Go away for a weekend for a little beer, barbecue and EMS education, and I get home to find the Battle of the Sexes being waged in my comments?

Tsk, tsk.

It’s almost enough to make me give up researching this clitoris thingy the ladies keep speaking of.

TOTWTYTR asked in the comments on my last post:

“What’s a clitris, anyway?”

To which I replied,

“Legend has it that that the clitris holds the key to a woman’s sexual satisfaction.

At puberty, they teach budding young women to tell their mates, ‘You almost found it,’ seconds after they give up in frustration.

Personally I don’t think the damned thing exists.”

His rejoinder:

“Oh, that thing. It’s sort of like Sumdood in that a lot of people know other people who say they’ve seen it, but no one actually has proof.”

*snerk*

…because even I can’t think of a thing to say.

…who had a…well, you know how the rest of it goes.

William the Coroner has started a new limerick contest on his blog. If you were a fan or frequent participant of Sparrow’s haiku contests, now on hiatus, here’s your chance to reveal your more ribald side.

Or not. Limericks don’t have to be dirty, and if you can come up with a good one that isn’t, you’ll get bonus points. This week’s theme is FALL.

Well now, that poses challenges. How do I come up with a clean limerick for fall, especially since I only know one? I suppose I can give it a try anyways, though:

There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who gathered his leaves in a bucket.
As he piled them higher and higher,
And then set them afire,
He said, “If the neighbors don’t like the smoke, they can suck it.”

There ya go, folks. Derivative and startlingly unoriginal, yet in keeping with the theme. I’m sure y’all can do better over in his comments.

Have fun!

…myself, mainly.

Which is not something I’m comfortable doing. Oh, I have a monstrous ego, but I really am uncomfortable hawking myself for profit.

And so, to those of you who hit the Tip Jar or bought AD merchandise, many thanks. (I’ve got some new designs, by the way, and I’m open to suggestions for more).

Which brings me to my next subject. Down there at the bottom of my left sidebar, you’ll see an icon of a certain book.

Now, that book was published before I ever started a blog, when a good friend and fledgling publisher was generous enough to offer me a contract. We’ve sold a few here and there, and the book has been well-received in EMS circles, but sales certainly haven’t set the world on fire.

Let’s just say that the money deposited into Double-Wide Fund from book sales is only barely enough to buy me a pop-up camper.

Well, those books are soon to become orphans collector’s items. They’re soon to go out of print. When The Publisher first offered me a contract, he told me, “I don’t know how many of these we’ll sell, but if it gets you noticed by bigger outfits than mine, I’ll have accomplished my goal. We need more EMS books that aren’t the ‘look at me, I’m a hero’ variety.”

Well, the publisher achieved his goal. He (and this blog) got me noticed by a big publisher, and the contract I’ve signed means that the old books will disappear fairly soon. The new book will be a substantial reworking of the old one, to include a number of stories from this blog. Call it “AD’s Greatest Hits,” if you will.

However, over half the stories in the old book appear only there. They’ve never been posted on the blog, and many of them will not be included in the new book. So if you’d like to read some AD stories you’ve never seen before, I urge you to go buy a copy. Emergency Publishers has only a few hundred copies left, and any that don’t get sold will require me paying money out of the double wide fund.

And I’d rather have y’all reading them than me using them as birdcage liner, noamsayne?

Your pirate name is
Krang the Mean
What is YOUR pirate name?

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day, ye scurvy* weasels!

‘Krang the Mean.’

Heh. That almost beats Beefy McManstick.

Almost.

*Of course, a diet rich in Vitamin C is the best prevention for scurvy. So if you’re ever aboard ship for an extended period of time, bring along plenty of citrus fruits.

Hey, this is a medblog. I post useful shit now and then, too.

…especially if you’re from Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas or Oklahoma. EMStock is only a week away. Held on Bryan Bledsoe’s ranch in bucolic Midlothian, TX – the cee-ment capitol of the world! – EMStock is one of Texas’ premier EMS events.

Or hell, no matter where you’re from, this is a conference that is worth the trip. Held outdoors in air-conditioned tents, EMStock boasts nationally known speakers and a unique, relaxed atmosphere. This year we’ve got speakers and attendees from as far as Wisconsin, Maine, Massachusetts and the UK.

There will be product vendors with free swag, quality continuing education sessions, chili and barbecue cookoffs, and live entertainment on the EMStock stage every night.

In fact, one of those acts will be me Yours Truly and good friend Gary Saffer on the stage Saturday night from 6 pm – 7 pm.

