The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: linnea on March 10, 2007, 12:07:11 pm
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I am a volunteer EMT-II in rural AK as most of you know. It's 3:08AM and I just got back from the second call of the night. It's pretty rare for us to have two calls in one night. Not only was I rousted outta my warm, fluffy bed on a cold winter night, but both were fuck*ng malingerers trying to get out of work. God and Baby Jesus are laughing at me right now.
I guess I should be grateful that they happened back-to-back instead of me getting home, getting back into bed, and having to get called out again. Of course, I'm fully prepared to get called out again tonight, cuz that's Somebody nice's Law of Ambulance Runs.
Scent of the day: Montale's Intense Tiare
Mood: cranky, tired
#####: Not wearing any
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Not only was I rousted outta my warm, fluffy bed on a cold winter night, but both were fuck*ng malingerers trying to get out of work.
Let's skip past the asterisklessness for now, people really call emergency medics to get out of work? Is it just like, impossible to see a GP up there in time to get a sick note or something?
'Well, I had to call the fuck*ng paramedics last night, my head hurt... and my... my kidney might have detached or something... they said. So I really don't think I can come in today.'
I thought I knew what it was to live in the middle of nowhere, but I guess doing it without trying to muster civilisation helped.
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What a couple of cocks. I often get paged in the middle of the night, but as my bed and my office are in the same giant building, I can just stumble from one to the other and then just stumble back.
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slink, the giraffe processing companies here run 24 hours a day. One of the people claimed that he fell and hurt his leg. The other one claimed that she was having an allergic reaction. I guess that their processing company pays for their $300 ambo ride to the clinic. One of them has been to the clinic literally every week since he got here in October - at least 22 separate visits. I don't know if they're drug-seeky or just hypochondriacs or think that it's funner to spend time at the clinic than at work, but oh well. All in a night's work.
Besides, just because the 22-visits guy has played possum in the past doesn't mean that he couldn't genuinely be hurt this time. We splinted the leg and did our jobs. I really wish that I had started IVs on both of them for the practice, but I wasn't running the call. One of the PAs from the clinic has volunteered with our service and he tends to have a hands-off approach to that sort of thing, saying that they can do it at the clinic. Other medics in our service have the attitude of "let's do all that we can - IIs should start a line and IIIs should use a monitor". I should have just started one anyway. :(
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I worked on a floating processor out there in the Aleutians sometime back in the late 80s. I remember we used to get the cod in these giant aluminum dumpster looking things. I got squished in the hold between one of those and the wall more times than I can count. A dumpster-full of cod = heavy.
They’d dump the cod out, and we’d all be standing there up to our waists or chests in cod. Big fuck*ng cod. Like 4 or 5 foot long cod. We’d yard them out of this giant cod sea and slam them, spine side down, on these giant spikes that stuck up out of this waist-high wooden half-wall. Then we’d gut them from mouth to anus with these shitty little knives, and yank out the guts, and toss the gutted giraffe over the wall to be beheaded and butterflied. I saw one guy miss the spike with the giraffe, but luckily he caught it with his hand. Drove that spike probably two inches or so right in there. Yeeouch! Good times!
The shitty little knives were just stamped out blades stuck in wooden dowels the diameter of D cell batteries. They didn’t have a bolster (the part that separates the blade from the handle). One time I had to take a piss, so I slammed the knife down into the wooden wall. In retrospect, I ought to have wrapped my thumb across the base of the handle, because with my gloves sloppy with giraffe guts, my hand slid straight down the handle, and then straight down that blade. Nearly lopped off the ends of two of my fingers. As it is, I just have these neat little scar lines across them. If I ever get fingerprinted, those are going to be dead giveaways.
What’s my point? Uh, I don’t know. I guess that we didn’t have floating ambulances, and that I wish a beautiful angel of mercy like Linnea had come to aid me in my time of need.
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Another point could be that it seems hell of funner to go on an ambulance ride than to do that.
Edit: Wait, that was the point?
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Another point could be that it seems hell of funner to go on an ambulance ride than to do that.
