So. Here we are. It's been just over a month since my last post. Time to pull the cobwebs down (again) and get up to date.
Well I literally have no idea where to even start. So in a nutshell:
Traveled to Moncton to finish up my preceptorship (had a blast), wrote my final for the Paramedic Academy in Moncton, anxiously waited for my mark, passed it, passed my scenario testing in Fredericton, then prepared for my Paramedic Association exam, wrote it, anxiously waited for another mark, passed it, saw Paul McCartney in Halifax (that's another story altogether, you have no idea), went through the two day "hiring process" (just another way of saying "more testing"), and got my starting schedule for my job in Saint John, which I start this Saturday. Oh and I forgot to mention that I did all of this while moving into a new apartment.
Nervous about the job? To say the least, yes. But not so much about the job itself, just working in a new city at a new hospital with new people. That's something I'll get used to fast, I assume. Not much else I can say about it right now, really. My brain still hasn't regrouped from the mush it had become over the last few weeks. Still a bit scatterbrained but a few days off has done me well I think. I may be insanely busy over the next week or so, but I look forward to passing on some good stories as a rookie paramedic, none of this student whining "exams, scenarios, blah blah blah..".
Until then.
-AM
Friday, July 24, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Still Alive.
No, I haven't abandoned this. I'm still here, still kickin'. Just barely though, these days. Hell week is fast approaching and at the end of it I'll either be a very happy, or very sad little boy.
It seems like someone up there has been trying to make things harder for me. Good news has not been coming my way, and smiles have been hard to come by lately, so let's hope for the best come the end of all this, shall we?
-AM
It seems like someone up there has been trying to make things harder for me. Good news has not been coming my way, and smiles have been hard to come by lately, so let's hope for the best come the end of all this, shall we?
-AM
Your Blue Veins.
Bored. Procrastinating. Just watching some videos and randomly decided to share this. A lot of you may know that I'm a huge Jack White fan. Well, if you've ever wondered exactly why, here's a pretty damn good reason, I think:
-AM
-AM
Friday, June 5, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The Cart Boy.
This is the original Trailer Park Boys short film from 1995. Less facial hair, and Julian is Jason, but it's the same guys:
-AM
-AM
Monday, May 18, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Crash Course.
Things had been fairly slow over the last 2 nights until about 2:30 on Saturday morning, when our radio chirped up dispatching us to a motor vehicle accident.
"Patient's head is pinned beneath the vehicle."
Trust me, whatever you're thinking right now is exactly what I was thinking when I heard it. I was expecting another fender bender until then. We arrived on the type of scene that I had been waiting for. As students, the type of scene we dream about. It was a rural road, almost in the middle of nowhere. No street lights, so the the only illumination when we arrived were the fire truck spotlights aimed at the car and the flashing lights from every other vehicle. I could hardly hear anything over the engines and the spot lights were blinding.
The first thing I noticed is that there was no car on the road. Everyone seemed to be peering over the guardrail down a steep embankment at the edge of the forest. As I walked over I couldn't help but watch the lights flash by against the trees. All I could see was white, red, white, red, etc. moving from right to left, with my shadow jumping from side to side.
I looked over the side to see the bottom of a car facing back up at the road. The top had been almost totally flattened and the car was resting against a tree on an angle with the passenger windows flat on the ground. The passenger's head was sort of outside the car pinned under the beam between the front and read windows (the "B" post), drifting in and out of consciousness. Alive, though.
A closer ambulance had taken over there, and we let the firefighters do their thing. They began cutting, so we tracked down the driver. Amazingly, he had just a small cut on his head. He had left the vehicle himself and found help. He knew he was in big trouble, and kept asking about his friend. Those are hard questions to answer. When you know he is trapped beneath a car, struggling to breathe. Just tell him "I don't know, someone else is working on it". Not the most reassuring words, but what else can you say without scaring him even more, or lying and saying he's doing just fine? One thing about this job is that you have to choose your words very carefully.
**********************
Shortly after we cleared from that call, another accident.
