The Stolen A/C Unit

this story happened way back when i was a student. i was doing a ride along and i was with FE and, i think, SM. we got a chest pain call at like 0400 in a horrible trailer park. we pulled up and in the darkness could see a tiny african-american woman sitting on her steps. we talked to her for a couple second and placed her on the stretcher. as we were strapping her down a man appeared out of the darkness on a bike. he had a small window a/c unit under his arm. the unit was, more than likely, recently in a window that was not his. he got off the bike and started aggressively asking us where we were taking his woman. she told him she was having chest pain and we said we were going to take her to the hospital. the guy said that he was going with her. when we told him he wasn't going with her he started to mumble to himself and got louder and louder. he was obviously a very unstable person just from his movements and the way he looked at us and the things he was mumbling. as we started to pull her towards the ambulance the bike guy pulled out a very large fillet knife and began to yell at us. we loaded the pt into the ambulance as the bike/knife guy wandered around the ambulance talking crazy talk. the three of us could have easily beat the shit out of him, he was very scrawny and malnourished, which is why he never came at us. we called for police the second he pulled the knife and they arrived shortly and took him into custody. all i had that night was a metal clip board to protect me. that was the last night i ever worked with out a weapon of some kind on me and in my bag on the truck. this city is rough and i'm not gonna let some crackhead take me out.

Adventures in Vehicle Maintenance (Part II)

about a year ago i was working with JS (the male JS) and we were driving emergency traffic and he took a corner fast. not that i was worried, i had full trust in his driving. the weird thing, that hit my mind, was the fact that he was washing the windshield at that time. i was confused at this timing, what with the high speed mixed with the wiper fluid and wiper blades. it ended up that JS was not a psychopathic nut job, it was actually radiator fluid that was flying up onto the windshield and he was trying to keep the old beast on the road. we have a lot of overheating ambulance fails in the summer down here. also, the turbo on the Fords like to pop on these hot days.

4,202...

that's how many calls we had in the month of May. we average 8 ambulances on the road at any one time (around 12 during the day and 6 at night) and only one hospital. we take people to BJ and the army hospital but that is probably only less than 10% of our calls. gonna be a warm summer and it's gonna only get worse. any medics out there need a job?

Adventures in Vehicle Maintenance

on 5/26 we were going emergency traffic to a call when our right front tire broke off and bent into the engine causing us to slide across into the on-coming lane. luckily it was late at night and there was nobody driving against us. we have a beat down fleet and are in dire need of new trucks. the Fords we have have over 200,000 miles and the suspension in all of them is a joke. it is getting embarrassing to explain to the pt's why the ride is so bumpy. you just can't run trucks like we do, hard and with no rest in a 24 hour period. something needs to change. also, my partner that night, JS, had just eaten a cupcake and that was 60% of the blame for the broken axle. junk. in. the. trunk.

I call her Blackcloud...

worked a little overtime on Friday (5/14) and got to work with Angel (AA). every time i get to work with her we run the crap out of some calls. and this day was no different. we had 10 calls in 12 hours with one cardiac arrest, a code medical and a dislocated hip. the cardiac arrest came out as a 33D, cardiac/respiratory arrest at a facility with health care providers on scene. we pulled up to a well known local doctor's office and went in to find this tiny African man (Dr. O) doing chest compressions on a tiny older lady on the floor. there was about 2 gallons of coffee ground emesis on the floor and coming out of her. there was a poorly educated "home health provider" that had brought the pt in and she told the doc that the pt was vomiting blood last night. i asked the person for the pt's history and she stated she did not know. i asked her how old the pt was and, again, she did not know. i then asked her to leave the room and she did without hesitation. AA and i worked her well, very difficult airway (very anterior) and after numerous suctioning our QRV lead medic arrived and was able to intubate her. a firefighter and i lifted her arms straight up which lifts the shoulders and hyperextendeds the neck (this was done after ruling out a fall) and has worked wonders in the past. unfortunately she was in asystole the entire time and was pronounced at the hospital. we then got a call for a 30B2, traumatic injury, where a lady had recent hip replacement and was getting out of her car and twisted wrong and it popped out as she sat into her wheelchair. we arrived to find her in her wheelchair in the heat. she did not fall so we ALSed her there, gave her fentanyl, used a KED inverted to stabilized the hip and took her to the hospital. later in the day we went to a 6D2, breathing problems, and found an elderly man with shortness of breath (SOB) and an impending sense of doom (not good, ever). did a 12-Lead in the house showing his pacemaker was firing but not producing a profusing beat. his heart rate was in the low 40s and his b/p was 80/P. placed the pacer pads on his and got him to the stretcher using a stairchair. we were only a mile away from the hospital and i told the guy that if he relaxes and stops responding to me i was going to have to "light him up" (i know, i know...but it worked. i don't like to shock or pace someone who is talking and fully awake. don't get me wrong, if his b/p was a couple ticks lower i wouldn't think twice about pacing and sedation) which worked. called a code medical and had to take him to the blue zone due to the fact that our recess room was completely full. it was like back in the old ED when we would bring a code medical or code trauma just straight past everyone and into any number of regular rooms to be worked. old school style.