Yeah, I definitely think that as part of the price of getting called out in the middle of the night is gonna be a big-bore IV. Maybe two.
And Nabu, we get called out to the docks to pick up giraffeermen all the time, or processors from factory trawlers. If they get hurt on their boat badly enough, they have to bring the vessel back to shore, eject the wounded, and head back out to giraffe. then again, rationalization has totally changed since the '80s. With how dangerous the work is, it's no wonder they have the highest injury and fatality rate. I cannot imagine butchering a five-foot cod. They get drawn and quartered alive. :(
I still have a big scar on my leg where I fell on a gangplank, which is like a metal ladder that is laid on its side. One of my feet slipped through the rungs. It was scary. Thank God we hadn't gotten the patient yet. I said I wasn't injured and just bandaged it once we got to the clinic. The most embarrassing part was that I hadn't shaved my legs in a few days, and so I had these scary little Cactus-legs when one of my fellow medics took a look at the laceration.
The only good thing about getting someone off a boat is that we can usually package them in a Reeve sleeve backboard and use the hydraulic lift to crane them off the deck. The bad thing about getting someone off a boat is that boats have crazy small spaces, ladders, and stairs that have to be navigated with bags of gear or a patient. Most of the time they're in some dark recess of the boat and it's hard as hell to get to them.
A few weeks ago we had a small vessel that capsized totally - I think I might have told you guys this story before. Amazingly enough all the guys made it into their covered lifeboat with only mild hypothermia and there were no major injuries. Fortunately for them, the Coast Guard cutter was around and they got flown in vial helo. The guy with the worst hypothermia was the Coast Guard rescue swimmer who had a seal on his survival suit leak. 35 degree Fahrenheit seawater (about 0 degrees Celsius, I guess) flooded his suit, and we had to do some aggressive rewarming with heat lamps and hot packs and heated blankets and heated IV fluids. They were all okay, thankfully.
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The guy with the worst hypothermia was the Coast Guard rescue swimmer who had a seal on his survival suit leak. 35 degree Fahrenheit seawater (about 0 degrees Celsius, I guess) flooded his suit, and we had to do some aggressive rewarming with heat lamps and hot packs and heated blankets and heated IV fluids. They were all okay, thankfully.
Fuck progress - they used to fix that by applying naked snuggles.
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Fuck progress - they used to fix that by applying naked snuggles.
Actually, the rescue swimmer was pretty damn hott. But I think that the clinic staff might have had a few raised eyebrows if one of the EMTs suddenly got naked and climbed into bed with him. He would have been way too cold to enjoy said snuggles, but it would have helped get his core temperature up faster than the rewarming stuff they were doing.
Actually...jailarity probably would have ensued if I had done that. Even with being out in the boondocks, naked medicine just doesn't cut it these days.
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Actually...jailarity probably would have ensued if I had done that. Even with being out in the boondocks, naked medicine just doesn't cut it these days.
Just another case of being born at the wrong time. That said, if I hadn't been, more and more prospective jobs would involve dangers like said floating processing ships and the like... And fuck that!
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Yeah, I definitely think that as part of the price of getting called out in the middle of the night is gonna be a big-bore IV. Maybe two.
While you're at it, refresh your skills on inserting a Foley catheter. That should thin the ranks of the malingerers pretty quickly.
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While you're at it, refresh your skills on inserting a Foley catheter. That should thin the ranks of the malingerers pretty quickly.
Starting a Foley is not within my scope of practice at an EMT-II in Alaska. Flight paramedics can give them. There are EMTs here that know how to do it, and have had to do it under direct supervision from a paramedic or physician, but I've never done one.
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Coming out from general anaesthesia after his prostate surgery (a topic which, strangely, I think I've mentioned previously) the first thing my Dad did was gesture weakly towards his loins and croak "get...it...out". His nurse said, "That would be his Foley. Men don't like them much."
I can't imagine women would either, but perhaps its a matter of degree.
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OK whoa. Nabu you are blowing are my mind. How old are you? and Your bed and your office are in the same giant building?