And all of this quality education, food and entertainment can be had for a mere $20 registration fee.

I’ll be camping out on the grounds, along with a couple of other well-known EMS medbloggers, so if you attend, be sure to stop by the campfire and look for the drunk Louisiana redneck signing books.

We’ll share an adult beverage or three.

I could survive for 1 minute, 22 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

…on what I had for dinner before I went to bed.

Because if I’ve hit the local Chinese joint for broccoli beef and crab Rangoon, and perhaps some egg drop soup, it’s me all the way, baby.

With that kind of gastrointestinal ammunition, ain’t no velociraptor wantin’ any of this. He’d be extinct again in no time.

“Aaaaauuuggggh! I’m dyin’! You muhfuckas got to help me!”

“Easy enough to do,” I sigh. “All you have to do is stop screaming and tell me what’s wrong.”

“My muhfuckin’ chest hurt, Goddamnit! Auuuuuuggghhhh! Mommmmmaaaa!”

“Tell me more about this chest pain,” I prompt, but he ignores me, writhing on the stretcher and crying piteously. For someone insisting that he can’t breathe, he sure has a good set of lungs on him. For a man whose heart is threatening to explode, his skin signs and color certainly don’t reflect it. His blood pressure is better than mine.

“So tell me the story again,” I order the guard perched on the squad bench beside me, watching the entire scene with resigned indifference.

“He’d just been brought in for processing,” the guard explains. “busted by the SO on possession of drug paraphernalia and resisting by flight. We brought him through the south sally-port, and it was kinda busy, and he asked to use the bathroom.”

“And you let him?” I ask incredulously. “Unescorted?”

“Hey man, we were busy and there was no place he could go,” the guard protests. “So we hand him a jumpsuit and tell him to have at it. Anyway, he’s back from the bathroom about ten minutes and he starts breathing funny and grabbing his chest. Then he fell out on the floor having a fit.”

At the mention of the word fit, the prisoner’s eyes immediately close, and his limbs start bucking. His back arches, and he writhes against the handcuffs and leg chains. He whuffs like a dog and spits foamy white sputum all over the front of his orange jumpsuit. I ignore him and casually put my hand on his chin, directing his head – especially the spitting part – away from me.

“And what makes you think he swallowed the drugs?” I ask, rolling my eyes.

“Told us he did. All the time he was rolling around on the floor having the fit, he kept saying, ‘I swallowed the whole bottle.’ That’s all he’d tell us.”

“Didn’t anybody fucking search him before you turned him loose?” I explode. By way of reply, the guard shrugs in embarrassment, and then his eyes widen in fear.

“Holy shit, he’s pissing on himself,” he moans in disgust, backing away down the bench seat. “It must be the real thing, then. They say you piss yourself when you’re really having a seizure.”

“Not this time,” I grunt. “Most seizure patients don’t have the capacity to work a zipper and whip it out of their jumpsuit first, much less aim it. They don’t usually close their eyes in a real seizure, either.” I pick up the stethoscope – the unit scope, not mine – and whack the guy firmly on the dick with it. He yelps in pain and drops his talleywhacker and resumes calling for his momma at the top of his lungs.

I strap a non-rebreather mask to the kid’s face, intending it as a dual purpose oxygen delivery device/spit-shield, and he snaps at my fingers as I cinch the straps tighter.

“Get over here and re-position these cuffs,” I order the guard. “Don’t give him enough slack to do that shit again.”

“Uh uh,” the guard demurs, holding up his hands. “I got no gloves.”

“There’s a box of extra-large gloves on the seat right behind you,” I tell him mercilessly. “Put a pair on and help me out.” Again the guard shakes his head, no.

“Dude,” I threaten quietly, “either you fucking help me out with this guy, or so help me God, I’ll aim his dick for him. And I hope he pisses all over those action adventure britches you’re wearing.”

Swearing under his breath, the guard gloves up, gingerly tucks the prisoner’s johnson back into his jumpsuit, and moves the handcuffs to a point further down the stretcher frame, glaring at me all the while.

“Mommmmaaaa! The muhfucka’s killin’ meeeeeee! Mommmmaaaaaa! My muhfuckin’ chest hurt! You gotta give me somethin’!” The prisoner kicks his legs, finding enough slack in the leg chains to make contact with the guard’s left elbow as he kneels on the foot of the cot.

“Sonofabitch!” the guard swears, clamping one hand on the kid’s shin and another on his thigh. He knees the kid viciously several times in the side of his thigh, just above the knee in a perfect common peroneal strike, and just like that the kid stops kicking. Even though his leg is dead for a few seconds, it does nothing to slow down his mouth.