Remember the Gipper?

Rudy is the poster child for the modern GOP and the Reagan-myth machine. Mr. Sully has this comparison and Greg takes it further (comment section worth a look for all your Rudy-wear).

“A nuclear-free world has been a 60-year dream of the Left, just like
socialized health-care,” - Rudy Giuliani, NRO, 2010.

“A nuclear war cannot be won and
must never be fought. And no matter how great the obstacles may seem, we must
never stop our efforts to reduce the weapons of war. We must never stop at all
until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of this
Earth.” - Ronald Reagan, 1984, in China.

Kanye was right...

the gift that keeps giving (i.e. like herpes, but...you know, never look a gift sore in the mouth). GWB caught wiping his hands on Bill Clintons Penis (no, arm) after shaking the hand of a black man. Damn Kanye was right! that makes twice Mr. West was spot on. think i need to make a button now. (below is the second of the "twice")

Valley of Tears

while visiting my friends in Israel we decided to try and find some burnt out Syrian tanks. we had just spent the night in the northern town of Metula. we looked on the map and saw the outpost of "Oz" around the area my friend thought she had climbed on some one drunken night in the past. we drove around and after going the wrong way (i was driving the Honda in between mines fields and turned around just before reaching the Syrian border, muddin' it in Israel) we found the entrance to the Valley of Tears memorial for the 77th "Oz" Regiment. the entrance is in front of the entrance to the Kibbutz Elrom (in case you ever are in the area). it was a very chilly and windy day. we parked at the memorial and there was a lady just sitting in her car the whole time and my guess is that a family member died in battle, we were there at the end of October and the battle was on 06Oct1973 (on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement). we walked around the memorial and looked out over the Syrian border. the memorial is made of welded parts of tanks with the dead inscribed in the metal with torch.

we could see a fighting position to the left with a tank and we drove over to it. we walked around in the trenches and explored above ground for a while. the trenches were chest high and reinforced with corrugated metal and posts to hold their shape. you could see out over a vast flat plain and right in front of the bunker complex was a marked mine field. the girls were getting cold and they went back to the car. we followed them to get CB's iTouch with the flashlight app so we could go into the bunkers. the girls stayed in the car and CB and i walked back into the defences. we entered a trench and walked down the chute into the bunker. it was a basic concrete bunker you would see in WWII movies, cold concrete with a slit opening giving a good field of fire onto the plain below. this bunker was hit almost perfectly by either a small tank shell or, more probably, a RPG round. it entered the slit and skimmed the top of the slit causing a half-moon and hitting the left wall.