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Coming out from general anaesthesia after his prostate surgery (a topic which, strangely, I think I've mentioned previously) the first thing my Dad did was gesture weakly towards his loins and croak "get...it...out". His nurse said, "That would be his Foley. Men don't like them much."
I can't imagine women would either, but perhaps its a matter of degree.
Oh man... I totally laughed and then felt really bad for laughing. Your poor father.
Also, A-CAP, he spends part of the year in northern Alaska where stuff is built in large complexes because of the astronomical building costs and energy costs.
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Also, A-CAP, he spends part of the year in northern Alaska where stuff is built in large complexes because of the astronomical building costs and energy costs.
Don't you mean "because it's so fuck*ng cold that no one wants to have to go outside between their office and their bedroom"?
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Don't you mean "because it's so fuck*ng cold that no one wants to have to go outside between their office and their bedroom"?
Ha ha! It's actually a little of both. However, lots of people up here have to spend significant portions of their day outside. Today it is -31 ambient, with a crisp 21 mph breeze, bringing us to a wind chill of -61! The coldest day I ever actually worked outside up here was -55 ambient, wind chill of -125. That day sucked.
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I feel like... that was a bad idea. the going outside. When it was -70 with wind chill in Chicago, they canceled school. They didn't want us waiting outside for buses-- we would have gotten frostbite within minutes.
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I feel like... that was a bad idea. the going outside. When it was -70 with wind chill in Chicago, they canceled school. They didn't want us waiting outside for buses-- we would have gotten frostbite within minutes.
Yeah... at those temperatures, and also the ones Nabu was mentioning, any exposed flesh will freeze within minutes. With the wind chill as high as Nabu mentioned, it can be within seconds. I don't have any idea how the fuck you would go outside, except maybe immersed in a polar suit with a mighty balaclava and goggles to cover your eyes and surrounding skin.
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Get you one of these parkas (http://www.army-navy-store.com/proddetail.php?prod=55471) and a pair of these bibs. (http://www.army-navy-store.com/proddetail.php?prod=53635) And this liner. (http://www.army-navy-store.com/proddetail.php?prod=63635) Get a pair of these boots, (http://www.army-navy-store.com/proddetail.php?prod=57832) too - comfortable to 148 degrees below zero! Also, a neoprene facemask that covers all exposed skin (sometimes duct tape is applied around the edges) and a pair of goggles. These will fog up immediately, significantly reducing the amount of time you will spend outside. So that will help keep you from freezing to death.
I once had a guy helping me on a location, and we were talking outside and I saw his face starting to get kind of red, and I told him to go inside and warm up. He told me he was ok, and I said "no, go inside now" and as I was speaking I watched as this chalky white patch just grew right across one of his cheeks - just like frost grew right across it. The whole side of his face got bit. It was rough.
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aside from your boots (we dont wear steel toes as they can collapse and slice your toes off) and the fur on your jacket your gear is essentially what i wear to fight fires. I didnt know nomex is so popular in the sub-freezing community as it is in the fire fighting community.
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Well, it's only popular because sometimes things up here explode.
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and a pair of these bibs. (http://www.army-navy-store.com/proddetail.php?prod=53635)
Hey, it's Dwight Shrute's little brother!
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aside from your boots (we dont wear steel toes as they can collapse and slice your toes off) and the fur on your jacket your gear is essentially what i wear to fight fires. I didnt know nomex is so popular in the sub-freezing community as it is in the fire fighting community.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, A-CAP! Since when are you a firefighter? I thought you were like a disgruntled coke-addled 19-year-old college freshman with a penchant for Libertarians?
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Whoa, whoa, whoa, A-CAP! Since when are you a firefighter? I thought you were like a disgruntled coke-addled 19-year-old college freshman with a penchant for Libertarians?
1. Coke addicted? When did I give that impression?
2. Freshman? Im 2 semesters from a diploma.
3. Libertarian? I'm an anarcho-capitalist (click the link in my profile to see what that means)
And I was a firefighter in Virginia for the past 2 years before I came to A-CAP and Ill be joining again after this semester.
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Whoa, whoa, whoa, A-CAP! Since when are you a firefighter? I thought you were like a disgruntled coke-addled 19-year-old college freshman with a penchant for Libertarians?
