April 12th

Today in class we practiced random basic skills and I FINALLY PASSED TRAUMA ASSESSMENT!

And failed all the things I had previously been passing because I was so worried about the trauma assessment.

Failed KED for not strapping my patient tightly enough.
Failed Mouth to Mask with Supplemental oxygen for saying all the right things and not acting them out. I know how to do it, I just didn't bother to simulate half of what I was saying.

-.-

Didn't want to put my mouth on, or even pretend to, a  pocket mask that's been in that room for who knows how long.

Anyway, my whole class will be taking the test without me next week and I'll be taking it next month because I'm terrible with money and now I can't pay for it. :'(

Well, I can pay for it. But I missed the deadline. So yeah.

Update!

Okay so, I passed the class and the practical is coming up soon. SOON. Like, next week. And I've been studying, but not the skill sheets. Omg, I hate studying the skill sheets. But I have studied a lot of textbook material and I wish I could just take the written exam or whatever and skip the practical because I'm not worried about that in the slightest. I bought a flashcard study guide with 300 questions, and only missed twelve. I'm ready for that.

But fuck, I can't get this patient assessment stuff.
Must try harder. I have a week left.

So you might think I spent my weekend studying, but actually I went to Charlotte and rode a mechanical bull until it felt like my thigh muscles were going to slide right off my femurs. Also, I broke my toe.

I'm moving to Charlotte after this exam and hopefully I'll be doing some EMTing there.

Just have to pass my driving test...

Woo! I passed!

And I probably won't finish that ride-along entry. It is probably illegal to put such things on the internet, which is why I had some issues with writing it, because I am not exactly anonymous here, am I?

I mean, I would maintain the patients' anonymity, but still, it could have been an issue.

Anyway, my ride-along PALED IN COMPARISON to everyone else's ride alongs. Except for maybe one.
Okay, I got to see a dead guy, and thought I was going to be attacked during a suicide attempt, oh, and I gave ...uh.. advice on sexual positions to a middle-aged drunk who pulled his back while banging his wife, but some of my classmates got MVCs and GSWs and actually got to bandage them and oooooh
I am so jealous. I wanted to get covered in someone else's blood! It isn't faiiir!

:(

Anyway, the class is over. Everyone passed! I'm so proud of them all!
Now we all just have to pass the practicals and stuff and get jobs and work at the same station and it'll be like we never left class!!

Ha. I'm just kidding. I'm moving to Charleston. I don't know what anyone else plans to do.
...

Um.
Anyway, hyper moment over.

I did terribly on the module 6 exam.

I just don't believe in studying, okay? I need to get past that somehow. Especially since I've got to memorize patient assessment thingies and skills until I can recite them in my sleep.

Funny thing is, I've got most of the medical assessment memorized
in Chinese.

Why?!

I don't know. I just thought it would be fun to learn some medical Chinese and Spanish.

So anyway, that should be easy enough.

I'm confused. The Knee (that's the instructor, keep up.) told us that the only important thing is that we know the objectives. And then 5 minutes later, he said the important thing was to memorize the skill sheets.


Abrupt blog ending!

Maybe I will never finish that ride along entry...

Or I will at a later date.

This post isn't about that. Posting about not posting is lame anyway.

(Though I do need to be reminded to write about the Hazmat course, it was awesome. And awesome things take time to write about. I wish I had a fucking pensieve and I could just extract the memory or something. Ugh.)

I'm lazy, but also very busy.

I just wanted to say that some people in class have kind of shocked me. I didn't notice it at first, but there are two women who I think will make awesome EMTs/Paramedics. They're fast learners, quick thinkers, and they both give me the impression that they could handle combative patients if they had to.

I like the way they fearlessly participate in class, and their gregarious natures.

Ummm... I cannot remember my codenames for them.

Oh!
Yes.
Daphne the Forgettable Slytherin
and the Gretchen Weiners of Orangeburg.

I'm giving up completely on even feigning competitiveness. I just can't do it. I'm too lazy/less ambitious/busy/excuses excuses.

There is a module exam tomorrow and I'm actually going to study, maybe. We'll see how that goes.

Highly anticipated ride-along entry!

So, I'm finally sitting down and forcing myself to write about my ride-along before I start to forget some important details.

My night started at 7pm. I only slept about 2 hours out of the last 24 and hadn't eaten in 12 hours or so.


Anyway, the first hour or so of my ride-along exists in my memory as a blur of signing forms ( basically"if anything happens to me on this ride, it is not the fault of ______ County EMS, and I can't sue."), meeting the guys I'd be riding with, and being shown all the equipment on the inside of the ambulance.

