Nothing new

What's new, Blogland?
Not much here... We're still in Cardiology, covered the different kinds of rythms so far. We were supposed to start treatments on Thursday, but our instructor was sick so we got the night off.
I've been doing absolutely nothing this weekend. I'm totally broke (i have like $4.90 for gas money and I don't get paid til Thursday and i'm below 1/4 tank.) so not much is happening this weekend. I really have to dedicate tomorrow to studying my rythms.

I just fell in love.... I clicked on a link for the '07 Yamaha sleds... oooohhhhhhhh. B-E-A-utiful!!!
The 07 Phazer and the 07 Nytro ER. ooooohh. nice nice nice. I'd love a sled. I had one several years ago, it was an 88 or an 89 Phazer. I loved it. Of course, the year I bought it only saw 3 weeks of snow. Go figure. I like the Yamaha SRX's as well. And the 06 Polaris 900 Fusion. 900. That's alot of sled.
The 06 Polaris 550 Classic trail sled is nice, too. And it only MSRP's at $5,799.
I think maybe a sled will be a project once I'm working a good steady job.

However, a 4-wheeler would be alot more practical because you can ride it 9 months + out of the year. I think i'm gonna concentrate on getting back into mountain biking this summer, though.
Cheap (compared to all the other toys i just talked about), fun, and practical. A good, fun source of excersize, also.

Speaking of exersize and general health, I'm bracing myself to quit smoking again, for real this time. The last 2 days have been gorgeous. low 60's on friday (albeit it was raining and windy) and in the mid 50's, sunny, with a breeze Saturday. This morning I slept in. Once i got up, i took the dog out for a walk and was feeling pretty good. Later in the day I had a smoke and I was totally winded. I then realized once again that if i'm planning on excersizing and getting into shape and enjoying the outdoors this summer, I have to quit smoking. I get winded so easily when I smoke. Just yesterday morning was a fine example. I had energy, I could breath in the morning, then I lit one up and poof, I felt like a slug yet again. I'm sick of feeling like a slug. I wanna be able to breath, move, etc. without feeling like i'm suffocating.
I can talk the talk, now it's time to prove that I can walk the walk. I'll keep you posted.

So there isn't much going on right now to talk about, so I think it's time for an episode of past calls of note. I'm gonna cover a few tonite. Not exceptionally detailed, but ones that stood out for one reason or another. I'm kind of going by Department with my stories right now, but since these stories were of my first FD, it's kind of going in order right now anyway. It'll be later that I start to jumble the time line. Anyway.

The FD I started out with usually did not fool around when it came to MVC's. If WAFD got hit for an MVC, you usually knew you were going to something "good".

We got hit for an MVC on the state highway that cuts through the town, came in as personal injury, vehicle is well off the road. It had been raining all night and sprinkling that morning and it was right around freezing... you know that point, where some spots are glare ice and some spots are just wet... Anyway, we (Mom and I) rolled up on the scene in our POV. We couldn't see the wrecked vehicle at first, but we knew we were there because of the chief's truck. I also think there was already a piece from FD there, I can't remember for sure. We hit the brakes and promptly discovered that the road was pretty slick at this particular spot.

As we came to a stop, we were looking but still could not see a wrecked vehicle. Then we saw it, on it's side, underside towards the road, vehicle right up against the woodsline.

One Pt was in a vehicle that stopped to help, one was trapped in the truck, which was a small pickup. I ran around doing the usual Jr. FF go-fer stuff while mom attended to the woman still in the truck. I then got assigned to get the girl's info who was in the car of the person who stopped to help. As I was interviewing her, I found out that her mom and her had been coming back from the Carolina's when they hit a patch of black ice coming around the curve, went off the road, hit a culvert embankment (you know, take a ditch, lay down a pipe, cover it with dirt so you can get vehicles to the other side. Logging trucks in this situation), went airborn, and came to rest against the woodsline.

This girl got out of the car in bare feet (late fall/early winter, i think it was), got up to the road and started flagging down traffic. She said she was trying to flag the traffic down for 10-15 minutes before anyone stopped, because you could not see the vehicle at a glance from the road and people are usually paranoid about stopping for apparent hitchhikers in the middle of nowhere.

It also dawned on me that this girl looked exactly like my best friend's girlfriend. They also shared the same first name. (It later turned out that it was not his gf).