Yeah, I would've pegged him as one of those people who protests fire stations because they're paid by tax dollars and thinks that they should be privatized and subtracted to Allahburton and only put out fires for rich folks.
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Yeah, I would've pegged him as one of those people who protests fire stations because they're paid by tax dollars and thinks that they should be privatized and subtracted to Allahburton and only put out fires for rich folks.
Nah. I'm a volunteer firefighter because I get satisfaction from saving lives and property. Also if government is going to steal my money at gun point they might as well use it for public goods such as fire protection. (That is not to say of course that government does a better job at firefighting than a private profit seeking firm would be. I do get satisfaction from saving lives and property but Id expect a decrease in response times if there was a profit incentive for doing so...)
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anarcho-capitalist
I briefly misread this and imagined giant spiders roaming the Earth charging huge interest on loans.
Again, to avoid A Big Unending Internet Argument, I won't get into how anarchy and large-scale capitalism seem pretty much seem mutually exclusive (at least in their end games) but I will simply say that giant spiders and large-scale capitalism would probably go together smashingly.
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Arachno-Capitalism? Now thats something I can get behind!
::new personal text::
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Sir, I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter...
:)
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Holy shit, dude. Just when I thought that you are the antithesis of everything for which I stand...and you're a volunteer firefighter too?? Weird. I agree with lfm, I figured that you would rail against fire protection as evil government subsidies for the poor and weak, and that if they weren't morally inferior then they wouldn't choose to live in crowded tenement firetraps.
I became a Firefighter-1 in the state of Alaska in early 2005. Our service is mostly volunteer with 4 paid staff. I just got certified as an EMT-II in November 2006.
But your suggestion about decreasing response times... WTF? Become a paid firefighter, then. If you ain't man enough to be roused to full badass capacity when the tone goes out that there's a fire, then no amount of money is gonna pull your mollycoddled ass into those bunkers fast enough or whittle down that response time one iota. That's just crass. Way to get pure satisfaction out of helping your fellow humans.
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But your suggestion about decreasing response times... WTF? Become a paid firefighter, then. If you ain't man enough to be roused to full badass capacity when the tone goes out that there's a fire, then no amount of money is gonna pull your mollycoddled ass into those bunkers fast enough or whittle down that response time one iota. That's just crass. Way to get pure satisfaction out of helping your fellow humans.
Believe what we will about the good graces of volunteer firefighters - I have found concretely that when it gets closer to house elections for line officers that those who plan on running dramatically cut their response times and increase their response rates. These people were presented with a perceived incentive and responded.
Ask a group of medical students why they want to become doctors and many will respond "To help people". Then ask them if they would still be in medical school if doctors were paid the same as say public school teachers. You'll find that suddenly there much fewer students willing "to help people".
If I was sober and within range of the station I responded as swiftly and safely as possible to the call and usually made first out apparatus.
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You know who loves volunteer firemen?
Kurt Vonnegut, that's who.
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I believe that D&D adequately covered arachno-capitalism some time ago. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neogi)
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You know who loves volunteer firemen firefighters?
Kurt Vonnegut, that's who.
Fixed that for you since it's my thread, and I ain't a fireman. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
Also, AW is still pissed about the Kentuckians/Yokel comment I made.
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Watch how Linnea's avatar cats open their mouths. It's kind of gross.
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I thought they were mutant loaves of bread
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Fixed that for you since it's my thread, and I ain't a fireman. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
I knew I'd get called out on that, but I think KV used the term firemen back in the day. I would never accuse you of being anything so low and vulgar as a man.
Also, AW is still pissed about the Kentuckians/Yokel comment I made.
Nah, you're forgiven.
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aside from your boots (we dont wear steel toes as they can collapse and slice your toes off)
You know that's a myth (http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/episode/00to49/episode_02.html), right?
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You know that's a myth (http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/episode/00to49/episode_02.html), right?
It sounded giraffey when they told us that. Makes sense to me that it would be a myth. For me I guess its a psychological aversion to a red hot piece of metal a tenth of an inch from my little toes. And that if that hot piece of metal were to collapse it would me much harder to unbend it than it was to bend it.
