A Work in Progress

Finally some new pictures. The new kayaking ones were taken toward the end of November. It was about 0730 and about 30 degrees. The fog rising off of the water was really cool to see. The icy pics were taken about a month ago when we had a nice ice storm that coated everything in a lovely layer of ice. It looked cool, but was a bit treacherous. Kayaking Ice!

I worked my regular Thursday night shift last week and went home and slept for 4 hours when my roommate called me and asked me to come in and finish his shift. Sort of forgetting he was on a 24, I stupidly agreed, woke up, took a shower and headed back to work. 33 hours later I stumbled out of work and went back home. I wish I could say lots of interesting things happened, but I can only say that lots of things happened. It more or less started when I arrived and didn’t sit down for more than 2 hours until then end of my Saturday shift. I think we had the busiest Saturday transfer shift ever. The 911 side on Friday night was also pretty busy. I shouldn’t have even bothered bringing my sleeping bag, as I didn’t get to see the inside of it very often. Friday day we did a twin NICU transfer. The babies were a good size and basically being transferred because the small hospital they were coming from couldn’t take on any more patients. So that took up about 3 hours. When we finis...

Last week when I got home I went to work. I did a 24, went home and did my weekend 12 hour shifts the next two days. Whew! The price of love. I did a transfer shift with my roommate which was pretty fun. We didn’t do anything too out of the ordinary but were pretty busy. We did get to take a trouble breathing out of a local nursing home. I love it when I see a lady sitting straight up in bed, clearly struggling for breath, pursed lip breathing, using accessory muscles, a pulse ox of 86% with 4 lpm on her nasal cannula and staff telling me that this has been going on for 3 days. I don’t know what people are thinking sometimes. The highlight of the day was when we found ourselves driving behind a UPS truck that unbeknownst to the driver, had its back door open. There was another car between us and the truck. We stopped at a light and as Andy and I discussed how cool it would be to see what was in all of those packages, our good citizen of the day (the car in front of us) made a ...

I find few things more satisfying than making a list and then crossing the items out as they are completed/accomplished. In school I did this all the time, and eventually started writing lists on the mirrored closet doors in my room. The structure of lists combined with the great squeak of a marker as I crossed things out was very pleasing. No surprise, I recently compiled a list of things that need to be done for the wedding. It came out to be about 5 pages long, and included pretty much everything. Thankfully, after my visit home last week I can pull out a big black marker and draw a line through several important things. venue, check caterer, check photographer, check florist, checkish bridesmaid dresses, almost check invitations, check and ready to be printed ring, cleaned and inspected groom, check plus pre-marital counseling, one check out of three centerpieces, okay, so that one’s not quite crossed out yet, but hey. Other than that, it seemed that time slowed down for us....

A little late is better than never, as my official blogiversary was a couple days ago. 10822 hits, 196 posts (about 2 a week) and 2 years later, the blog still exists, which I guess is pretty good. And I think that I have a few regular readers (other than mom), thank you all! I've gotten a little behind in my blogging as of late which I hope to make up for in the next couple of days. Much has happened since the latte was coughed in. A trip back home, extensive wedding planning, an anniversary finally spent together, the best use of an ambulance PA system ever, and a transfer call where I actually had to do, well, work. Ooh, also, if you'd like to rent my diary, well, to be honest, you'd be renting a blank book. Pretty much everything important is written right here. But instead of renting my diary, you could print out the entire blog, send it to a publisher, and I'd give you 5% of the profits...okay 10%...if you're nice. Thanks for reading, and more updates...

We went to get fuel at a gas station with a dunkin’s in it. I was waiting inside for the tank to fill as another customer ordered a drink at the dunkin’s. The employee was coughing up a storm, so I decided not to get anything. After a few minutes I see the other customer doing that anxious dance people do for example when at subway, they start putting mayo on your sandwich and you wanted mustard. You try to stop them, but it’s too late. Only the lady then said, “Don’t cough over my drink!” needless to say my curiosity was piqued. The coughing employee said, “Well, I’m sorry, but I’m sick!” prompting the greatest sound bite ever: “You’re coughing on my latte!” The employee continued to cough, said she was sick again, and the customer turned on her heel and stormed out. If it hadn’t been so disgusting, I would have laughed right then. When I signed for the gas, I used my own pen.

So, as the title implies, I had my first code the other night. It went as I expected and as any other cardiac arrest ever went, badly. It came out as shortness of breath, en route we were informed that CPR was in progress. So, I drove slightly more like a maniac and tried not to over think what I wanted to do first. When we arrived the FD was doing CPR, bagging, and said that their AED was showing no shock advised. Already the patients chances were slim. What made them more slim was that the halls of the apartment we were in were lined with bookshelves and we had to literally drag the patient out before we could even put him on a backboard. Once we got him in the ambo, I asked my partner to got for a line, and I plugged the pads into our monitor. Asystole as predicted. As I set up for the tube I was pleased to see that I didn't falter even though it had been quite some time since I had intubated even a fake person. I tried twice, feeling successful both times, but my firs...