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 :).