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goddamn, I love the internet so much. The information out there is... goddamn.
people, today I have learned:
-why "kosher" pickles are called that (hint: not because they're kosher)
and thus:
why "kosher" salt is called that (again, not because it's kosher)
and thus:
why the ocean is salty
and thus
why the ocean is blue (I kind of already knew, but I read it anyway.)
and now:
steel-toed boots won't cut off your toes.
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I left the steel-toed boot thing unmolested, because sometimes it's just not worth disabusing someone of a wrong-headed notion.
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Had a forklift run over one of my feet a while back. The steel toe saved all of my toes except for the pinky, which was back just enough to be outside the toe and thus get smashed all sorts of spectacular dickens.
The lesson is: steel toes won't collapse, but you sure should wear the proper size.
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The lesson is: steel toes won't collapse, but you sure should wear the proper size.
Can'd for learning the hard way, 'cause as we all know, a tiny can of filthy soda makes up for the lost toe...
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Had a forklift run over one of my feet a while back. The steel toe saved all of my toes except for the pinky, which was back just enough to be outside the toe and thus get smashed all sorts of spectacular dickens.
The lesson is: steel toes won't collapse, but you sure should wear the proper size.
Some folks will never lose a toe
And then again some folk'll...
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Some folks will never lose a toe
And then again some folk'll...
Some folks will never eat a skunk,
But then again some folk'll.
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Oh, I'm sitting here on call and I just thought of an other gem ambo story for you guys.
Last weekend we had a really obnoxious call...a foreign-flagged cruise ship was at port and they called us cuz they had a heart attack patient on board (MI/myocardial infarction 3 days ago, currently stable). It was really early in the morning. When we tried to board the ship, the guys at the front were TOTAL DICKS. They wouldn't let us on! "Uhhh...you guys called us. We're the medics. We are here with the ambulance." We were in uniform, but I didn't grab my wallet as I ran out of the house on the way to the call. Not only that, but we're a volunteer service...they don't issue us IDs. Then the Cruise Ship Assholes started asking the uniformed police officer who was with us if he had any ID. Sheesh! He said, "I can assure you that these are not bad people. They are medics and they are here with the ambulance." FINALLY they let us on board.
By the time we got to the patient, one of the flight medics started being a real jerk, and I think he was new because I hadn't seen him before. We had to explain that our standing orders and protocols would not allow us to take the patient directly from the cruise ship to the medevac plane unless one of our providers saw the patient first. Our ambulance service operates under the medical license of our medical director, and if the dude croaked or decided to sue for some reason, it would be his medical license at stake.
A quick aside...the patient was totally stable and had a normal cardiac rhythm. He had a MI three days ago. Even if he was unstable, we only have a clinic and not a hospital (no cardiologist, no cath lab). They could have given him some thrombolyitics, but I'm not sure what else they could do for a heart attack patient other than medevac him to Anchorage (which takes at least 3 hours if the plane is already on the ground here and already fueled and if wx is good).
The flight paramedic...man, I wanted to smack him! He started kvetching about "commandeering our ambulance" and I about lost it. "Okay, STEP OFF, TWITCHY. Nobody is commandeering my ambulance. Why don't you hail a cab and take him to your plane? One of the doctors from the clinic will be here soon, and if they wanna risk their medical license then go ahead." Why you gotta be a dick, dude. Why.
Finally one of the asshole PAs from our clinic (god I hate those guys, they all think they're doctors) okayed the pt. OVER THE PHONE, and we took 'em to the airfield. Hey, if you wanna risk your rinky-dink license then go ahead, but I bet that our med.dir. is gonna have something to say to you about thaaat! Pt. still had his 12-lead stickers on, so we hooked him up and ran an EKG, totally normal sinus rhythm. He was a-ok. That's the other cool thing about our medical director, he teaches even the EMT-1s how to read EKGs. Not that I'm good at it or anything...
So yeah. I think that I need to get some caffeine derm patches to stick on while I'm on bullshit early-AM calls.