Attention: Would the pilot of the illegally parked black cloud please immediately MOVE IT!

What a week.
This last week or so has been totally NUTS, both from a personal standpoint and from the effects of the black cloud hovering over the area.

Last weekend, a 21 y/o girl died in an MVC just outside of VO's district. She was going down some back road in her little Matchbox car, lost it going around a curve, and started spinning like a top. Not a big problem, in and of itself. The problem was the bread truck that was coming around the curve from the opposite direction. He saw her spinning, stomped the brakes, went sideways... They collided, she got knocked into the ditch, and the trunk ended up on top of her car. Either way you look at it, it was pretty much a lose-lose situation... Getting T-boned by the bread truck would probably have hurt pretty bad too.
News story link: http://www.syracuse.com/news/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1140947974325290.xml&coll=1

Also over the weekend, a 21 y/o male died when he went head-first into a corn shredder. Noootttttt pretty. Apparently all that was left intact on him was from the waist down. The OIC from the FD requested "Bring the jaws, cancel the ambulance."
Here's the link to the news story. http://www.news10now.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=60751

Then the worst news around here in a long time...
A local police officer was killed in the line of duty last night. It happened not very far from where my paramedic class is located and it actually happened during class. Sad situation. The first PD LODD in the county since 1969.
Here's the article.
http://www.9wsyr.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=0B1BCEAC-003F-495D-8980-8FE25D0A0267

So yes, this black cloud has worn out its welcome and needs the GTFOH.

The craziness on the personal level is much more mundane that the newsworthy stuff.
I went on a "vacation" last weekend. Went to see a friend of mine about 110 miles from here, we were gonna chill, go to a big party friday night, etc etc. None of that happened. Except for the hanging around part, which there was alot of. He had some stuff going on when I got there (at like 0230 friday morning). I didnt get to bed til about 0530 and he was up all night and didnt get to bed until 1730 or 1800 friday evening, then he slept straight through until about 0900 saturday morning. The party got cancelled anyway because the host moved. So obviously, it wasn't happening. Sooo, we just hung around his place for the most part until I left saturday evening. We did go a few places here and there, but nothing of note.

The whole drive home saturday night was slow because it was snowing like crazy.
Then I worked an 08-1700 at VO. That was an OK shift. We had 3 calls during that time span, one for each crew.
My partner and I got called for a 77 y/o Female with injuries from a fall. We got up there, and FD already had her packaged. We were told that she was standing on a countertop hanging drapes when she FDGB backwards and landed on her right side. C/o right shoulder pain, originally also complained of right hip pain, but that was pretty much non-existant when i did my P.E. on her.
I did, however, notice obvious forward displacement to her right shoulder. Her shoulders were not equally shaped and there was a large lump protruding from the front of her shoulder, obvious pain on movement and palpation. I was looking at her and thinking about how to immobilize it best and I decided to leave it as it was. FD had strapped her arms down when they secured her to the board, she had good distal CMS, so i decided to leave it secured as is. Why disrupt a perfectly secured limb just to resecure it slightly different, right?

We transported, I gave my report when we got to the hospital, and I told the nurse about the shoulder and how it was secured and asked her to use caution when they took her off the board.

The rest of the shift went pretty uneventfully. I went straight home because I was supposed to go on duty at 1800 with QVA. About 3 minutes shy of 1800, we had a call. Stacey called me and asked if i wanted to take it (she was on til 1800) and I said "sure". It was one of our justified frequent flyers. He is a Duchenne's M.D. patient and apparently he has lived longer than any other D.M.D patient has ever lived, at 23 years old.

We took him to the same hospital that we took the FDGB patient earlier with VO. After we transferred his care over to the ER staff, I tracked down one of the nurses who was there earlier and asked how the lady made out.
The nurse said "OMG, she had a horrible arm fracture."
I said "You serious? She didn't have any major swelling or anything, other than lump on the front of her shoulder... You still have the X-rays?"
Nurse said "Yeah, let me bring them up on the computer." So she brought them up and this fracture was BAD. She had a complete oblique fracture of the upper Humerus and the distal end of the fracture basically slid up the proximal end and lodged itself in her shoulder socket, partially dislocating her shoulder. Ouch. She was admitted upstairs and scheduled to have surgery the next day.

Other than that, the sheer joy of Cardiology is in motion. Our first lecture on it was Thursday the 23rd and it wasnt too bad. My instructor in the Basic-Orginal class I took in 2001 beat the crap out of the A&P of the heart, how the electrical system works, alot of the more basic but important stuff. That was what we covered on Thur., along with going over Sinus Rythms. Then last night we covered Atrial Rythms and we're learning the appropriate meds for each condition as we go. Right now he's telling us which drug is used for which problem as we go and we have to study up on the appropriate drugs along with learning what each rythm is. Starting this coming Thur., we'll be getting into Heart Blocks, then Ventricular Rythms.

I also learned some new words Monday night. Verapakill (which I've heard before. For the non-Med. people out there, there is a cardiac drug we use that is called "Verapamil" and "It either works, doesn't work, or works too well and kills them. So they call it Verapakill.), and then "Misconscrewed". One of the guys in class asked about what can happen if you misconstrue (sp?) a rythm and call it "This" vs "That"... And as our instructor started answering him, he starting saying "Misconscrewed". He has issues with pronunciation at times, but after he said it 2 or 3 times, i realized that the word Misconscrewed can actually be pretty accurate from time to time and that I may need to add that word to my vocabulary.

Ok, it's 2330 and I need to start thinking about getting some sleep. Good night to all.