Downtown, a lady had come down the hill and t-boned a car full of teens. The side of their car was punched in a good 6 inches, but it was the the lady in her SUV that was of concern. She was quite scared an anxious, crying an complaining of pain in her neck. My preceptor held her head steady while I looked her over. She'd occasionally tell me she couldn't feel her hands, arms, or whatever, and then change her mind. She was just scared but we took all precautions.
The plan was to lift her up to get the edge of the spine board underneath and then spin her onto her back. I was at the driver's side door, with a firefighter in the passenger seat. We had one of the belts from out board to slide under her thighs and buttocks to lift her up. Now, this lady was not exactly tiny. Quite the opposite. As I wrapped the belt around my wrist to get a good grip, I heard one of the firemen behind me say to his partner, "I don't think he's strong enough". I turned around and looked him in the eye (he realized I'd heard him) as we counted to three and lifted her straight off her seat as they slid the board under her. He didn't say a word to me afterward.
I had a difficult time accepting how much control I have at a scene. With an injured patient, police and firefighters will look to me for instructions. My preceptor jokingly told me that the firefighters will do anything the attending medic says: "Scratch your back, rub your shoulders, massage your scalp...", okay I get the idea. It's a crash lesson in assertiveness that's hard to learn when you're not sure if you're even doing things right. A medic I was with the other day sent me in first to a chest pain call and as he entered, sat in the largest chair he could find in the lady's living room, legs crossed, arms on the arm rests, looking like a king on his throne and just watched me. I'm glad he did. It's the best way to learn. I don't even ask questions on a call anymore because I know exactly what they'll say: "What do you think?". I know they won't let me kill anyone. I just do what I've learned.
I enjoy being the one others look to on these calls, when I know what to do. I'll have to avoid power trips and try not to abuse it. I can't see me doing that anyway. Just to cover myself though, to you firefighters out there, if we're ever working a call together and I tell you to massage my shoulders, I'm (probably) joking.
-AM
because we separate like ripples on a blank shore
"Patient's head is pinned beneath the vehicle."
Trust me, whatever you're thinking right now is exactly what I was thinking when I heard it. I was expecting another fender bender until then. We arrived on the type of scene that I had been waiting for. As students, the type of scene we dream about. It was a rural road, almost in the middle of nowhere. No street lights, so the the only illumination when we arrived were the fire truck spotlights aimed at the car and the flashing lights from every other vehicle. I could hardly hear anything over the engines and the spot lights were blinding.
The first thing I noticed is that there was no car on the road. Everyone seemed to be peering over the guardrail down a steep embankment at the edge of the forest. As I walked over I couldn't help but watch the lights flash by against the trees. All I could see was white, red, white, red, etc. moving from right to left, with my shadow jumping from side to side.
I looked over the side to see the bottom of a car facing back up at the road. The top had been almost totally flattened and the car was resting against a tree on an angle with the passenger windows flat on the ground. The passenger's head was sort of outside the car pinned under the beam between the front and read windows (the "B" post), drifting in and out of consciousness. Alive, though.
A closer ambulance had taken over there, and we let the firefighters do their thing. They began cutting, so we tracked down the driver. Amazingly, he had just a small cut on his head. He had left the vehicle himself and found help. He knew he was in big trouble, and kept asking about his friend. Those are hard questions to answer. When you know he is trapped beneath a car, struggling to breathe. Just tell him "I don't know, someone else is working on it". Not the most reassuring words, but what else can you say without scaring him even more, or lying and saying he's doing just fine? One thing about this job is that you have to choose your words very carefully.
**********************
Shortly after we cleared from that call, another accident.
Downtown, a lady had come down the hill and t-boned a car full of teens. The side of their car was punched in a good 6 inches, but it was the the lady in her SUV that was of concern. She was quite scared an anxious, crying an complaining of pain in her neck. My preceptor held her head steady while I looked her over. She'd occasionally tell me she couldn't feel her hands, arms, or whatever, and then change her mind. She was just scared but we took all precautions.
