My First Year

Well holy crap. I'm done for a bit. That's right, I made it a whole year. I wen't to 99.98% of my classes. I think I only missed three days? Either way it was very few. I've made the deans list. I've fought fire. I traveled to my first foreign country that isn't Canada. I held on to someone very dear to me with 6000+ miles of distance and 15 hours of time between us. I've made friends, I'm sure I've made a few enemies. I have an EMT job, I am a volunteer firefighter. I've had my ups, a lot of ups, I've had my downs, a few downs. So yeah, a year that I didn't know what was in store for me, turned out to be a very positive one. I'm hoping next year will be the same, but all I can do is take it one day at a time. I remember moving up here to Helena last August. What the hell was I doing ran through my head. Turn around, get the hell out. That's all I thought. Then I bit the bullet and now I'm here. I've learned a lot this year. I have a lot more to learn I am sure. But yeah that's it in a nutshell for this year. Now for current events.

As you know school is done and it is time for summer vacation. The last week of school had it's moments. Honestly this semester really didn't feel like I was in school. What with all the time we had off and teachers cancelling class and what not. However Wednesday of last week was amazing. I fought my first fire. It was a training exercise but until you feel the heat of the fire and see it rolling you just don't know. We were at the ARFF trainer. Basically it's a huge plane that they can light up anywhere. As we haven't had the ARFF class yet we treated it as a trailer fire. The cockpit was a bedroom, the seating area was the living room.The bathroom was well... the bathroom. So we got in there and sprayed the hell out of the bedroom. The instructor yelled at me to get in there. So I was a foot and a half away from the fire. By the time we finished that room and got into the main area. The flames were basically what you see in the movies. Rolling up the walls, and hitting the ceiling and rolling up across the ceiling. Then the heat hit me. You know that feeling you get when your clothing gets really hot after being right next to a camp fire and it barely touches the skin? It was like that, but a little less intense. 700 degrees though. Toastie.

After that I went to work and it was lame, a chica I work with was being dramatic. Nothing new. Wednesday after work I ended up getting my gear with the volunteer department. After we got our turnouts, then our wildland gear, our uniforms, and our pagers the guy issuing the gear told us it was about 5000 dollars worth of gear. Yeah I am now in possession of stuff that is worth more than what I make in about 5-6 months.Crazy, But other than that I think I'm in the right place. Saturday I got my first pager call. 15 gallon diesel spill. Yeah nothing too exciting but my response time was excellent. I was the only one there and then they cancelled the page. So as I was leaving I called a fire dept guy and he was like well I'm going to come fill out a report so if you want to see how that is done then come back to the station. So I did then the chief called and told us to respond. So we went over there. Placed dirt and absorbent on the spill then got a report. Like I said nothing exciting but still.

Other than that not much exciting is going on. Fully getting into the swing of Summer vacation. Stay tuned as I get more calls fire and EMS wise!

Busy Busy Busy

So yeah every time I go to write this blog I somehow get distracted. It seems that 40 hours of work a week, plus 19 credits of school keep me busy enough that time escapes me. Seriously, wasn't it spring break like last week? But now that we get down to it we have 14 days of school left. It has been a very busy few weeks. Here's the scoop.

Classes are going well. Driving class has been by far the most fun. We've spent a few days driving on the interstate and in town driving. But the most fun came last weekend when we learned how to operate the engine water pump and aerial ladder. It ended in us using the 1.5" pre-connects to wash the aerial truck and having a water fight. Yeah it's been 70's in Montana and beautiful. I spent some time outside today. The driving instructor has kind of zeroed me out to get things done which is both good and bad. Good because it means I am doing well, bad because it means I'm on his radar. So yeah we have a presentation to work on for driving and that's it. Strategies and Tactics has been productive. We've run a bunch of scenarios and Monday we practiced flat roof venting. Chainsaws, pike poles, and ladders oh my. Tell you what, 70 degree weather on a black roof midday is a bit toasty. PT is going well for the most part. Basic working out and doing my own thing. As I have said 14 days of school left. I'm okay with that. I'm ready for summer.

