EMS NEWS

I was listening to an NPR piece earlier today out of boredom. (I saw it linked from another site which I got from Stumble Upon. It’s an article about something called Miracle Fruit, and I was intrigued, so I purchased a small amount of it to see if it actually works.

Apparently, when this fruit is chewed, it tricks your tastebuds for about an hour, making bitter things taste sweet. This sounds better than top diet pills.

I am notorious for not eating vegetables. They all taste bitter and nasty to me. The NPR story had the hosts drinking black coffee and eating lemons and talking about how delicious it was. So I’m gonna try some brocolli once I get my order and wolf it down in front of Corrie and see if she faints.

This is pushing the limits on a bloggable experience, but I’m perplexed.

Ever since the weather has been warm enough for it, we’ve been opening the windows. Every window and window blinds was fairly clean except for the one facing north in our 2nd bedroom. I kind of ignored it until about 5 minutes ago because I thought it was just dusty. Turns out it was caked in about a half centimeter (I’m proving my intelligence by using metric) of MUD. It was like someone was digging a hold and threw a chunk up to the 2nd story and it landed inside my window sill. Of course, it could also be 10 years of rotting spider eggs for all I know.

Something to think about.

Although I am almost certain I was not at fault, I still worry that the lady who rammed her Ford Escort into the side of my rig a few weeks ago is gonna try something crazy like a lawsuit or my boss is gonna call me in for a chat after I forget about the whole thing. I know it’s irrational, but I’m driving around in an advertisement for deep pockets. My other fear is that the old lady who fell down the stairs is going to sue because she had to wait a few extra minutes because we had to stop instead of continuing on the call. I wonder what an auto insurance quote for an ambulance runs, anyway?

So, if you’ve been in an ambulance crash before, what ultimately ended up happening?

I am notorious for carrying nothing on my person except for a pen when I go to work. So many people at my job feel it’s necessary to carry trauma shears, tape, bandage scissors, a pager, a cell phone, a wallet, a stethoscope, and other garbage on calls. I can only attribute it to a lack of confidence. If your “jump bag” or whatever you want to call it doesn’t have what you need inside of it, why even bother having one?

I go through my bag each morning, so if I ever need a piece of equipment, I can reach for it, without having to carry it on me for 24 hours. I have never been in a situation where I’ve needed something that I didn’t have with me on a call an couldn’t find an alternative.

Pens seem to materialze out of nowhere when I need one. The only thing I really can’t forget on a call is my glasses, because I can’t read house numbers at all without them anymore. And I can’t afford Lasik on an EMS budget.

I’m officially addicted to the History Channel show Gangland. I just watched an hour on the Vice Lords, and last week was an episode on the Mongols Motorcycle Club. Right now they are showing an episode about the Bloods in L.A. I’m amused primarily because I don’t have to deal with gang violence in my neck of the woods.

I have had one shooting in my EMS career and that was while precepting with a much bigger department. I can’t imagine working a city like Lawndale, IL, and having to deal with trauma on a consistent basis, or having to take out travel insurance to go to work in south central L.A.

Although I wouldn’t mind a LITTLE bit of excitement instead of picking old ladies up off the ground all day long.

Part of my anniversary gift was a big surprise to me! I’ve been talking about going back to Disney since we went in October. The Magical Express bus and the sand-bottomed pool at the Yacht Club Hotel made a good trip into a great trip. I’m not sure about wandering around Animal Kingdom or the Magic Kingdom again, but I love Epcot and Typhoon Lagoon.

We haven’t booked our hotel yet. I want to go back to the Yacht Club solely because of their wonderful pool, but we’re going to need some good hotel deals, because right now it’s about $300 a night there. I’m spoiled.

I just celebrated my first wedding anniversary with my wife. Money is tight for now, but I think I came up with a good gift. I either wanted to get her some new office furniture so we could blog simultaneously, or I wanted to get her a nice new showerhead for the master bath. I ended up going with the showerhead! It has a giant face for rain, and a separate head with 8 different settings. It’s luxurious, and as an added bonus, we can clean Oliver with it!

Last shift we were called 911 to a large park for a child having an asthma attack at the soccer field.

PD arrived before us and advised someone would direct us to the patient. The officer on scene didn’t sound too worked up.

We arrive on scene and are met by the coach, who didn’t seem worked up either. The kid was waaaay on the other side of the field, probably 4-500 feet from the street, with no easy way to get the ambulance back there. So we parked and grabbed our bag and headed over with the coach. As we’re passing the sidelines with the parents, some lady starts yelling at us to “run, or something!”

We both kind of looked at her, and ignored it. Then she starts rattling on about how this is an EMERGENCY! and they are BREATHING FOR HIM! which they clearly are not since I can see the kid sitting on the ground across the field. She gets the idea that we aren’t going to run across the goddamn field just because she said so, and shuts up.