The plan was to lift her up to get the edge of the spine board underneath and then spin her onto her back. I was at the driver's side door, with a firefighter in the passenger seat. We had one of the belts from out board to slide under her thighs and buttocks to lift her up. Now, this lady was not exactly tiny. Quite the opposite. As I wrapped the belt around my wrist to get a good grip, I heard one of the firemen behind me say to his partner, "I don't think he's strong enough". I turned around and looked him in the eye (he realized I'd heard him) as we counted to three and lifted her straight off her seat as they slid the board under her. He didn't say a word to me afterward.
I had a difficult time accepting how much control I have at a scene. With an injured patient, police and firefighters will look to me for instructions. My preceptor jokingly told me that the firefighters will do anything the attending medic says: "Scratch your back, rub your shoulders, massage your scalp...", okay I get the idea. It's a crash lesson in assertiveness that's hard to learn when you're not sure if you're even doing things right. A medic I was with the other day sent me in first to a chest pain call and as he entered, sat in the largest chair he could find in the lady's living room, legs crossed, arms on the arm rests, looking like a king on his throne and just watched me. I'm glad he did. It's the best way to learn. I don't even ask questions on a call anymore because I know exactly what they'll say: "What do you think?". I know they won't let me kill anyone. I just do what I've learned.
I enjoy being the one others look to on these calls, when I know what to do. I'll have to avoid power trips and try not to abuse it. I can't see me doing that anyway. Just to cover myself though, to you firefighters out there, if we're ever working a call together and I tell you to massage my shoulders, I'm (probably) joking.
-AM
because we separate like ripples on a blank shore
Friday, May 15, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Closed Doors.
First rotation is over with. It had it's quiet moments, and a few interesting calls in between. I'm definitely making huge steps in ping pong.
On my fourth shift, overnight, we were called to a stabbing at an apartment downtown. It was pouring rain and about 2am at this time. As we were arriving, our dispatch added that it was possibly self inflicted. We got to the scene along with three police officers. They entered first and we followed. It was a big, run down, dirty place on the middle floor of a house. The hallway light didn't work, so they used their flashlights. It turns out most of the lights didn't work, and no one would answer their calls of "City Police!", so we had to go looking.
I've always told myself that I would never do anything that could get me hurt at work, or killed. I was just so caught up in how cool it all was. I felt like I was on a cop show. Knocking on doors in dark rooms and then throwing the door open if no one answered. It occurred to me after opening a couple doors that this was a stabbing call, and what if the "stabber" was still here? So then I was a bit more cautious. I looked down a dark hallway and at the end I saw another door, this one with light coming from around the edges. Maybe I've watched too many movies, but it was one of the scariest things I've ever seen. The "ones with the guns" went first, and I think we were all expecting to find a body on the floor. I hate to be anti-climactic, but there was nothing.
To me that was even more strange. The apartment was totally quiet, nobody around. No blood. The police never found anyone and we were never called back. I thought I was finally going to get to see something other than a patient being short of breath. Maybe next time, if I'm lucky... and someone else isn't.
-AM
i am the son and heir of nothing in particular
On my fourth shift, overnight, we were called to a stabbing at an apartment downtown. It was pouring rain and about 2am at this time. As we were arriving, our dispatch added that it was possibly self inflicted. We got to the scene along with three police officers. They entered first and we followed. It was a big, run down, dirty place on the middle floor of a house. The hallway light didn't work, so they used their flashlights. It turns out most of the lights didn't work, and no one would answer their calls of "City Police!", so we had to go looking.
I've always told myself that I would never do anything that could get me hurt at work, or killed. I was just so caught up in how cool it all was. I felt like I was on a cop show. Knocking on doors in dark rooms and then throwing the door open if no one answered. It occurred to me after opening a couple doors that this was a stabbing call, and what if the "stabber" was still here? So then I was a bit more cautious. I looked down a dark hallway and at the end I saw another door, this one with light coming from around the edges. Maybe I've watched too many movies, but it was one of the scariest things I've ever seen. The "ones with the guns" went first, and I think we were all expecting to find a body on the floor. I hate to be anti-climactic, but there was nothing.
To me that was even more strange. The apartment was totally quiet, nobody around. No blood. The police never found anyone and we were never called back. I thought I was finally going to get to see something other than a patient being short of breath. Maybe next time, if I'm lucky... and someone else isn't.
-AM
i am the son and heir of nothing in particular
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)