Speaking of being ready for summer, we are starting to pick up in calls EMT wise. The other night I had my first real trauma call. Car vs. Elk. The car was a ford festiva type car. It rolled a few times, everyone is thinking 4. Anyway I was inside the car holding c-spine and trying to move the patient on the backboard when my boss came up and started cutting the patients clothes. A.) he was in a roll over, bleeding pretty good and probably had shock, B.) I didn't find this out until I was in the car already, the car was leaking gas and starting to smoke. Did I worry a little, yeah. C.) The patient was shivering and showing signs of hypothermia.  We finally got the patient out and backboarded and in the ambulance. We went code to the hospital after bandaging and placing an IV because the patient was losing feeling in his left side. We got the patient to the hospital and checked out. He from what we gathered had a possible broken shoulder, neck and knee, and bleeding somewhere. That's all I know on that patient. We did bring a patient in later that morning and my previous patient was still backboarded. Scary.

The next day, yesterday, we ended up going on a 911 to a nursing home for a man with difficulty breathing. He had a stroke previously and was feeling dizzy. We hooked him up with a 3-lead heart monitor and he was throwing up random beats and problems so we got him into the ambulance. After that it was fluid like in how we operated. My boss was the main EMT on the call and I was his assist, I was hooking up the IV bag and getting it spiked and ready to go along with the blood draw kit ready. Well the IV wasn't pushing fluid and we didn't know why. My boss thought it was because he blew a vein or the iv stick closed off somehow. Well after fiddling with the iv for a bit he gave up and went to give a patient report to the hospital and I was sitting there looking at the patients arm and I noticed it was turning purple. I was uh oh, a clot or something then I saw it, the tourniquet. My boss forgot to take it off. After that the IV started flowing. We got the patient into the hospital and I didn't know what happened after that. That's the problem I guess, patient confidentiality stops us from knowing what happened and if the patient made it.

But yeah that is about it with the calls, I'm starting to work more on my endorsements that allow me to do IV's and advanced airway stuff. Then I will be able to do more than I could before on calls. Looking forward to that. But yeah other than that, life is plugging along, it's amazing how fast time goes when you don't have time to sit and think. The next two weeks will be busy, then I will have some time to breathe. We are going to be playing with live fire at the ARFF trainer on May 5th so definitely expect pictures and a blog about that. Until then hopefully I will be able to find time to work on the blog. Stay tuned!

The Stake Out

So my Friday afternoon at work was not too exciting for the most part. Transfered one patient from Fort Harrison to the BSCC retirement center. He was a nice old guy (90 years old) who had all the nurses fawning over him. Seriously, they loved him. Turns out he would bake pies for him as a thank you for taking care of him. After that we went back to the shop where I cooked up the steaks that one of my co-workers brought for us. After finishing said steaks we got a call from dispatch that basically runs down like this:

Friday, April 2nd

1843* - Dispatch calls us via telephone to ask us to respond to a 72 year old female schizophrenia patient who is off her meds.  They told us that they were going to try to convince the patient to come with us to St. Peter's on her own but chances were, that would wouldn't happen easily without a police escort. We were told to wait about 20 minutes before we arrived so that the local sheriff could get there first. Scene safety, it's a must!

1847 - We were called back from dispatch saying to go ahead and take off but to stage out at a different location and wait for the sheriff to call us in.

Around 1900 or so hours - Arrived at the staging area to wait for police. Shortly after the sheriff arrives and tells my partner and I to follow him.

1915 - Arrive on scene. We wait. My partner and I talk to each other for a while and randomly have conversations with the officers that are coming and going in and out of the house.

1925 - Montana Highway Patrol Arrives to help with patient.

1950 - Sheriffs inform us that they cannot find patient in her house and that previously during the day they couldn't find her because she ended up hiding in a bunch of boxes. Apparently this even has been going on all day... My partner suggests dispatching the local fire department to get their thermal imager.

2000 - Sheriff leaves to get his thermal imager and arrives roughly twenty minutes later. After searching they cannot find her.

2100 - We are cleared of the scene by the sheriff as the patient was picked up by a relative earlier that took her somewhere but was not telling officers where.

So yeah that was the last call I did for the night. It wasn't bad and we basically just sat in an ambulance and hung out but I was pretty excited/nervous because this was my first psych patient that needed a police escort. Afterwards I ended up clocking out and going home. Went to bed early because I have a big day of driving the firetruck to Butte. Hooray for driving.