“Muhfucka stop kickin’ me! I need muhfuckin’ help, and these muhfuckas beatin on me! Mommmmaaaaa! Mommmmaaaaaa! I ain’t resistin’! I ain’t resistin’!” the kid screams at the top of his lungs, all the while resisting like wildcat getting a turpentine enema. “I’m gone die, and these muhfuckas ain’t did nothin’ to help meeeeee…”

“FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY!” I bellow, my temper getting the best of me.

The kid doesn’t shut up, but he does quiet down enough that I can hear myself think.

“Last chance, kid,” I offer, leaning over him, speaking softly in his ear. “Man up and tell me what the fuck you took, so I’ll know what medicine to use to make it better.”

“Don’t know what it was,” he moans, shaking his head wildly. “My bro just said, ‘throw it out the car’, but I couldn’t even get da fuckin’ window down, man! I didn’t want ‘em to find it on me!”

“So you swallowed the whole bottle while you were in the bathroom, is that it?”

“And I flushed the empty bottle down the commode,” he confirms, tears streaming down his face.

“Jesus,” I shake my head, “and it didn’t occur to you to just flush the pills, too? What’s your name, dumbass?”

“Dontrelle,” he answers, panting like a Saint Bernard in August. “Man, you muhfuckas gotta help me! My chest be hurtin’, man!”

“No shit, really?” I ask, feigning astonishment. “You think that might be because you swallowed a whole buncha pills? What were they, speed? Come on man, be honest. Your life might depend on it.”

“Don’t know,” Dontrelle shakes his head. “Mighta…mighta been crack.”

“Mighta been, or was?” I press. “Come on, Dontrelle. Pretty easy to tell the difference between a crack rock and a pill.”

“Crack rocks, man,” Dontrelle whimpers. “Bunch of ‘em.”

“Like how many?” I ask, eyeing the cardiac monitor. His heart rate is 160, but his blood pressure is still 130/88 – not bad for someone who swallowed a handful of crack twenty minutes ago. Dontrelle mumbles something I can’t quite make out between the moans and pitiful whimpers. I lean close over his head and lift up the oxygen mask so that I can hear what he is saying…

…and the little bastard horks up a big loogie and spits it right on the side of my neck.

I recoil in disgust, and try to pull away, but he has managed to grab my right hand where it rests on the stretcher rail, and he clamps down, viciously digging his fingernails into the back of my hand.

Gritting my teeth, I calmly sit up, fish around with my left hand on the suction shelf and pull an antiseptic towelette from its canister, and wipe the loogie off my neck. Then, I reach over with my left hand and grab Dontrelle’s right hand, thumb planted firmly in the back of his hand, fingers buried in his palm.

I twist counter-clockwise, and keep twisting until his grip loosens and he starts squealing like a little bitch. I keep twisting, holding his hand there, taut against the handcuffs, and nod to the guard. “If you’re through sitting there with your thumb up your ass
,” I tell him solicitously, “perhaps you’d like to take the slack out of the cuff on this arm, too. We’ve got another five minutes before we’re at the hospital, and I’m thinking little Dontrelle could use some medicine.”

Flashing me a dubious look, the guard grabs Dontrelle’s wrist and moves the other end of the cuffs down the stretcher frame to a position matching that of his left arm. I dig through my ALS bag and pull out the EZ IO – a little drill that we use to insert a large needle into a patient’s tibia, in the event that all of their veins have collapsed. Putting the needle in isn’t all that painful – I’ve volunteered for it myself – but flushing the fluids through it will make you suck the stretcher sheets right up your ass. We normally deaden it with lidocaine to blunt that pain, but I’m thinking I’d rather not risk it.

Dontrelle’s not the most reliable historian, after all, and he might be allergic to lidocaine.

“Hey Dontrelle,” I call cheerfully, “help is on the way, man.” I lean over him and rev the drill several times, giving him my best sadistic dentist leer. “I’m gonna give you some medication that will make it all better – for me, anyway.”

“Hey man, I’m sorry,” he whimpers. “I di’int mean nuthin’ by it, man. I can’t do needles.”

“That’s okay,” I assure him, “because I do needles very well. Just lie back and try not to scream too loud.”

“Hey man, please don’t…aaaaaaauuuggghhh!” he screams as I bury the spinning intraosseous trocar into the bone just below his knee.

“Did that hurt?” I ask. “Scale of one to ten, how bad?”