Our chief had called for a chopper due to the mechanism and extrication time for the mom. Once he decided what he needed on scene, he took a few guys from our dept and a few from our neighbors to the north, put them on an engine, and sent them down to the convenience store/gas station that we usually used for an LZ. (The combo crew was due to the fact that the FD that mom and I were with had only about 15 people on the roster, and you were lucky to get 5 during the day. We didn't get a huge turnout from our neighbors either.)

The engine left for the LZ and we on the scene went about our business. A few minutes later, we heard the chopper coming in. It circled the scene, then continued on for the LZ, which was about 4 miles down the road. A few minutes later, the sound of rotors edges its way back to my consciousness and I heard my chief yell "Oh, WTF is this Bullsh-t!!!!!!!!!!!" I turned around and saw the State Police helicopter (one of the medivacs that cover our area) landing in a field with a barbed wire fence between them and the road... They touched down, then immediately pulled back up, scooted sideways, and landed right in the middle of the highway. The chief started screaming into his radio "FIRE POLICE! SHUT DOWN TRAFFIC IMMEDIATELY, THE HELICOPTER JUST LANDED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD! LZ CREW! GET BACK HERE NOW!!! THE BIRD JUST LANDED ON SCENE!!!"

He continued his tirade as the chopper shut down and the flight medic got out and started walking toward the scene.

Everything worked out pretty good though. Mom and daughter both got out of the hospital quick and nobody plowed into the chopper or anything, so it went well. Later in the call, the chief was showing me what exactly happened. When they went off the road, they hit the culvert, went airborn for over 100', and hit a tree about 12' up, then the truck landed on its side at the base of the tree. You could see right where the truck had hit the tree. It was pretty impressive. They're lucky they weren't hurt worse.

We had another MVC hit in the middle of the night in the dead of winter. Have you ever have those times when you're sleeping like a log and all of a sudden you just snap awake, look at your pager, and right then it goes off? Happened to me that night. It was weird.

Our tones dropped, PFD's (our neighbors to the west) tones dropped, and the ambulance tones dropped. This is how the dispatch went:

WA and P rescues, ***** Ambulance, report of an MVA, minor injuries, only location given is on State Highway, somewhere between the villages of PFD and CFD (CFD is the neighbors to the east)"

My thoughts? "Oh you have got to be kidding me. There are 19 miles of middle of nowhere highway between PFD and CFD!!!"

Mom, Dad, and I called enroute to our chief and asked for orders and he told us to stage at the convenience store (same one we use as an LZ. It's on the eastern border of our district) The various chiefs and rescue units call enroute and state which sections of the highway they're searching. It eventually ended up being in our district, about 2-3 miles up the road from where we were staging.

It was all minor injuries, 3 pretty nice looking girls coming back from a concert down in Syracuse lost control of their car and went through the snowbank.
That call stood out mainly because of the dispatch information.

Another call we went on was one of those calls where you stand there scratching your head going "How the hell did you get out of that without getting TFU?"

My Dad decided to join Mom and I in WAFD because he usually chauffered us anyway, plus he was a Vol. FF when he was younger. The night he got accepted, we (Mom, Dad, I, Car 2, and his wife, who was also in the FD) were all standing around outside talking after the meeting.
Then all of our pagers went off. It was kind of funny, because we were all standing there looking at each other like "Why's your pager going off?" Car 2's wife actually said it out loud (admit it, you throw more than 4 vols in a group together and you're bound to have one of those moments even if you are all in the same dept.)
Then the siren went off and all those little screws that must have shaken loose during the meeting fell back into place and we started for the station. Over the siren, I heard "Car vs Tractor trailer, possible car fire" Ooohh, this doesn't sound very good.

We all jumped on various pieces of apparatus and started for the scene. When we pulled up, I looked ahead at the scene and saw a pickup on the side of the road with the roof and windshield pushed up against the back window, a guy sitting on the ground in front of his truck looking kind of stunned, and a semi pulled into a lot.

Turns out that the driver of the pickup was most likely intoxicated, to what extent I am unsure, but you could smell the alcohol on him. Anyway, he was going west on the State Highway, into the sunset, and according to him, he couldn't see anything because he was driving into the sun. When he found a shadow, it just happened to be that of the semi that was sideways across the highway, backing into the lot where the owner kept it at his house.

The pickup driver said that he realized that a very bad thing was about to happen, so he immediately laid himself down across the seat of his pickup just before the laws of physics joined his A-posts with his B-posts. Other than a few scratches and being a little shook up, he was fine.

