Monday, August 28, 2006

The light at the end of the tunnel!

The light is a new career and the tunnel is my less-than-impressive resume spanning the last several years. The last few years have seriously sucked, job-wise.
I worked in a convenience store on grave shift during college, quit that job to come work for QVA (which is the one thing that has been relatively steady for me) and because I was moving back home, then in '04 i got a job working at a furniture factory near here. I turned down a security/EMT position at the casino because this job was closer to home. Then I kind of kicked myself because the factory job lasted 8 months, then I got laid off due to a sales slump. Looked back into the casino, nothing open. Looked into the R.M. Syracuse, also kept looking locally for work. I got hired on at a Marina/Bait and Tackle shop, then a week before that was to start, RM called me for an interview. So I weighed my options: $8.50/hr 15 miles from home, or $8.00/hr starting pay 45 miles from home. I took the closer option.

A week after I got hired, they decided to tell me it was a seasonal job. The place is open year-round, but only 2 or 3 people, the manager included, work there during the off-season.
When the end was getting near, I looked back into the casino. I got shot down from there because they didn't like the fact that I had a fair amount of Saturday classes for paramedic class, and they told me to call back after class was done. Yeah, right. I'll get right on that.

I wound up getting hired as a Sub. Bus Driver for the school district I live in. That was relatively steady and quite interesting. So over this past winter, I worked for QVA, occasionally for VO (Just started doing my ride-outs that are required for new employees and new ALS providers. before that, I havent worked there in months... BS factor got to be too high and i felt i needed to concentrate on paramedic class more than I did being people's litter-box), and I drove Bus.

When school let out, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I desperately needed a job, but I had NO time available to get a full time job and still get my clinicals and ride time done. So I scraped by over the summer, working for QVA, then getting hired at the bar that I have frequented over the last year or so. That is quite entertaining, being a bartender in a redneck bar. Some of the stories I've heard and some of the people I've met... wow.
Anyway, i've been working there for a couple months, a few days a week, and it's helped. The main thing was that it is flexible.

Early this year I had to stop by the Administrative Office for the schools and on my way out, I took a glance at the bulletin board, which had a number of civil service exam postings on it. One caught my eye: Public Safety Telecommunicator. Hmm. So I looked into it, paid to take the exam, took it in March, and went on my merry way.

Then in June, I got a notice in the mail to report to the county office building on such-and-such day for the Typing and Information entry test. I went, passed it, and again went on my way

I got a canvas letter and the test results shortly thereafter. I scored a 90 on the civil service exam, which surprisingly put me in the #1 spot. I also comfortably passed the typing test. Well wouldn't you know it, I got that letter, went to MA to visit my Aunt and Uncle for a weekend, came home, and on the Tuesday after I came home, I sat down to fill out the canvass letter. As I was looking it over, my heart almost stopped. The time was 17:30 on a Tuesday. The canvass letter had to be hand delivered or postmarked THAT DAY. %$#@&
I was so mad at myself, because I had spent that whole day being a couch potato, then finally remembered the letter when it was too late.
The next day, I called the county Personnel Dept and told them what happened. They said that I was off of that canvass list, but if I sent in the canvass letter with an explaination as to why it was late, they would put me on the list for any future canvass. I did just that, then I spent about a week kicking myself over my laziness and blowing that job opportunity, then I got over it and decided to keep looking for job possibilities.

Fast-forward a few weeks. Guess who gets a phone call from the 911 Center, looking to set up an interview? That put me on Cloud 9. I went into my interview, found out that I was one of 4 candidates, and also the only one with any dispatching experience (Mom used to dispatch for one of the ambulances in an adjoining county before 911 came in, and when I was old enough I also signed on. Didn't do much dispatching because 911 came in just before I joined, but I got a few years of keeping track of the rigs, their times, getting crews together, etc etc.)
Anyway, the interview went well, the interviewer (who is also the head of 911, a county coordinator, among other things) told me all the stuff about the job, asked tons of questions... When it was over, he said they would be wrapping up the interviews that week and would be making their decision the week after that and would call to let me know.
Well, they never called. I didn't think much of it, I figured I either didn't get it, or else they were following the typical state/county hiring process (slower than molasses in February). A few weeks ago, I got a letter telling me to go to the county health office for a Visual and Hearing Acuity test. I figured that either it was just another part of the screening process prior to them making their decision, or else I had the job and they just forgot to tell me.
There was one girl there who had taken the test and we got talking. I asked if anyone had ever called her after the interview and she said that no, no one did, but she called the guy at 911 and bugged him after a week or 2 and he told her that yes, she had the job, Personnel must have forgotten to call. So right there, I got excited. She was #2 on the test, I was #1, and we were the only 2 there for the visual/hearing test.
The visual/hearing test was the day after the written exam for paramedic (So it was the 18th). Wednesday of last week, I got a call from home while I was working at the bar: There were 2 letters for me from the Dept. of Personnel. They brought them to me, i opened them, one was another canvass letter and the other was a letter saying that I passed the physical exam requirements for the job and was now eligible for appointment. SWEEET!
The next day, I called Personnel because I had a question about the canvass letter. On the front are 2 checkboxes. One says "Yes, I am interested in the position" and the other one says "No, I'm not interested". On the back are all sorts of particulars to check, and I wanted to make sure I filled it out right. I asked the woman at personnel what I needed to do on the back and she said "Nothing, just check yes or no on the front. I know for a fact that they want to appoint you to the position, and the only thing you use the back for is for future canvasses if you dont get appointed the first time around. So just check yes on the front and send it back to us, we'll get it upstairs, approved by the county board, send it to the 911 Center, and you should be hearing from them soon, it could be a few days, it could be a few weeks." I was almost dancing across the firehouse when I got off the phone with her. So I mailed it Thursday of last week.