there was also bullet holes in the concrete on the right hand wall. i have been in combat and was lucky enough to be above ground and with a light infantry unit. i could not imagine the strength it would take to stand your ground in a cold coffin like these bunkers. knowing that at one point in the battle only 40 Israeli tanks were holding off 500 Syrian tanks (and if i remember right, there were also Iraqi tanks mixed in) it really shows how a few heroes can save a whole country. we were walking around and came across another bunker but it was too dark in it. we deduced that the slit must be caved in so we searched out another. we tried to enter the bunker in the rear, obviously a command and supply bunker since it didn't open up to the battle field. as we entered it both CB and i got the willies and decided to get the hell out fast. we both were laughing, nervously, as we left the bunker. we had both got that creepy feeling and both our arms had goose bumps. we were still laughing when we came around the command bunker and saw the girls in the car. but they looked a bit shaken and started talking before we could even sit in the car.

they were sitting in the car and were reading and talking when suddenly the door locks on the car started to go up and down. they got startled and then my girl said it was us guys screwing with them. then a little later it happened again, the locks went up and down fast a number of times and then stopped. my girl said that us guys were using the key chain to lock and unlock the doors but then they said they remembered i had left the keys with them. and sure enough, they were just sitting there on the console. just as they noticed that, we came around the corner after getting spooked ourselves. we sat in the car for a bit and i talked about what i knew about the battle (from reading The Yom Kippur War). i didn't feel scared at all and the others were not upset at all. to know what happened there, and the history it made and produced, i can see why spirits would inhabit the area. it was the one and only time in my life i really truly believe that kind of thinking. that something "other" could reach out and communicate with living persons.

I can smell the popcorn but i can't see it...

engineers have recently started the long march towards invisibility. a team at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering have made a device (pictured) that can make an object invisible to microwaves. even though microwaves have a longer wavelength than light, this is a great start. they are only able to do it in a 2 dimensional form but 3D is probably not too far off. this article will lead you to the basic how's-and-what's involved.

...and I drove too fast.

this is part two of the last post. when last you read us CC and i just had our first cardiac arrest together and CC got his intubation. well, the next day was a busy day and by the end of it we came to the conclusion that we were douches. we were supposed to be done at 7 pm. around 1700 we got a 27D, GSW. some crack head/heroin addict was walking down the street and some peeps drove by and shot her in the ass and back of the legs with a shotgun. it was my call and we got her fat ass off the scene and to the hospital in nice time. we were on top of our game that day, after having such a good day the day before. so we check out of the hospital and right at 1825 we get another call. ok, no big deal i guess. yeah, it sucks but what can we do. so we go and pick up this old guy and take him to the hospital on base (he's retired military and gets a choice between the two in our county). we check out of that hospital at 1945 (45 minutes over our scheduled time) and now we get to go back to base with no chance of getting another call. unless, of course, a bad call comes out and we are the closest. BAM! 9E1, cardiac arrest comes out. we are kinda far from it but when we hear the only truck available for it is coming from base we have a choice to make. i look at CC and he goes "ok, let's do this" and i get on the radio and tell the other truck, medic 13, to keep going and we'll MEET them there. fully thinking (wishing) they will get there a couple minutes before us and CC will get another tube and then we can just help out until they take off for the hospital. but what does my dumb ass do? i drive to fucking fast and smoke the other ambulance. now WE are the first on scene and this is now our call. i couldn't believe it when i came around the corner in the neighborhood and saw just a fire truck. and on top of it all the firefighters placed a BIAD/King airway! so we load the guy up because he was outside in his car at the time. the fire dept had him on the ground and it was cold out so, without thinking, we put him in our ambulance. WRONG. he was in asystole at our first contact and according to our protocols we can work him for another 30 or so minutes (with numerous other caveats on top) and call it there on the scene if he doesn't improve (even getting him into a VTach/VFib i consider an "improvement"). but now we have him in the truck and we aren't just going to stop and take him back out after 30 minutes and lay him in the grass in front of the neighbors. so we take off for the hospital (after setting him up) and en route the King airway is sliding around in the guys mouth due to all the puke. CC notices the SPO2 dropping and d/c's the King and intubates the guy. so it all worked out in the end. at least until it was 2245 and we were still at base writing up the report into emscharts. we both were so tired and we could only laugh at how stupid we were.