Another MVC we got hit for came in during the wee hours of the morning, reported as a head-on with injuries and entrapment about 1/4 of a mile from the firehouse. Car 2 was immediately on scene, requesting EMT's, manpower, and traffic control from PFD (west neighbors) WFD (north neighbors), and I also think that one or 2 other depts were brought in for traffic control, but I don't remember. We also wound up bringing in 4 ambulances on this one. We wanted a helicopter, but it was snowing like crazy and they wouldn't fly.

What happened was a lone male driver was heading east on State Highway in something along the lines of a Chevy S-10, overtired, returning from a long day somewhere. Heading west was a GMC Jimmy with a 17 y/o girl driving, her mom riding shotgun, her aunt in the back seat, and they were either going to or coming from a skiing trip. It was snowing like crazy out, as I said before. Coming around the curve, the guy in the S-10 fell asleep, drifted across the highway, and CRUNCH. Head-on.

There was some hardcore front end damage to both these vehicles. We had to break out the Jaws to get the doors open on the Jimmy. I think they used the Jaws on the S-10, but i'm not positive. I know that the S-10 driver was in PBS (pretty bad shape). The women in the Jimmy weren't hurt too bad, but they were banged up. The girl who was driving was totally freaked out. She probably thought she was going to get in trouble. They did get her calmed down eventually though.
That wreck went incredibly smooth. I still wasn't medical though, and not yet old enough to play. So I did the usual go-fer stuff again.

Another call we had was for a working structure fire about 2 miles from our house.
As we approached the end of our road, we were looking for signs of fire and not seeing any. Then we rounded a curve, got away from the trees, and saw a very impressive column of smoke and cinders. We pulled onto the scene, dad called 911 with the address (it came in as "in the general area of Routes 17 and 17a"), Mom and I tried to do a quick walk-around just to make sure no one was hanging out of any windows. We could not get within 30 feet of this house. This house was RIPPIN when we got there and the heat wouldn't let us get anywhere close to it. That job was just a surround and drown. Turns out the house was built with rough cut timber and had sawdust for insulation. Can anyone say "tinder box"?

The next one will be the last for the evening. I know it's been a long read, so thanks for bearing with me.
This call imprinted into my head the necessity to listen to someone even if they are at a lower level of training that you are.
We got called for a severe headache. Mom and I got there, Mom did her assessment and everything, and eventually the ambulance got there. It's stationed about 15-20 miles away, so it takes a few minutes for them to get there. Mom gave her report to the medic (the county WAFD is in is blessed with the convenience of every ambulance in the county having at least one ALS crew on duty at all times. Pretty much the only time you might get a BLS rig is if it's a call-in crew that could only get an EMT). Anyway, mom reported her findings to the medic. Mom also told the medic that she was pretty sure this lady had a brain aneurism brewing because of the signs and symptoms.
This is how the conversation went:

Medic: "Ma'am, do you think you could get up and walk to our ambulance?"
Pt: "I don't know... my head hurts so bad"
Mom: "Medic, I don't know if you heard me, but I think this lady has an aneurism!"
Medic: (Nose up) "Hmm. If you say so. Ma'am, do you think you could at least walk to the front door and get on our stretcher??"
Mom: "Medic, I think she has an aneurism! Having her walk to the ambulance is NOT a good idea!"
Medic: (Dramatic sigh) "Okay, Fine! Driver, go get the stair chair please. The EMT thinks this lady shouldn't walk anywhere."

Driver gets stair chair, brings it in, sets it up, sets it next to Pt.

Medic: "Ok Ma'am, go ahead and get up and move over to our stair chair"
Mom: "I think we should pick her up and move her over."
Medic: "No, she can stand up."

The ambulance driver took the pts arm, pt started to stand up, got up halfway, let out a very odd sound, and DFO's right in front of us. She went totally limp, her lips were flapping every time she exhaled, her respirations got fast, and even I, with nothing more than first aid and CPR, knew that something very bad just happened. The Driver caught her on her on the way down, set her on the stair chair.

Medic: "Aww sh-t."
Mom: "I told ya!"

I don't remember how the lady turned out. I think she made it, but I don't remember for sure.
I also believe that my mom had a little chat with our chief about that call and he supposedly had a little chat with the ambulance corp about the actions of the medic on the call.

Ok, it's 3 am and it's time to go to bed. Cya