A Work in Progress

When all else fails to give me something entertaining to write about, I look up some good search terms that led strangers to read the blog a bit. I've had a few interesting ones recently. Here they are for your entertainment. "hiking the great glen way" I never wrote a guide, but I did put together a day in the life. Please let it be your guide . "how to belay" I'm pretty amused that someone found the blog via the belay post. I'm no expert, but there are a lot of videos about it on youtube. "cavicide and miscarriages" Though I love cavicide, it is a carcinogen, and not meant for skin contact. Right on top they have a picture of a baby with an line through it. I don't think that means it causes miscarriages. At least I hope not. "flashlight pocket built into trouser-pant" It would be cool if they built in a pocket for those giant skull cracking mag lights. But it would probably pull the pants down. And, my old stand by ...

The other morning we headed out on a motor vehicle accident. It came out as a rollover with entrapment, which around here gets and automatic medic unit dispatch. When we got there we saw one medium sized SUV facing the wrong direction up against a building. On the other side of the road we saw a tractor trailer that was destroyed. The truck driver was uninjured, and thanks to his quick reaction, the driver of the vehicle wasn't dead. That is pretty much a miracle. We got the driver out and flew them to the trauma center. Among other things were broken femur, ribs, and decreasing mental status. There's not much to say that the pictures don't tell. I'm glad there wasn't a passenger, because they probably would have been cut in half.

Yesterday I received my shiny new passport. It really is shiny. My old one had gotten wet and the fabric of the cover had shrunk, so this one needs some serious breaking in. No prob. Last week I made my first official tuition payment (1 of 2). Ohh, it made me nervous. Well, anytime I have to sit and wait in a bank I get a little nervous. I'm not sure why. Well, yes I do; it probably has something to do with spending, um, a significant sum of money on what, at this very moment, is an intangable education. I feel better now though. I decided that it was worth the 30 dollars to wire the money stop to the university's bank rather than taking on the risk of mailing a check. Either way, now that I have the passport and have paid a bit, I have to wait for them to receive said wire and send me a letter that says that I am officially enrolled. Then I delve into the murky waters of applying for a student visa to the UK government. I've pretty much sorted things out with the...

In the course of about a week, my partner has run five cardiac arrests, and I have run two. I'm starting to think we're going to get a reputation. Like anyone else, I am more excited when I see something treatable on the monitor and not just asystole. One that I ran, we shocked seven times, and the other got pulses back from PEA. Of all the arrests I know of from last week, two had pulses and blood pressures well after we got them to the ER, which is pretty rare. For the second time, I successfully used a miller laryngoscope blade. This guy didn't have rigor, but his neck was so stiff that when I took the pillow out from under his head, his head remained suspended there about three inches above the floor. It was strange, so I pulled out a miller blade and it worked beautifully. Some of my coworkers would now call me a real paramedic. So, the point of all this is to ask my intubating readers what blade you gravitate to when you open up your kit and cast your eyes o...

Last week we had a very strange occurrence at work, and then it happened again less than an hour later. We were called for a cardiac arrest, and were updated that it was a shooting suicide. When we got there, the police were met with a distraught woman who had come home to discover that her husband had sadly shot himself. They went in, surveyed the damage and put us back in service. The wife refused transport to the hospital, and we headed back to the station. Not five minutes later we were dispatched to another cardiac arrest. On the way we were updated that it was a shooting suicide. No, wait, we had just done that. But sure enough it was a separate incident. The police were met with a distraught woman who had come home to discover that her husband had sadly shot himself. Again, they went in first, surveyed the damage, and put us in service. We comforted the wife for a few minutes until she calmed down and also refused to go to the hospital. As we drove away, I decided that...