“TEN!”

“My friend,” I assure him, “you’re about to experience a new frame of reference for what a ten is.” I attach a saline lock and flush the intraosseous line with twenty milliliters of saline.

“Aaaaaaaaaaauuuugggghhhhhh, Gawdamighty please stop!”

“I’m guessing we have a new record on Dontrelle’s personal Worst Pain Ever scale,” I observe mildly. “If you want sympathy, Dontrelle, you can find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”

“Please man, don’t do this to me!” he begs. I’m an evacuee, man! You can’t be treatin’ no evacuee like this!”

“Waaaaaaahhhh,” I sneer. “Mean old Gustav and Ike turned me into a dumbass crack dealer. The hurricanes made me do it! I can’t collect my FEMA check in jail! Waaaaahhhhh….”

“Man, make him stop,” Dontrelle begs the guard, who is suddenly engrossed in studying his fingernails. “You can’t let him do this to me, man! He violatin’ my civil rights!”

“By rendering medical care?” the guard yawns disinterestedly. “I ain’t seen nothin’.”

“You got any next of kin, Dontrelle?” I ask idly, drawing up 100 milligrams of succinylcholine into a syringe. “A mother who’d miss you?”

“Yeah, I got family, man! I got a girlfriend and a baby on the way!,” he blurts, eyes widening in terror. His voice rises into a high-pitched, desperate scream, “I got a baby on the way, man!”

“Then that makes this much easier,” I tell him as I inject the succinylcholine. “Better to have no babydaddy than to have one at home slinging rock.” I reach for a vial of Versed, but think better of it. I want him to be wide awake for this.

Dontrelle’s scream dies in his throat, and the muscle fasciculations start a few seconds later. His arms and hands twitch and the muscles of his thighs writhe like snakes, then go altogether limp. His chest stops its desperate heaving, and he exhales his last breath in a long, gentle sigh.

I lean over his face and stare at the peaceful expression. Only his eyes have life now. The paralytic has denied him the use of his extraocular muscles, as well as all of his skeletal muscles and his diaphragm. He lies there, eyes staring straight ahead, limp as a dead man.

But he’s not dead. He’s still wide awake.

I watch the heart rate rise inexorably on the cardiac monitor, no doubt due to fear and hypoxia. Perhaps pain, too. If he really was having chest pain, it has to be excruciating now, what with no breathing to suffuse his blood with life-sustaining oxygen.

“Dontrelle Mayeux,” I intone softly, mockingly. “Twenty-three years old, died of sudden cardiac arrest secondary to cocaine-induced excited delirium. Paramedics tried heroically to revive him, but to no avail. Toxicology results showed high levels of cocaine metabolites, along with a slightly elevated serum potassium and elevated myoglobin levels indicative of skeletal muscle damage – all due no doubt to Dontrelle’s physically combative state immediately prior to his arrest. Dontrelle is survived by a mother, girlfriend and an unborn child, and will be missed by…absolutely fucking no one.”

I lean over him and stare into his eyes, dangling a bag-mask resuscitator just over his face. “You’re probably really wishing you could breathe now,” I muse. “You’re probably wondering how, if you had a second chance, you could avoid being such a worthless asshole. Well, I got your second chance right here, Dontrelle. One second chance to…”

“…worthless little bastard would have never gotten a second chance with me,” Bitchy Partner is saying. “I don’t see how you keep your temper, AD.”

“Huh?” I blink. “Sorry, I didn’t hear what you were saying.”

“I was saying how I don’t know how you keep your cool when those little thugs are screaming and acting out like that,” she repeats, rolling her eyes. “They get only one chance to behave themselves with me. I don’t give second chances. But you roll them into the ER like that punk, cursing you like a dog, and you don’t even act like it bothers you.”

“Uh huh.”

“You weren’t even paying attention, were you?” she accuses. “You’ve been sitting there this whole time, staring off into space with that goofy grin on your face, and you haven’t heard a word I said!”

“Sorry, BP,” I smile apologetically, absently massaging the claw marks in my right hand. “I was just doing a little daydreaming. You were saying how much you admired how I can keep my cool?”

…tired, but none the worse for wear. I’ve got a few Hurricane Ike vignettes I’ll share later, but right now I’m beat. Got home yesterday afternoon and slept for ten hours straight, which still leaves me with a sleep deficit measured in days, not hours.

For all who asked, the house made it through just fine – no damage, and only a four-hour power outage. Unfortunately, that outage occurred shortly after I went home for a few hours after the winds had died down Saturday morning. I woke to the sound of my cell phone ringing, my supervisor calling me back to work.

