and tried to pull, but it tore off, revealing charred leathery looking skin all across his chest and back. I grabbed his elbows and dragged him back about 10 feet, but not before degloving both his arms from the elbows to the wrists.
An ALS unit, a BLS unit, and aviation had been requested, but we were still the only unit on scene. The engine had BLS supplies, which were brought to me. The patient was breathing at a rate of about four times per minute and had no gag reflex. I don't honestly remember what his pulse felt like, but I do remember that it was there. I assisted respirations with a BLS airway and a bag valve mask while the driver of the engine removed clothing. We estimated that he had full thickness burns over 90% of his body, including airway burns and circumfrential burns to his chest and back. I also worked on controlling the bleeding coming from a laceration to the back of his head from him hitting the pavement, and we covered as much as we could with dry burn dressings.
The two ambulances finally arrived and we got the patient loaded onto a backboard and got on our way to the landing zone for the helicopter. An IV was established and fluids were hung. The patient was RSI'd by the flight medic and was off to the burn center. I was given a ride back to the scene by one of the police officers, where all of us on the engine crew wrote statements for the fire investigators.
By the time we returned to quarters I was completely exhausted, stinky, and drenched in sweat. The drive home was tough. I called my fiance, who was pretty angry until I told her the whole story. After that she understood why I was late. I spent the rest of the ride second guessing pretty much the entire call, especially my part in causing that head injury.
I don't know how the patient turned out, but I can't imagine it was good. I would be surprised if I were told he is still alive today. I'm mostly healed from this call myself, but I can't be sure that my own healing process will ever be finished. It got off to a good start though, my fiance had a hot shower and cold beer waiting for me when I got home.
23 April 2011
Anxiety
Today you learn a little about NightShiftMedic, author of Road Doc. Maybe a little too much, that I haven't decided yet. It's very difficult for me to write about myself, so if you could, please bear with me.
I've suspected for a while that I have some problems with anxiety and trust, particularly in social situations. I don't open up to people because I don't trust them not to judge me, even if that person is my best friend or my parents (who by the way have never been anything other than supportive towards my sister and I). I absolutely dread groups under most circumstances. I think it stems from some bad experiences with bullying early in life and lately, it's become a little more than just a small sneaking suspicion. Recently there was a talent show on camp. I was on my night shift rotation so I was unable to attend. My wife participated, and was proud to, as she should have been. The morning after the show she showed me videos that various people had taken of her and other participants. I laughed, because they were funny, but I was mostly extremely embarrassed. I wasn't embarrassed for myself because my wife got in front of people and acted foolishly. That was the point of the whole show, for people to act foolishly in front of others who had done or were about to do the same. I was embarrassed because if that had been me, I would have died of a heart attack from embarrassment. All that, just from watching the videos. She said she wished I had been there. I told her what would have happened, that I would have been so embarrassed just being in the audience. This made us both upset.
Today I learned that my anxiety as affected not only me, but my wife as well. Because of my anxiety, she doesn't invite people to the house or go to other functions around the camp because she knows it will make me anxious and nervous. I never realized this until she told me today. I knew she got lonely here at times, I had no idea I was the cause of so much of it. I learned also that what hurts her the most is that I've just come to accept that this is me, this is how I am. To date, I've made no attempt to do anything about it. I think it's time I figure out what my options are for getting help. This isn't going to be easy for me, since I don't open up well to other people, but the last thing I want is to be the reason for her loneliness. I need to do this for me, for her, and for the two of us as a whole.
I've suspected for a while that I have some problems with anxiety and trust, particularly in social situations. I don't open up to people because I don't trust them not to judge me, even if that person is my best friend or my parents (who by the way have never been anything other than supportive towards my sister and I). I absolutely dread groups under most circumstances. I think it stems from some bad experiences with bullying early in life and lately, it's become a little more than just a small sneaking suspicion. Recently there was a talent show on camp. I was on my night shift rotation so I was unable to attend. My wife participated, and was proud to, as she should have been. The morning after the show she showed me videos that various people had taken of her and other participants. I laughed, because they were funny, but I was mostly extremely embarrassed. I wasn't embarrassed for myself because my wife got in front of people and acted foolishly. That was the point of the whole show, for people to act foolishly in front of others who had done or were about to do the same. I was embarrassed because if that had been me, I would have died of a heart attack from embarrassment. All that, just from watching the videos. She said she wished I had been there. I told her what would have happened, that I would have been so embarrassed just being in the audience. This made us both upset.
Today I learned that my anxiety as affected not only me, but my wife as well. Because of my anxiety, she doesn't invite people to the house or go to other functions around the camp because she knows it will make me anxious and nervous. I never realized this until she told me today. I knew she got lonely here at times, I had no idea I was the cause of so much of it. I learned also that what hurts her the most is that I've just come to accept that this is me, this is how I am. To date, I've made no attempt to do anything about it. I think it's time I figure out what my options are for getting help. This isn't going to be easy for me, since I don't open up well to other people, but the last thing I want is to be the reason for her loneliness. I need to do this for me, for her, and for the two of us as a whole.
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