Easter isn't going to be too eventful as I have to work until 0700 tomorrow and start working again at 1900. So yeah, so much for that holiday. I was really hoping for an Easter basket filled with Easter candy but I will probably just have to settle for Cadbury eggs. Ask anyone, they are like crack to me. Anyway, time to get ready for some driving, stay tuned for my adventure in driving the fire truck to Butte.

* - All times down in military time and are approximate.

Great Falls Hoooooooo!

Okay so yesterday was a long day at work. I worked Sunday night 1900 to Monday morning 0700 which luckily in that time frame there were no calls. My partner and I just sat at the shop and watched Family Guy. The next morning after leaving work I had class from 0900 to 1200 then I was to be back at work at 1300. I started in on the weekly checklist for our 911 rig when one of my supervisors Bob told me to stop what I was doing and join him on the trip to Great Falls to drop off a patient who had hip surgery. I didn't know where the place was so Bob made me drive. So I would then remember where we went. There was a lot of road construction through the canyon as well. But for those of you who haven't been to Great Falls, it's a wee bit confusing to get places at first. Especially considering that one of the main roads had road construction happening and with the added benefit of detours the city was even more confusing. But the trip wasn't bad. It was windy and rainy in the canyon but after that it was sunny. The most amazing thing though was that everything is starting to turn green. Spring is here! Well, it's on its way! So that is a plus.

My partner/boss Bob and I discussed how getting emotionally attached to your patients can be both good and bad. It's good in that if you feel emotional towards the patient you will want to help them, well if you feel for the patient. The bad being that if you get too attached to the patient and it doesn't go the way you want it to the emotions could end up eating at you. The I guess proposed solution to such things is to keep at a distance. Bob told me that it comes with time and losing patients. I don't like the latter part of that but I guess it is the business we are in. Basically the way I see it, the more I study and learn the less likely that will happen, even though I know that it's just a matter of time before I experience my first real loss EMT wise.

Now that the mood is set to something bordering depressing it's time to be upbeat. Tomorrow night after my mandatory work meeting I will be going up to Station One to help fill eggs full of Easter candy for the egg hunt  we are putting on this weekend. So that will be fun. But yeah other than that, it's not been too busy with work. and school. It's weird working 40 hours a week and going to school for 19 credits. It seems like a lot and I feel busy but it doesn't feel overwhelming. So that's a plus. Anyway it's time I be off. Stay tuned!

Classes, EMT, Firefighting etc!

So it has been a really busy couple of weeks these past few weeks. It's only now that it's Spring Break that I have time to write this right now. There has been a lot going between the last time I wrote on here and now. Maybe I should start writing more frequently so that I don't have a lot to write down. Well here it goes.

Classes
So the first half of the semester has wound down which means that we had finals and a change into new classes. The semester wound down pretty smoothly with A's in Haz-mat, Wildland Firefighting, Radio Communication, and Emergency Apparatus Maintenance. I am now Haz-mat certified in both the Operations and Awareness Levels so I know enough to help out but not obligate myself into going into the scary dangerous green gases.

We started new classes last week. Fire Strategies and Tactics and Apparatus Driving classes. I'm pretty excited for both of those because we have less class time and more hands on time. Class time is needed mind you but who doesn't love skipping the bookwork and getting dirty.

So Tactics was off to a fast start with our first two quizzes handed out within the first two classes. Nothing exciting as we have to watch movies and read the chapters on it.  But we're off to a good start. Turns out this class will be more of a hands on class and we will hit on everything we did first semester but with the added bonus of learning tactics that affect the overall strategies of the incidents.

Driving class is going well too. This past weekend we did a driving competency course. We had to drive straight through cones and reverse. I managed to hit 8 out of 11 cones on my first run but I was going at 25mph rather than inching along like most folk. But the rest of the test went well. A week from Saturday we will start our driving around town.

The EMT Job


So these past few weeks have been complete chaos. Transfers aside I've had a lot of 911 calls. Usually on the nights I have to spend the night. It's nice because they had beds there and we get to sleep. The only thing is if we get a 911 call in the middle of the night we have to respond. Well conveniently every time I spend the night we seem busy as hell. So here is the break down of the past three calls I've had as they are ones I remember in detail.