Southwest Louisiana got lots of rain and a major storm surge, worse than that recorded during Hurricane Rita. Winds weren’t so terrible, although they were clocked at hurricane force near my station during a couple of the rain bands. Fortunately, I didn’t have to venture out into those winds in my ‘bolance more than a handful of times. During Ike’s fiercest, I holed up at the station and listened to the wind howl and watched the trees sway, and marveled at how, during a hurricane, such a maelstrom of wind and water can be possible without even a lick of thunder or lightning. It was a bit eerie, actually.

The city in which I work got some major flooding, but nothing compared to southeast Texas. Those folks need some prayers and support. Spent most of my time Saturday and Sunday morning evacuating very sick people from small hospital ICUs that had flooded or lost power, transporting a diehard or two that had to be plucked from the waters by boat or helicopter, and saying, “there but for the grace of God, go I.”

Anyhoo, the ambulance station and its occupants survived relatively unscathed, save for the tree that fell on my partner’s truck. When I parked my truck, I took care to position it as far out in the open parking lot as possible, well away from the trees and utility poles. Partner was not so cautious, however.

That truck is my own beloved Dodge Dakota, Frankenhoopty. Partner, being the kind and generous soul that he is, chose to park between Frankenhoopty and the trees, and thus it was his Chevy Silverado that got crunched, and my own horseless carriage only got brushed by the uppermost branches you see here. There was one big limb that would have stove in my hood, but the aforementioned Silverado took one for the AD team instead.

One side-effect from the storm surge is that, with the Gulf and major estuaries swollen with big storm surges, the smaller rivers well inland have nowhere to drain. They just back up and spill over their banks, and wind up flooding homes well away from Ike’s path.

Heck, the closest I came to personal disaster was Sunday night, driving north to pick up KatyBeth. Two of the three main roads that lead to her Grandma’s house were impassable due to high water – a fact I did not grasp until I found myself plowing into a foot of standing water near one particular creek bottom.

They replaced the old, decrepit bridge over that particular creek bottom with a nice, sturdy concrete one just a few months back, and resurfaced a mile or so of the road along with it, so I waded tentatively down the road until I reached dry ground again. The water never got over my knees, with very little current, so I waded back to my truck, locked Frankenhoopty into 4-Low and crept on through.

It was either that, or add another 90 miles to my round trip.

Anyhoo, I just got back from taking KatyBeth to school, and still can’t keep my eyes open, so I’m going back to bed. I’ll try to post something coherent in a few hours.

…isn’t good enough, it takes quite a toll on you.

And you come home and cry, or drink, or stare blankly at a flickering television screen, or hug your wife and kids, and you contemplate why it is that you ever took a job that requires you to see such things.

Or you realize it doesn’t bother you, and that fills you with even more dread. What are you becoming? Can you feel anything any more? You wonder if the job is worth it.

And then you contemplate doing anything else with your life, and you have your answer.

Just talked to AD on the phone.

He worked last night, doing a few runs. They had some pretty intense winds (managed to uproot a tree outside) but managed to maintain power to the station until 4 or 5am.

On the drive home he found out that his house did have power, unfortunately by the time he got there it was out. It’s back on now, however.

He was signed up to work on a standby truck, and has since been called in. He’s been told they may possibly be heading to Orange, Texas later on for some sort of rescue operation (the specifics are unknown so far).

So in short, he’s safe.

If I hear anything else I’ll let you know.

–Epijunky

At least, that’s what the weather shamans are saying.

I’m headed to work. Don’t know when I’ll be back. It’s getting nasty out there. A few minutes ago, I saw an old lady fly by on a bicycle with a little dog in a picnic basket strapped on the back.

Our area (northeast quadrant of the predicted landfall) is predicted to get a much higher storm surge than we saw during Hurricane Rita. They’re talking 20-24 feet, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

We’re gonna hunker down until the winds die down, and then hit the ground running, trees and floodwaters permitting.

Don’t worry about me, folks. I lettered in Hunker back in high school.

If we get the devastation some of the more panicky talking heads are predicting, I’ll expect to see an army of volunteers descend upon southwest Louisiana to help clean up the mess – all of you attired in spiffy new Ambulance Driver tee shirts, dammit!

Y’all watch the place while I’m gone. I’ll try to phone updates to friends if I can.

I delivered.

Enjoy, and tell your friends!

Now, all I have to do is sit back and collect my piddly-assed ten percent filthy lucre.