I am really excited about this. I'm really hoping and praying that I can hack it as a dispatcher, because it is way past time for me to get into a career and get out of the dead-end-job pool.
I do have the paramedic card under my belt, so I can always fall back on that, but still. This job has county benefits, state retirement, starting pay of $23,381 a year, $30,000 at 5 years, and a really sweet vacation and scheduling setup. 8 hour days, 5 on 2 off, and each pay period the off-days back up one day. So if my first 2 weeks I have Wed-Thur off, the next pay period I get Tue-Wed off, then Mon-Tue, Sun-Mon, so on so forth. 2 weeks paid vacation per year, I get my 2 weeks the first year but I can't use them until I hit the 1-year mark, so when my 2nd year starts, I'll have 4 weeks of vacation that year. Then you have the usual earning of sick time and personal time.

From what they said in my interview, you don't get stuck on any one position, either. There are 5 spots on shift: County Law (State Police, County Sheriff, and multiple town/village police agencies) County Fire/EMS, City Fire, City PD, and Data (running VINs and licence info, backgrounds, etc.) and it rotates on a day to day basis so that each day you're on a different station.

Did I mention that i'm really excited about this? I am gonna make this work. This is too good of a shot for me to miss. I think I could definately stick with this job. It would take something pretty impressive for me to leave this job. As long as I can handle everything that goes with it, I don't see it being much of a problem. I've dealt with the on scene stuff for 7 years... I know dispatch can be just as stressful though. Probably more so, I would imagine. (What do you think, Wadical? Any advice?)

Well, it's getting late and i need to go get some coffee. Have a good night!

Friday, August 18, 2006

A case of whup-ass

WWWOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm a paramedic, I'm a paramedic!!! We did it!
Mom, Stacey, and I all passed!!! QV's paramedic population has now doubled and now half of the paramedics for the ambulance have the same phone number. how cool is that!!! Plus from what mom said last night, we are the first mother/daughter/son combo in New York State to all get certified together.

Yesterday was pretty great overall. All but 2 of us from my class who were testing on-site met at the training center, hung out for a bit, had a beer (passengers only) then headed out to Albany.
The guys i rode with had gotten a hotel room so we just chilled there for a few, went to Applebee's, went back to the hotel, soaked in the hot tub for a few, then went to the testing site.
Near the end of the test i started getting a little edgy and had to consciously keep myself from getting lax and just whipping off answers. After 2.5 hours, went into the scoring room as a basic and stepped out as an extremely excited paramedic. I got a 94% on the BLS portion and a 90% on the ALS portion. I was just about dancing.

We went back to the hotel room afterwards, lounged in the pool and the hot tub for an hour or 2, then started making our way back.

Now I am just writing this out while waiting for the bathroom to free up so i can take a shower. I'm heading into the city to take my visual and hearing acuity test, then going to the training center for my protocol test and to get online, then going to VO and letting them know that despite their doubts and occasional mockery, I passed this thing. Actually, today is a friend of mine's shift and he and most of the ppl on this shift have been pretty supportive.

Ok, gotta hit the showers.

Thanks for the well-wishes, everybody!

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Tomorrow is THE big day (2 of 2)

Here we go.
if all goes well, i'll be a paramedic in about 24 hours.
either way, i am partying my ass off this weekend.

I had a blast tonite... Went fishing at my favorite lake ever...
Caught a very nice largemouth. a solid 4 pounder, if my weight estimation is correct.
it was a nice, fat, solid fish. got my pulse racing pretty nicely.

