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Showing posts from August, 2014

Hours of boredom; Minutes of terror.

"Shut up! you don't really work! you played borderlands for eight hours!" He spat.  I had complained I was never home.  I wanted him to get off his ass and stop playing games and help me clean up after I had worked 48 hours in three days. I had to bite my tongue.  He wouldn't get it.  He was right in a sense.  I had  spent a whole 8 hours playing borderlands.  Once.  The last 24 hours hadn't been like that.  Had not been like that at all.  The area I cover is fairly quiet most days, most days being a key component in that statement.  My favorite saying at work, to the point I would call it a mantra is "No rest for the wicked".  Assuming I'm a wicked person, it's about as true as they come. Like some dispatcher somewhere was watching me, as soon as I kicked my boots off the tones dropped for another call.  I was running on fumes by the time I got home. I wanted to tell him to go pound sand. I had  worked for the last 24 hours. I had slept a fu

Critical incidents: it's not heartless, at least I hope not.

Terrible things happen to good and/or undeserving people.  The drunk driver walks away from heaps of scrapped metal.  Parents do the exact opposite of take care of their children. One persons stupidity leads to another persons demise.  Sometimes people just die because of unintended side effects. I had the misfortune to help with one of these cases the other day.  A young female, no medical history.  Only medication was oral contraceptives (Now I'm hoping as I write this that it doesn't turn into the catholic churches next stand against contraceptives).  Started complaining of not feeling well a few days ago and had fainted earlier on the day I met her.  When I met her she was already intubated and waiting to go to a major hospitals.  She had coded a half dozen times already.  In EMS we have this silly notion of an "EMS code save" which means very little for people we treat.  It just means that we got them to the hospital with a chemically induced pulse.  The

Critical Incident Stress Debriefing: Rule 1, It's confidential, respect the other attendees.

The first thing I have to say about a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing(CISD) is that they are like civil fight clubs. They have a very sensitive, confidential nature about them, so like fight club it has 2 rules. You don't talk about the CISD.  You DO NOT talk about the CISD. Jk...