I just spent upwards of six hundred miles driving your roads with my emergency lights on, siren turned off for the most part, evacuating nursing home patients from Ike’s path. In all that time, not a single driver failed to yield and pull to the right.

Not a single one.

I am suitably impressed, people. Any chance y’all can bottle up some of that courtesy and ship it east?

On another note, I’m about to be on hurricane ops for the next three or four days, so don’t expect any posting. I’ll try to hit a connection if or when I can, but I’ll likely be busy and the screen on the old laptop is still busted anyway.

Behave yourselves while I’m gone, and I’ll post something worthwhile when I get back. Browse the archives or something. Beer’s in the fridge, and the tip jar’s on the sidebar.

See y’all soon.

…but do you have the tee shirt?

Apropos of nothing whatever, but if a certain smart-assed blogger were contemplating caving in to the lure of crass commercialism coming up with a line of tee shirts and similar merchandise, what Ambulance Driver-isms or stories would you like to see emblazoned on a tee shirt, bumper sticker or mug?

More importantly, would you buy one?

I’m not as popular as some, so any witty Ambulance Driver aphorisms you’d have draped across your body would have the added cachet of being the ultimate in-joke.

Think of it; people would stop you in passing and ask, “Love your shirt…but who is Sumdood?”

You’d be the envy of the psych ward. Really.

…who opined in the comments,

“People with our body habitus should not wear spandex. I’m just sayin’.”

Speak for yourself, dude. I’m infinitely sexier than this guy.

If you were driving through a certain southwest Louisiana city yesterday morning at 0650 and saw a Borg ambulance parked next to a wrecked Chevy Lumina in the middle of an elementary school playground, and there was a heroically dashing paramedic-type guy pulling an old lady from her car…

…after noticing that she had no pulse and had undoubtedly wrecked her car after she suffered a sudden cardiac arrest, and the heroic paramedic type, while working with three stupid and utterly useless eager but inept firefighters and a partner he had never worked a code with before…

…still managed to defibrillate the lady three times, get her intubated, an intraosseous line in place, give a round of Epi and Atropine, and wind up with a very-much-alive little old lady, complete to spontaneous movement and adequate breathing, all in a scene time of less than ten minutes…

…yeah, that was me.

I’m getting fitting for a cape and a new spandex uniform tomorrow.

…here we go again.

Come on now, Mother Nature. What did I ever do to you? I mean, every time I saw one of those old Chiffon margarine commercials, I was the kid with his nose pressed to the television screen, squealing, “They’re lying! It’s partially hydrogenated soybean oil and artificial coloring! Don’t believe them!”

If that storm track holds true, I’ll be working in the direct path or in the northeast quadrant when Ike rolls ashore, treating southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas like a surrogate Tina.

He’s gonna hit us again, and this time he’ll put some stank on it.

I am not looking forward to this weekend. At the very least, I’ll be on duty for an extended period of time on what would have been my weekend off, with the prospect of getting off duty after 3-4 days of continuous operations to go home and see what damage to home and hearth Ike managed to do that Gustav could not.

This is getting to be red-assing, tedious and expensive.

Crap. Crappity crap crapola.

Check it out.

1900 hours, 8-31-08: Casa de Ambulance Driver

Ambulance Driver: Okay, that’s the last of it. Take care of my stuff. And make sure Katy is out of harm’s way.

The Ex: Two ice chests worth of tilapia filets and boneless chicken breasts, a jar of spicy mustard, a bag of frozen chicken nuggets, six bunches of celery, and a tub of low-fat ranch vegetable dip? That’s all the food you have?

AD: Don’t knock it. I lost 84 pounds eating that stuff.

The Ex: And a truckload of guns. Did you have this many guns when we were together?

AD (smirking): One fringe benefit of having your wife leave you for another man is that he has to justify his gun purchases to someone now. I don’t.

The Ex (extending middle finger): You sure you don’t want to send anything else? We’ve got a little more room in the back. Surely you have something else of value…

AD: Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I have a couple of pistols to send, and my muzzleloaders. Be right back.

2000 hours, 8-31-08: Casa de Ambulance Driver

AD: Hey Stupe, so do I still need to be there at 0600 tomorrow, since landfall has been bumped up 18 hours?

Stuporvisor: Oh hey, AD. There’s been a change in plans. No one called you?

AD (rolling eyes): Nobody called me, Stupe. What’s up?

Stuporvisor: We just need you to work your regular shifts Monday and Tuesday night. We’ve got the rest covered.

