Laceration

We got called for a child with a laceration. He had been riding his bike at the skate park and fell. His sunglasses caught him right above his eyebrow. A nice deep 3 cm laceration. We cleaned him up, got ahold of his parents and waited. His parents were at a friend's house, but got there in about 5 minutes. They wanted to take him to a hospital out of our district. They signed him AMA and that was that.

No other calls yet. I'm bored out of my mind. Hopefully we get something good tonight :)

Greasy Spoon

A few BLS calls back to back. Then a priority call for a woman with abdominal distention. She wasn't in any pain, but her belly was hard as a rock and made her look 9 months pregnant. She had a history of bowel obstructions.

A psych transfer to a state mental facility for a woman with psychosis. I've had her before. She didn't like me the first time, and she really didn't like me today. It was a long 65 mile trip.

Another BLS return.

Last call was for a 55 y/o man that was burned by hot grease. I didn't get the whole story but he was frying chicken at a restaurant. He had first and second degree burns from his chin to his belt line. His arms and hands were probably the worst. We took him to the burn center. We didn't even take him to his room (in the ICU). He went directly to the washdown where they clean and remove all the dead tissue. The weird part was that it didn't smell like burned flesh. It just smelled like grease. Yuck.

We didn't get back to quarters until almost 0500. A very long shift.

Sluggish

Back at the ambulance company today. I have been terrible with keeping up with my blog. Sorry! 

We haven't done too much today. All BLS calls. Nothing good. I am doing some public education tomorrow so that should be fun.

Hopefully more excitement soon!

Back from NFA

I have more stuff to post, I just don't have the time right now. The academy was great. I made some really good friends, and met some really cool people. The class was awesome-as I expected, but my classmates were the best part. I had people in my class from all over the U.S. Some of us already have plans to vacation by each other. Me and a friend from Idaho are already planning a trip to Hawaii in the spring to visit two other guys from my class. Good times.

When we left it felt like summer camp all over again. Very sad. I felt like I was losing my best friends. We all plan to keep in touch though. Spring will come soon...

Fire Prevention

I just arrived in Emmitsburg, MD. Well, yesterday anyways. Good times. I am having the time of my life. It is so wierd to be away from work. When the alarm clock went off this morning I thought it was my pager and came flying out of bed. When I actually came to I realized that I wasn't at the firehouse.

My class is going to be really good. We have tons of outside activities. We even have graduation! We are taking a class trip to Gettysburg to visit, and if I can convince a couple others, maybe DC. We shall see.

I was told how wonderful it is here, but I know now that it is definitely the truth. This place is awesome. Everybody treats you like an equal. Even the security officers are nice.

We are right across the street from Camp David. When the president comes in, the blackhawk helicopters land here. That's pretty cool.

Anyways, I will have more blogs from this week and a couple backdated ones. I haven't had time to keep up.

NFA

I'm finally out at the National Fire Academy. We left yesterday around 1030 am. Yeah! We had check in as soon as we got on campus (after an hour and a half long bus ride from Baltimore/DC airport), then it was time for some fun. We had dinner, then went out drinking. A couple of us walked the mile or so to "town." Which is actually only about a mile long strip. A one stoplight town. We ended up at a hole in the wall bar, but it was a really good time.

I started class this morning. The class I am in focuses on community fire prevention. I think it is going to be a really good class. There are people from all over the U.S. here. Five people came from my department. We are all in different classes, so we only see each other for breakfast, dinner, and night time fun :). Lunch we spend with others from our class because lunch times may differ depending on what you are doing in class that day. 

I have already learned a lot that I plan on bringing back to my community. It is interesting to hear about how other departments around the nation are run. I thought we were a very small department, but I learned today that we are really lucky. We may be small, but we have neighboring departments that we have mutual aid agreements with that we work with all the time. They can be to our city within five minutes or so. Some of the people I talked to said they would have to wait at least a half hour. Wow. 