Well, i'll letcha know this weekend how i did.
I plan on opening a can of whup-ass on it.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

We did it! 1 of 2

Yep! Passed my Practical Skills Exam. So did Mom. So did Stacey. I'm pretty sure everyone who made it to the practical, passed the practical. Now all i have to do is pass the state written exam thursday and it's allll good. I plan on passing it. i will pass it. and i will enjoy the relief of having everything done. and i will not be around next weekend. i will be with at a friends house friday. and maybe camping and/or fishing in North Nowhere on saturday. Either way, this weekend is gonna be a party. a big party

Friday, August 11, 2006

Tomorrow Morning is the Big Day, 1 of 2

Here we go, ladies and gentlemen.
Time to prove that I have learned a thing or two over the last year.
Tomorrow morning, (almost precisely 10 hours from this moment) is my Practical Skills Exam for Paramedic class. We had a practice practical Thursday night and it went well for the most part. All I gotta do is remember to keep my head, not freak, breathe deep, and get it done.
I've come too far to botch it now.
I'll let you know how it goes.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Cat got your tongue?

Saw this story, had to share it.


Calling in sick to work makes me feel uncomfortable because no matter how legitimate my illness, I always sense that my boss thinks I am lying. On one occasion, I had a valid reason but lied anyway because the truth was too humiliating to reveal. I simply mentioned that I had sustained a head injury and that I hoped I would feel up to coming in the next day. By then I could think up a doozy to explain the bandage on my crown.

In this case, the truth hurt. I mean, it REALLY hurt in the place men feel the most pain. The accident occured mainly because I had conceded to my wife's wishes to adopt a cute little kitty.

As the daily routine prescribes, I was taking my shower after breakfast when I heard my wife call out to me from the kitchen. "Honey!", she hearkened, "The garbage disposal is dead again! Come reset it!" "You know where the button is!", I protested through the pitter-patter of the shower. "Reset it yourself!" "I'm scared!", She pleaded. "What if it starts going and sucks me in?" Pause... "Please honey, it'll only take a second!"

No logical assurance about how a disposal can't start itself will calm the fears of a person who suffers from "Big-ol-scary-machine-ophobia", a condition brought on by watching too many Stephen King movies. It is futile to argue or explain. And if a poltergeist did, in fact, possess the disposal and she was ground into round, I'd have to live with that for the rest of my life. So out I came, dripping wet and buck naked, hoping to make a statement about how her cowardly behavior was not without consequence. As it turned out, it was I who would suffer.

I made my way to the kitchen, crouched down, and stuck my head under the sink to find the button. It was the last action that I remember performing. It struck without warning, without respect to my circumstances. Nay, it was not a hexed disposal, drawing me into its gnashing metal teeth. It was our new kitty, clawing playfully at the dangling objects that she spied between my legs. She (Buttons, aka "The Grater") had been poised around the corner and stalked me as I took the bait under the sink. At precisely the second that I was at my most vulnerable, she leapt at the toys that I unwittingly offered and snagged them with her needle-like claws.

Now when most men feel pain or even sense danger anywhere close to their masculine region, they lose all rational thought to control orderly bodily movements. Instinctively, their nerves compell the body to contort inwardly, while rising upward at a violent rate of speed. Not even a well-trained monk could calmly stand with his groin supporting the full weight of a kitten and rectify the situation in a step-by-step procedure. Wild animals are sometimes faced with a "Fight or Flight" syndrome. Men, in this predicament, choose only the "Flight" option.

Fleeing straight up, I knew at that moment how a cat feels when it is alarmed. It was a dismal irony. But, whereas cats seek great heights to escape, I never made it that far. The sink and cabinet bluntly impeded my ascent; the impact knocked me out cold. When I awoke, my wife and the Paramedics where standing over me. Having been fully briefed by my wife, the paramedics snorted as they tried to conduct their work while suppressing their hysterical laughter. My wife told me that I should be flattered.

At the office, colleaguess tried to coax an explaination out of me. I kept silent, claiming that it was too painful to talk. "What's the matter, cat got your tongue?"
If only they had known.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Gaurdian Angels and the Grace of God

Those two forces, my friends, were working overtime Wednesday night.
Here is the story as determined by the Fire Investigators.

At 1530 on 8/2, lightning struck the house. It caused a smouldering fire in a crawl space. The lightning also caused a propane leak in the basement. As we all know, propane is heavier than air and seeks out the lowest point, in this case, the basement. Since propane settles, if it has had enough time to settle, there won't be much of a smell if it's enclosed. Getting off track though.

The homeowner got home around 1900, found her house full of smoke, went to the neighbors house and called 911.

