it's the final countdown

(admit it, how many of you sang that?!)

I'm getting down to the very last things I need for school and I'm happier than a pig in shit. Sorry for being blunt but it's the truth. I only need 10 more calls, 3 more ERs to complete and 1 more intubation. I need a couple pediatric patients, some syncopes, some OBs, some abdominal, just a smattering in a few categories.

When I first started it seemed impossible to get done, but I'm actually ahead of the game. Some of my classmates have much more to do, as of today, I have exactly 1 month before all of my paperwork is due, which I admit kinda scares me. We take our final exam May 3rd, then have another certification to complete, and review for the state test, we graduate June 1st, then take the state test that weekend. If we pass we should have our licenses by the end of June.

And guess what that means?? MORE TIME FOR QUILTING!!!!!!!

whirlwind

This week has been CRAZY!!! It started last Friday with an ER clinical, a call-less 12hr ride on Sunday, our Peds & OB/gyne mod test (which btw, I ROCKED!), an event filled ER clinical on Tuesday, more class on Weds, peds ER yesterday, and an ER tonite! I'm very thankful we have an 8 hr limit per 24 hrs on our hospital clinicals, I'm already wiped out from this week.

Tomorrow I am off! Going to take some time and spend with the kiddos tomorrow (I'm thinking the arcade would be a WONDERFUL plan!), going to one of my local quilt shops that just got some Verna yardage in for my pinwheel quilt, I need to get a new ironing board, and then work on another quilt for charity. I am SO looking forward to it! Back to the grind on Sunday for some time on L&D. Have a great weekend y'all!

how i spent my sunday

yep, feels good to be home again. did some more ride time and knocked out 3 calls. this is totally the field i was meant to be in.

hitting home

In my time away I've been real busy with school and clinicals. This weekend I put in 24 hrs of ride time, got 8 calls which isn't bad at all considering 20 hours of 104 of ride time so far were spent holding down the recliners at the station.

This weekend was just weird. Lots of weird calls, lots of weird outcomes, just weird. There is no other way to describe it. Today we had a call that really hit home with me. I had been in her shoes a couple times before and it's like a switch was flipped. Normally I kinda keep low key with the patients and their families as the medics I ride with take over that part, I just basically start the assessments and get histories from them. I talk to them during the transport, I try to calm them down, and sometimes just lend a hand to hold. The medic in the back takes the jump seat (which is behind the patients head for the non EMS folk) and I'm usually on the bench or the CPR seat which are on the sides of the ambulance. I'm fairly inexperienced as an EMT having gone straight from EMT school to paramedic school without working in the field but today with this one patient I felt like I'd been doing this for years.

I talked to her, I told her my experiences, what to expect, how things work, how to stay safe, how to get a fresh start, and most of all how to escape. She was terrified and her vitals showed it. I sat by her side the entire way to the hospital, totally forgot there was a medic in back with us, just talked to her, hopefully helped to ease her fears of the whirlwind that is about to come in the next few days. I didn't do much for her medically other than take her vitals and give her some ice but by the time we got to the hospital her vitals fell into the normal range and she was more at ease about what's to come. Got her transferred to the ED staff and I wished her good luck and gave her a hug, I hope she follows through on everything and gets a fresh start. We're only with our patients for a short time, hardly enough to make a difference, I can only wish that my story gave her some hope. I really do wish her all the best.

waste of my time

I volunteered to be a victim for the T/Th paramedic classes PHTLS class tonite. We were to be all moulaged and made up to look like real victims. That didn't happen. There were 5 of us from my class that participated because it counted for some ER time that we were going to have to do. Plus it's a preview of what we can expect at the PHTLS when we take it.

For starters, it was fairly unorganized. No one knew where we were going or what we were doing. Only some people had assignments prior to the class but of course nothing was concrete. Secondly, I let them use my car for rapid extrication and the students ripped the shit outta my seat when they jammed a back board too far under the 'patient'. It already had a small rip (it's a 1991, the leather is dry) but they made it about 5 times larger. I knew it was a possibility of some damage to arise but that just frosts my cake that they made it significantly worse than what it was. The cars actually belong to people who drive them on a daily basis, they're not junk yard cars. Lastly, one of the proctors brought along about 10-12 of his HIGH SCHOOL EMT-B students. Some of them were fine but there were a few that were obnoxious. I happened to be in this guys group during the trauma scenarios teaching station and he said he was going to give me a scenario to play victim but never did, even after I reminded him several times. He had 3 of his students play victims and 1 person from my class.

If his excuse was that they needed cars there were plenty of people willing to have their cars used for the rapid extrication part. I find it really rude that he brought along so many students who won't take PHTLS for a good length of time to come if ever and that he gave priority of playing victims and scenarios to his students. They didn't really get in the way but it's a school nite and they lived at least 45mins to an hour away, things were just wrapping up about. They acted very clique-ish at times and a few of them thought they were tough shit because of where they were.

In the end, I wound up with a severely damaged front seat and got to do absolutely nothing that I signed up for, I would've much rather stayed home and did homework.

I have NO clue what happened last nite

I know where I was at and for what purpose but can I tell you that I learned anything? Nope. Quite possibly one of the driest and worst classes to date. We're not at a college, in fact our classes are held at an elementary school the academy rents space from. The paramedic class room is 2 classrooms with the wall between them removed and it's quite a large space. If you're a person who doesn't know how to project your voice then those that are NOT in the first 2 rows will have a very hard time hearing you.

Yesterday's lecture was shock. All about shock. Cardiogenic, neurogenic, hypovolemic, anaphylactic, and septic. Let's throw in some acid/base balance and how pH is controlled and maintained. Now, I've had A&P, chemistry, and microbiology before, how the hell this person managed to make my head spin I'll never know. First she didn't know how to break down bicarbonate into it's proper form. She kept adding an extra particle and it was never consistent which really irritated me. Normal pH of the human body is 7.35-7.45 if you're curious.

I did learn *some* things, like when you start an IV using a crystalloid solution you replace at a ratio of 1cc of fluid lost:3cc of fluid replaced, if using just a colloid you only do a 1:1. NS is a crystalloid and blood is an example of a colloid. Another thing in a patient who's in cardiogenic shock, you only run fluids at a TKO (to keep open, not total knock out ;) ) rate because they're already experiencing some stage of pulmonary edema and you don't want to make it worse.

I'm still not fully understanding the buffer system as presented in our books but I do know that acidosis or alkalosis can happen quickly when the body's pH gets either above or below the its normal pH. Sounds like a good question for my science nerd sister.

On to other things, CLINICALS have begun!! We have to do a precepted rotation in the ER before we're set loose to start doing rotations on the 'bolance, dispatch, or ER so I get to do that on Thursday night and then I can start riding, SCORE!! I pass the station I'll be riding at when I do clinicals on my way home from school and I saw them rolling out totally green I wasn't on the rig :(

if i go missing, send help

This is the stack of books I came home with last nite:


Yep, and there are more to come. See, we have to take 4 prehospital advanced life support courses, ACLS, PHTLS, PEPP, & PALS, and we haven't gotten those books yet. I'm very excite to get this started an underway but I'm also very overwhelmed at all the stuff there is to do. I thought that of being an EMT but that's NOTHING compared to paramedic training.