AD: Uh, Stupe? Coming in to work Monday evening will mean I’m driving to work through hurricane-force winds and rain. Not happenin’, brother. And you mean to tell me we have every shift covered?

Stuporvisor: Well, we’re all gonna caravan to the racetrack at 1200 hours and hunker down until the winds die down. You could come in early and drive over there with us, but yeah, all the shifts are covered. Everybody has said they’ll be to work on time.

AD: Through downed trees and power lines, flooding and high winds? I’ll believe that when I see it, Stupe. See you in the morning.

1330 hours, 9-1-08: Borg Sub-Hive

AD: So what’s the story, guys? I thought we were heading to the shelter an hour ago.

Borg Drone #1 (yawning): Still waiting on word to head out. Right now, we’re suffering through this tropical storm-force mist. At this rate, it’ll be tomorrow before any real weather gets here.

Borg Drone #2: Shhhh, listen up! There’s another update on.

Nearby Parish OEP Director (on television): Aaaauuugggghhhh! Run for your lives! We’re all gonna die!

Weatherman: Look like Hurricane Gustav has fully come ashore now, folks, and we should start seeing the outer rain bands in the southwest Louisiana parishes within the hour. Houma is being lashed with 115 mph sustained winds and…

AD (looking out the window): Sunny as hell out there. Sheeeeit, I coulda rode my bike to work!

Drone #2: Shhhhhhh!

Nearby Parish Sheriff: As you know, Nearby Parish, as well as all surrounding parishes, have been advising evacuation since 0600 yesterday. Mandatory evacuation of Nearby Parish began at 1200 hours. I urge all residents to gas up their cars if they haven’t already done so, pack enough food, water and clothing for three days, and get out on one of the designated evacuation routes. Now.

AD: Oughta be pretty slow around here for the next 24 hours, with a mandatory evacuation order in place. No transfers, at least.

Bitchy Partner (darkly): Yeah, but wait until we start getting everyone back. They’ll have forgotten their medicine or water, and they’ll be dropping like flies. And the malingerers will want to go to the hospital for the air conditioning. And returning all the bedbound evacuees…

Borg Drone #1: AD, your partner is just full of sunshine and happiness. She must be a joy to work with.

Borg Drone #2: Shhhhh!

Nearby Parish Sheriff: …we also have transportation available for any residents who have no means of evacuating. If you are foolish enough to stay, despite all the warnings, I’ll remind you that I have suspended all emergency services until the mandatory evacuation order has been lifted. That means no fire department, no police, and no ambulance. We will not send out our emergency services personnel until we are sure that it is safe for them to be on the roads. If you need help before then, you are own your own.

Bitchy Partner (swooning): I love that man. I’d have his babies.

AD: That’s because he’s a cop, and a hardass. Just your type.

Borg Drone #1: If he keeps me outta this shit until the danger has gone, I’ll have his babies. And I’m a guy.

Borg Drone #2: Shhhhh! I can’t hear the television!

Everyone Else: Dude, if you don’t chill out soon, Hurricane Gustav is gonna see its first fatality before the winds ever get here.

1630 hours, 9-1-08: On the road`

AD (on the phone): Hey, Epijunky. How goes it?

Epijunky: OhmyGod, ohmyGod, OhmyGod…are you okay?

AD (making howling wind noises and rubbing the phone against the collar of my shirt): ... ignal… breaking up… winds… errible… uctural collapse… odies everywhere… trying best to… alive… working… overturned schoolbus… hemophiliac kids… doing my best… pray for me to…

Epijunky (frantically): OhmyGod, ohmyGod, OhmyGod… AD???? Are you there??? Ayyyyy Deeeeeeeeee…

AD (chuckling): Gotcha.

Epijunky: You bastard! I’v
e been glued to CNN, worried sick!

AD: Oh really? We all got tired of watching it and turned the channel to Skinemax. No nekkid Shannon tweed movies on yet, though.

Epijunky: Really, are you okay?

AD: I’m fine, Epi. They’re not gonna put us in any danger, and it looks like the path is north of us. At most, we’ll get some rain bands. My house, on the other hand, may not be there when I get home. The storm track runs pretty much right over my town. I only hope it’ll be a lot weaker by the time it gets there.

Epijunky: Is there anything I can do?

AD: From Ohio? Uh, no. If I gave you my blogger password, can you post an update for me, though? It may be a week before I get online again.

Epijunky: Sure thing, AD. Anything you want me to say?

AD: Just tell everyone to throw money, and all romantic proposals will be seriously considered.