My FD was activated, along with our neighbors to the west (Station 8) and the north(Station 29). When they got on scene, they were faced with a 2 story colonial with a smoke condition in the house. As a side note, the homeowners were putting up a stone facade on the house. The FD investigated, could not find any active fire. They went to the TIC (thermal imaging camera) and found the fire in the crawlspace. One crew went outside and started removing a few rocks from the wall to access the crawlspace from the outside and another crew went inside with saws and PPV (positive pressure ventilation) fans. When access was gained, a cellar nozzle was inserted into the crawlspace. (A cellar nozzle is a ball shaped nozzle with multiple orifices pointing in multiple directions.. a hole is cut in the floor and the nozzle is hooked up to a 2 1/2" line, then lowered into the cellar. When water flows, the head of the nozzle starts spinning, sending large amounts of water in all directions. It is a very effective tool for fighting cellar fires and it saves you from having to send firefighters into the burning basement, which is about the worse place you can be on a fireground.) As far as the investigators can tell, when the cellar nozzle was charged, it introduced a lot of air to the fire as well as stirring the prementioned pooled propane. As we all know, Fire+Air+Large amounts of Propane= BOOM.

And that's exactly what happened. There were several (6+) Firefighters inside when the house exploded. The stone facade blew off the side of the house, landing on the deputy chief from Station 29, buring him up to his chest in stone. Originally, the docs thought he fractured his spine, but upon further review they decided that he exacerbated an old injury and also injured his leg. The chief from Station 29 got 1st and 2nd degree burns to his face and hands and also reportedly caught a PPV fan with his head (reports say the ppv fan has the shape of his helmet on the cowling). Another assistant chief from the Station 29 broke his leg and i don't know about burns on him. In all, 5 ppl from Station 29 got transported.

In my Dept., my Deputy chief got 1st degree burns to his face and 2nd degree burns to his hands, as did my Captain. I believe my captain got it a little worse than the deputy chief because the captain's mask got knocked off in the explosion. Another of our firefighters went to the hospital for eval due to some transient deafness. He was treated and released quickly.

Our neighbors to the west (Station 8) had 4 FF's injured. The chief had burns to the face, head, and hands as well, i believe. I'm not sure about the other 3's injuries, but i believe they were burns, bumps, and bruises.

Come to find out, the neighbors later told crews that the propane tank "Had been making a funny noise" earlier (after the lightning strike and before the 911 call), so they shut it off. The tank itself was some distance from the house (100' or so from what i was told).

The fact that no one died is nothing short of a miracle, nothing less than divine intervention. The fact that the most severe burns were 2nd degree is a miracle in and of itself! If the wall had fallen on anyone other than the Deputy chief from Station 29, it would have killed or seriously injured them. The DC is about 6'5" and built solid. He's a foreman for a construction company, so he's got many years of hard work behind him. His build saved him, along with the grace of God.

Everyone is already home for the hospital, which is great. That means no one was burnt bad enough to need the Burn Unit. Only 4 or 5 out of the 12 spent the night at the hospital.

I got to the station around 0300 and the assistance was already pouring in. The farthest dept to the Northwest end of our county (Station 26) was at our station, with a crew and an engine on standby. We are the farthest dept. to the Southeast. Last night, the farthest in-county dept. to the north of us (Station 24) was on standby at our station with an engine and a squad. Station 29 has departments from the far west of the county (Stations 27 and 15, among others) on standby for them. It's amazing. There was even a firefighter from one of the paid depts to the southeast of us (about 25-30 miles SE, 2 counties away) at our station standing by. Thursday morning, we had 2-3 news stations out front with their communications masts up in the air, reporters everywhere. it was crazy.

I got a chance to see the house that morning when we got called up there to extinguish a hot spot. I couldn't believe how blessed we were that no one died when I saw that house and also the rock pile the 29's DC got buried in. Completely amazing.

My chief is still really shaken. He has an extensive fire intruction/training, prevention, and investigation background. He's on the NFPA Advisory Boards, all sorts of stuff. And he is really shook up and torn up over this. He's the type who will spend every idle moment picking the whole scenario apart trying to find what went wrong and what could have been different, and beating himself up over anything he can think may have been done differently. So i do hope he can rest easy. The investigators determined that he and the rest of the crews did everything right with the information they had and nothing could have been done differently unless someone could have seen into the future.

For those of you who offered up prayers, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You.
God was watching over Station 4 (my dept) and everyone else present that night.
---------------------------------

In other news, paramedic class is almost over. I have 2 more rides with my preceptor and 2 more ER rotations and i am done with clinicals/field time.
Our PSE is the 12th (!!!!!!!!!!) and our state written is the 17th. Time to start brushing up and preparing. Paramedic, here I come!

Have a great night, and thanks again

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Please Pray

Hi all
If you could all say some prayers for the people in my FD and neighboring FD's, I would appreciate it. We had a house fire tonite while I was at work and apparently while the crews were working in the house, it exploded. All i know is that about 12 people were hurt, some serious, and anywhere from 6 to all of the injured were firefighters. I know at least 3 ppl from my FD went to the hospital with burns and other injuries.
I'll let you know more when I do.
Any and all prayers would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

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