Friday March 19th


Friday was a busy night. My first call was a call to Big Sky Community Center for a woman complaining of shortness of breath. It was a pretty straight forward call. We did vitals and helped her onto the cot and drove her to the hospital. About 10:30pm we received a call from the hospital to return the woman back to the retirement center. Turns out she had fluid on the lungs. Well anyway my partner Anna and I decided to hit the hay after getting the 911 rig ready to go. Everything was going along just fine until 2:30am. We got paged out to Boulder for a woman complaining of abdominal pain. Boulder has its own ambulance service but they couldn't muster up a second person to go so we were called out.

We were called by our boss to wait for her to get to the shop before we could leave. When she got there we headed off. I do enjoy driving code 3 to incidents but at 2:30am I prefer sleep. So anyway I drove 100mph the whole time. Scary but the woman was complaining of 7 out of 10 abdominal pain, plus my boss was harassing me about going slow. Well we get there and her pain went from 7 to 9 out of 10. We got her in the ambulance and her husband wanted to come so he rode in the front with me. That is where the night took a turn for the crazy. The patient ended up having kidney stones but decided to stop taking her meds about 2 months ago. She had so many piercings setting off a metal detector would be a common occurrence but she wouldn't let us put an IV in because she was afraid of needles...

My experience up front was just as exciting. The husband was trying to fidget with the lights and buttons and I had to tell him to knock it off. He explained that he just wanted me to not be a distracted driver and he wanted to get to the hospital safely. Then he proceeded to pull out a portable dvd player. After that he started talking to me about nano technology and how DNA from sharks are curing blindness. Then he started explaining to me how the videogame series, Resident Evil was a cover up by the U.S. government for a cure for AIDS gone to far. I had to shake my head at that. Then he put his iPod on and started singing. We got her to the hospital and everything was fine. We filled out paperwork and returned to the shop. We got back into bed around 5:30am so I was able to get another hour of sleep before we had to get up.

Monday March 22nd


Monday night we had two legitimate 911 calls. First was a gentleman with COPD and a broken arm. He fell trying to fix his clock. We got there and helped him with his breathing treatment then rushed him off to the hospital. We got back to the shop around 12:30am we went to sleep about 1:00am or so then we got a call at 2:30am again for a gentleman who was bleeding profusely into his catheter. When we got there it was basically all blood. His blood pressure was 86/55 so yeah he wasn't doing good. It was one of those load and go situations. I again drove because my partner Ryan has all his endorsements so his scope of practice is a little more advanced than mine. We got the gentleman to the hospital after his nurse told us that this had been going on for four days. Awesome right? Well we got called back at 6:30am to return him to the retirement center so he wasn't as bad as we thought. Which is good.

But yeah that is about it for calls. We took a class this week on our monitoring endorsement. Nothing exciting. I can now test blood glucose, use a pulse oximeter, and put on a 3-lead heart monitor. We're going to do the other endorsements all together. IV monitoring, IV placement, medications and a few others. So I'm one step closer to being an aggressive EMT-B. I think that is what they are called.

Firefighting


The volunteer gig hasn't been to exciting, we had training the other night. Wildland this time. We learned about how these firefighters in South Dakota almost died because they didn't watch out for any of the watch out situations you're supposed to. 11 out of 15 watch out situations were violated. Then we practiced with fire shelters. We tried it without wind then we got the ventilation fan and did it with wind. That was fun. I just have one more meeting I need to go to before I am voted in as a full member.



The Wrap-Up


So yeah that is about it. Even on spring break I'm taking classes and am ridiculously busy. But that is okay because I don't mind the work and helping people is an awesome feeling. I know I've been saying this but I will try to update this more. Stay tuned!

Again I haven't forgotten about the blog.

I haven't forgotten about the blog I promise I have a lot that I will fill everyone in on this Sunday. So Stay tuned!

Haz-Mat Hands On, Volunteering, EMTing, etc.

So as most can see it has been a while since I have updated my blog. Honestly due to lack of content. It's hard to make school work and class time sound exciting. Well that changed yesterday when we started doing hands on Haz-Mat training.