There's more to it than it seems. 

It's a lot more spacious than I expected. 

Anyway, after checking all the equipment in the ambulance, we left the main station and arrived at our first scene.

A gas station.

To get energy drinks!

Actually, I have no idea what those guys purchased.

The crew I was with (Let's call them Ewan and Neil, because they looked like Ewan McGregor and Neil Patrick Harris.) probably forgot I was in the back of the ambulance, because they just jumped out and left me back there, with no idea how to open the doors and get out. 

I fought with the side door for about 2 minutes before I realized it was locked, opened it, and basically fell out into the parking lot. 

Luckily there were no witnesses.

I bought Skittles and a Red Bull and hoped they'd be enough to keep me up for a few more hours, but then I started to fall asleep as soon as I got back in the ambulance. 

As I was drifting, I had the following thoughts:

"No one warned me that it would be dark in here and that a speeding ambulance feels more like a gentle swaying when you're actually in a seat and not on a stretcher."

"Even these blinking lights are kind of soothing, like lights on a Christmas tree."

"Wait a second, why are we speeding?"

"...And what is that noise?"

It was a siren, you guys. I did not even notice the siren until we were actually on scene. :|

Btw, eating half a bag of Skittles in under 20 seconds won't do anything to wake you up. I was still pretty much a zombie during this call.

First Patient

We arrived on scene at what I assumed to be a pretty extravagant retirement facility, where an old man was waiting for us in the driveway. Why did I assume it was a retirement facility? I don't know. Maybe I sort of forget that people that the elderly are capable of living alone. But apparently they are, because that old guy lived there. (Not alone though, with his wife, who happened to be the patient.)

The first patient was a 77 year old woman, with tingling in her left arm. She said that it started last night, but then it went away and came back. She didn't have any pain, but she was nauseated, but she said it was probably because she was very nervous. 

Neil and Ewan are really good when it comes to getting the SAMPLE history without making it obvious that they're doing it. It was just like a normal conversation, they even told a few jokes while attaching her to the heart monitor and fiddling with it. (I don't know how that thing works or how to read the results, so I didn't pay much attention.)

I wish I could apologize to these people for coming into their home and standing around awkwardly while real paramedics did everything. I mean, I could have attempted a blood pressure or something... :/

The patient didn't seem to mind my awkwardness, and she said my hair made her feel happy. I suppose she likes pink. 

Her vitals and everything seemed pretty normal, but we transported her anyway. 

____

I fell asleep after admitting the woman to the hospital, and woke up in an eerily lit garage.

Um, I still have no idea exactly where that was, but apparently it was a substation. 

In the garage, I shivered and drank my Red Bull while the paramedics showed me and talked about the equipments on the outside of the ambulance, and cracked jokes about obese southerners. 

There is this awesome device called The Thumper, which looks like a medieval torture device but is actually a CPR machine powered by compressed air that if used incorrectly could kill a person instead of saving them. 

But that could be said about a lot of things.

I found out that they wouldn't be keeping me, because apparently they'd be at that substation all night and not much goes on around there, so a supervisor would pick me up and take me along with him to get all my calls as quickly as possible. And by the time they finished telling me that, so the supervisor showed up and I grabbed my charts and jumped in his humongous truck. Not an ambulance, an actual truck. First response vehicles can be whatever you want them to be, I suppose.

I'm probably wrong about that though.

Wow. I am suddenly too tired to finish this now, but I will later.

I've been procrastinating, because this blog is going to be a long one.
Oh gosh, it's going to take forever just to type it, I wish I could just have it transcribed.

Maybe I'll do a video blog.

Tomorrow's class is going to be on Weapons of Mass Destruction.
It probably sounds more interesting than it actually is. I guess I'll see.

My ride-along was great. It was mostly just drunk people and attention seekers, but I had a lot of fun and had a lot of my EMS operations related questions answered by one of the supervisors. I was with him from like 9pm-3am and I talk a lot, so yeah. I'll cover those questions when I blog next.

I've actually been asleep on and off since 7am, Sunday. I feel like I've only been awake for a total of 8 hours since then.
Ah, sleep debt.

So tired. I nodded off and dreamt I was making a pot of coffee.

Too sleepy for this. Going to review chapters 34-37 while watching Family Guy and go back to sleep.


Edited to add: I fully intended to write about my ride-along this morning. >.>

Ride-aloooooong in about 4 hours.
And I am just going to bed.

GOODNIGHT.

Should probably invest in a coffee maker.
Or some cocaine.