I have more blogs to post that are currently on paper. I just haven't had the time. I would do it now but I think I had a few too many tonight if you know what I mean. I apologize in advance for this blog because it probably makes absolutely no sense. :)

God bless and good night.

Phantom of the Elevator

Several calls today. Good times. We had a smoke investigation. A deck caught on fire. A neighbor put it out. It was still fun. We also did an elevator rescue that turned out to be nothing. We joked that it was the phantom in the elevator. There was nobody there and the students needed to get a key from the office to use it. Oh well. At least we got the keys figured out so that if there is a real emergency we can act more efficiently. We also had a dumpster fire. Lots of fun. The paint was completely melted off and the lid was burned off. The water was boiling off the metal. It was almost a real fire. I hope I get a real one soon :).

...Psycho

I spent most of the day today in the city. Good times. We did a psych from up north to the city. The woman seemed okay. She was hearing voices. I got about a quarter of the way to Chicago and all hell broke loose.

I was on the highway and I heard a ruckus in the back. My partner was struggling to get the seatbelts back on our patient. I was on the highway, and I had to pull the ambulance over, turn the lights on, get out of the rig and get in back. We got her in restraints and we were back on our way. Whew. She said that the voices were telling her to get out of the ambulance.

Dispatch sent us hot to a professional building in the city for a woman having difficulty breathing. We got on scene, up to the floor, and my dispatch called us and said, "don't go on the floor!" Okay, well now that we're up here. We never found out why we were cancelled.

We got a call right after that for a five year old with a femur fracture. He supposedly tripped and fell while running at the playground. Yeah, not quite believable. We had to put him in hare traction for transport to the Children's hospital.

Another day. The countdown begins for vacation!

Even Better

One good call. We were called for a man who took the wrong medication. When we got on scene, our patient was very agitated, and said he was going crazy. He had taken the wrong meds. Not his fault though; the pharmacy gave him the wrong ones. He had been taking them for four days, and obviously, not taking the meds he should have been. They gave him clomiphene instead of clomipramine. Yeah. Clomiphene is a drug some women take to increase fertility, etc. Not really for men to take. The calls just keep getting better. First a leaky testicle, now a guy that will probably grow ovaries... :). What next?

Fall

We did back to back calls for falls. One was legitimate...I guess. She ended up getting admitted because she couldn't remember falling. She had a 1/2" laceration on her head. No biggie. Our second fall was for a lady that slid out of bed. She was A+Ox2-3, so we had to take her in. The facility wasn't going to send her. I guess our patient had slid out of bed trying to get a better light for reading at 0530, and didn't call anybody. She was still sitting on the floor reading her book at 1000. I guess it was a good book. Anyways, her family wanted her checked out. I took her back to the nursing home several hours later.

We did a psych transport. A transport for a lady who's doctor was at a different hospital.

And a chest pain at 0630 (I get off at 0700 grrr). Just the typical chest pain. Nothing great. We hauled butt and got off by 0730.

I was hoping to work outside today, but it is raining. Oh well...

Urine

I worked 0800 until about 1400. One call for a man with urine leaking from his testicle. Very weird call. I guess it's possible, but as far as I know-unusual. All I could think about was the human anatomy and I couldn't figure out how it was possible. But, there was, in fact, a hole (small) in the man's testicle with fluid leaking out-and the room smelled like urine. Even the doctor at the ER had never heard of it. It had been going on for 6 days. I don't know if it's just me, but if I had urine leaking out of my testicle, I wouldn't wait 6 days to figure out why.

I caught a "structure fire" today responding from home. It was just room and contents. If we had been two minutes later, it would have been a good one. I was just excited to get a fire.

I figure this: since I have been "official," I got one supposed structure fire mutual aid that we got on scene-went to staging, and never got out of the rig. This one was #2, and I actually made it on scene, packed up, with my axe in hand, and (almost) did some work. Granted, all I got to do was carry and set up a ventilation fan and repack hose, it was still a step closer to the real thing.

I was absolutely psyched to finally be on a fire scene :) It was that much better without having "recruit" plastered across my helmet. Yeah for me!