 For our Fire Fighter I Certification we have to demonstrate the abilities to establish a haz-mat hot zone, and create a decon area while being able to practice proper decon techniques. It was nice to get back in my turn outs and get to hands on stuff again. It's weird, I was ready at the end of last semester to get done with the evolutions but after 8 weeks of class room boringness I found I missed being in my gear. A good sign perhaps. Anyway, our first tactic was to spot the hazardous material, figure out what it was, then establish a perimeter for the hot zone. We used a gas meter to monitor the air for the mininum required 19.5% oxygen requirement. We also monitored for CO, LEL and other gases. Afterwards we went through decon techniques. Monday we learn how to take off our gear while still being on air. I promise to get pictures of that because it might be hilarious. Here are a few pictures.

Stewart, Wunderlich (Pronounced Wonderlick, yeah, that's his real name), and I practicing Decon techniques.

Me rocking the gas meter. Apparently there is a class I can do online to get certified in using that. I think I'm going to go for it. 

Getting decontaminated or practicing for Dance of the Sugar-Plum Firemen, I'm not telling.

So yeah, that's been it for classes for the most part. We finished the ambulance and we have our class finals this week. Three finals this week. Friday we start new classes. One class is Fire Tactics and Operations so we will be doing more hands on stuff so expect more writings and pictures for that. Now on to volunteering.

So Wednesday was my first meeting with the Montana City Volunteer Fire Department. It was a business meeting where I was able to introduce myself and what not. Not ten minutes into the meeting were people joking with me and carrying on so I think I am going to fit in really well. I was assigned a mentor who is basically just around to show me how MCVFD does it. The funny thing is, is that the guy assigned to me for mentoring is my roommate's boss. So we joked around about all the expensive stuff my roommate has broken and got along awesomely. I stayed after the meeting to help with the monthly checklist on Engine One.  Engine one is pretty cool but they just bought a new engine. Engine Two as it's called is dare I say it, a very sexy looking fire truck. I would love to roll to fires in that. It is the picture to our left here.  But yeah, I overheard the president of the business meetings and the fire chief talking and basically I still have to go through the hoops of  applying but they said it was a no-brainer on hiring us on. Now when I say being hired on I mean being voted into the organization but they call it hiring us on because for Wildland work we'll actually get paid if we are called by DNRC. So that is pretty cool.

 I am planning on attending the Wildland Intermediate class at the end of this month which I am pretty excited for. I will then be one step closer to my Wildland Firefighter I certification. It's backwards in Wildland fire compared to structure fire in that Wildland Firefighter I is the best where as in structure fires Firefighter II is the highest. 

My EMT job is going well for the most part. I have had a few problematic patients. One that was extremely heavy but decided he wanted to walk himself. He was starting to collapse as he was going up the stairs but I swooped in and managed to catch him. Good thing I work out because the 260lbs he weighed was a lot to shoulder. The next patient we had that same night kept trying to rip his I.V. out of his arm and touch my partner's private areas, so I had her drive and I dealt with the patient. He did not attempt to go for my privates. 

Scheduling has been kind of off as there are a bunch of us new folk. But it seems as if I will be partnered a lot with this girl named Anna. She seems nice. They like to have a guy/girl partnership because there are some patients that do better with males vs. females and vice versa. I did my first overnight shift though last night. It was good. I worked that with Mike, a paramedic. He's the one that is going to help me with my endorsements. We were on call at a local hockey game. One of the perks of the job is free hockey games, plus the folks at the concession stands give us free food and drinks. Afterwards we went back to the shop and hung out. the nice thing about an overnight shift is that we get to sleep. The bad thing about an overnight shift is that the beds are less comfortable than cots and sleeping is hard to do. The shop dog stays there too and decided that at 4am I was the best person to play ball with. He was mistaken. I work again tomorrow at 7am to 7pm. Long shifts but it pays the bills. 

Other than that not much has really gone on. I'm discovering that being busy makes time go by rather quickly as this past week really didn't exist, but the days are getting longer and the weather is warming up so things are looking up. I'll try to update about finals and such here this next weekend. Stay tuned!