We get to the kid, and he’s having a moderate asthma attack. No big deal. We throw him on a neb and talk to the family. I tell my partner to keep an eye on things because I think I can get the rig over to the kid instead of carrying him.

I start walking back to the truck at a decent pace. Not running, but not wasting any time either.

I cross the sideline on the other side of the field again, and now some other doughboy-in-socks-and-sandals-parent wants to be a tough guy.

“Do you guys always move this slow?”

I ignore him, and keep walking.

“Oh, I guess you’re just too cool to care about anything!”

Well, I take a lot of shit from people as private EMS, but I’ll be Goddamned if I’m gonna let some untrained layman asshole tell me how to do my job.

So, never breaking stride, I said something to the effect of “If you’re so concerned, why didn’t you run over there and carry him to us?”

The guy said something I didn’t understand about doing my job.

I drive the ambulance over to the kid, who is now doing much better, and the family thanks us profusely (not having heard the handwringers on the other side of the field)

I just don’t understand. Do people expect their doctors to run into the room when they have an appoinment? Aside from ER, have people EVER witnessed a person in the medical field run? I don’t run unless there is some critical piece of equipment in the truck and my patient can’t wait to get out there. (Suction or something.)

What made it even more infuriating was that every one of these pudgy american soccer parents were sitting their fat asses in lawn chairs not lifting a goddamn finger to improve what was a catatrophe in their minds and expecting 2 strangers to sprint across a muddy soccer field to save the day.

Also, our total time on scene was 12 minutes.

Thanks to Michael Oosting, we once again managed to have a free night out at the racetrack. I had been reading that Mike Oosting just broke a record, having surpassed 3000 wins, so I decided I was going to bet on him as long as his horse wasn’t too terrible. He won 3 of the 7 races we stayed for!

The last race we were down to $4 between the 2 of us, and managed to win $44 thanks to Mike winning with a 7-1 horse.

I don’t know if it was the Venti Frap or the medium cookie dough blizzard that made me realize that I need to lose some weight today. Oh, and the pizza for breakfast and lunch.

I would really like to get some phentermine and start exercising at work and on my off days, but it’s just so daunting, knowing that I’ll have to do it for months to see any appreciable results. I guess at it’s core it is a willpower problem.

I’m a big believer in popping pills though, even if they are natural weight loss pills and not the glorius phentermine.

Last night we made the rare decision to order pizza delivery since Cor didn’t get hom from work until 8pm. Never being ones to do anything in proper portions, we ordered 2 larges and a full order of breadsticks. So I’ve now eaten pizza 3 meals in a row. And that will most likely be 4 by tonight. I’m gonna need a colon cleanse at this rate.

I want a bike this summer to lose some weight.

Various news outlets are reporting that Sen. Ted Kennedy was just rushed to the hospital after showing signs of a stroke. He is 76 years old now, so it was just a matter of time before something happened. I’ve never been a particularly big fan of his, but he must be doing something right to win re-election all this years. He did endorse Obama before it was popular, leading me to believe he didn’t like working with Hillary in the senate. That must have been some awkward discussion at the dining room furniture.

This will probably be the end of his political career if it was indeed a stroke.

Like it or not, the parent-child relationship will (and should) be give and take, with the child being the taker and the parent being the giver. I don’t make the rules.

So it’s a bit off-putting that my mother has been dropping not-so-subtle hints and wanting some of her furniture back that she gave me several years ago. It’s not like it is teak furniture or anything. It’s part of a bedroom set that doesn’t even have all the pieces anymore, and it’s not particularly nice. On top of that, she has no room for it.

She also made a comment to my wife about taking our leather sofas if we don’t want them. I’m not down with that. Should I feel this way?

We’ve had some luck with our wiener dog in the past few weeks. We’ve managed to teach him sit and lay. We’ve also found that he does much better at night when he has something to occupy himself with. On that note, we ordered him 3 toys all purporting to be “smart toys”

They all operate on the concept of releasing a treat after a certain action is performed. Two of the toys were defeated almost immediately by sharp wiener dog teeth.

The third toy is a plastic bottle with a rubber rope hanging out one end that dispenses treats when the rope is pushed in and the pulled back out. Almost like bar faucets for goodies. So far he has not managed to figure out the trick to it, but it has kept him fixated for over 4 hours. $10 well spent, indeed.

So we busted out the credit card tonight to order pizza. It really says a lot about the state of things when $30 for pizza for two requires a third party to vouch for your ability to pay.

We have 2 savings accounts right now, and one of them has a decent amount in it, so I’m told. The sad reality is that we’d be out on the street in 2 months if one of us lost our job.

Once I get a second job (soon) we are going to be in full-on penny pinching mode so we can move on out of this area!