1645 hours, 9-1-08: Pulling into the racetrack parking lot

AD (on the phone again): Hey Phlegmmy! How goes it?

Phlegm Fatale: Hi, how are you?

AD: About to get soaking wet. We’re getting winds and rain bands now. We have fifteen rooms at the racetrack, and we’re hunkering down until the winds are gone.

PF: Well, keep your head down and stay safe! And keep me updated!

AD: That’s why I’m calling. The cell towers may be down, or tied up with increased call volume. I’ll text you when I can, and can you keep me updated on how Peter is doing?

PF: He’s getting wind and rain now, but the worst is yet to come, he says.

AD: Well, tell him to keep his head down, and if/when he needs help digging out, tell him to give me a holler. I lost his number when I smashed my cell phone.

PF: I’ll tell him, AD. You want me to update folks on how you’re doing?

AD: Just tell ‘em all to throw money, and all romantic -

PF (no doubt rolling her eyes): Yeah yeah yeah, AD. I got it.

1730 hours, 9-1-08: Racetrack lobby

Borg Southwest Hive Supervisor: Okay everybody, listen up! We have a few housekeeping issues to tend to, and then everyone can go to their rooms. I’ve been told by the hotel staff that all of the gaming areas are off limits, but other than that, you have free run of the place. They’re operating with a skeleton crew, so please clean up after yourself.

AD (raising hand): Uh, what about food?

BSHS: There will be burgers and crawfish etoufee available in the food court starting at 1900 hours. Now, back to the issue of the hurricane…

Drone #2: How long will we have to be here? And is the hotel rated to withstand hurricane-force winds?

AD (coughing into his hand): Pussy.

BSHS: The hotel is perfectly safe, as long as you don’t venture outside. As you know, the winds are topping 40 mph out there, and we’ll be off the road until they die down. How long that will be, I have no idea. Several hours, at least.

Drone #2 (nervously): Yeah, but what about tornados?

AD (raising hand): Can we lash Drone #2 outside somewhere? Like maybe a human weathervane of some sort? If he’s vertical, we can all get back on the streets, and if he’s horizontal, we stay inside…

Drone #1: …and if he’s gone, we’ll all be better off.

BSHS: Knock it off back there! Okay, about the tornados. In the event of a tornado, we’ll all shelter in the food service hallway on the first floor.

AD (raising hand): What if the power goes out? Will the elevators work? How will we even know a tornado is coming? And how will we all get downstairs safely?

BSHS: That’s a good question. Let me get back to you on that.

AD (whispering maliciously to Drone #2): We’re all gonna die here, dude. Hope you updated your will.

2000 hours, 9-1-08: The food court

BSHS: Okay, a number of people have asked me if we’re resuming operations soon. I want to remind you all that our computer models indicate the wind still hasn’t peaked, and that it isn’t safe to drive ambulances out there. When that time comes, we’ll resume operations immediately. All on-duty crews need to be ready to deploy within ten minutes of getting the word. I want to assure you that your management staff is on top of things. i know we have quite a few 911 calls holding, but we will not do anything to risk damage to our trucks – er, I mean crews.

Drone #1: Uh, can you tell us why security broke up our game of Texas Hold ‘Em?

Racetrack Rent-a-Cop: Gambling is strictly forbidden on racetrack grounds.

AD (waving his arm at the slot machines): Uh, and what are those?

Drone #2 (sotto voce): It means that the only gambling allowed in this gambling den is the kind where the racetrack makes money from it. And Barney Fife over there is too stupid to realize all those slot machines are turned off, and all the racehorses have been evacuated, too.

AD (raising hand): If we can’t play poker, can we at least watch the Spanktravision in-room movies? The Borg will pick up the tab, right?

BSHS (humorlessly): That is humor, AD. Humor is a foreign concept to the hive mind. There is no place in the collective for a jokester.

AD: Seriously, dude. It says right there on the screen that the titles won’t appear on the bill. No one will know we’ve been watching hotel porn but us. I hear the Headquarters Hive is even having a hurricane party.

BSHS (nodding to one of his minions): Someone take AD out back and see to it that he is reprogrammed.

2130 hours, 9-1-08: Hotel lobby

BSHS: Okay, sustained wind speeds are now at only 30 mph, so we’re resuming operations. All on-duty crews, get in your rigs, log in on the computer system and report to your stations.

Drone #2 (nervously looking out the window and the palm trees swaying): Are you sure it’s safe?

style="color:rgb(0,0,153);">AD: Of course it’s not safe yet. Anyone with a perm should stay inside until the dew point drops to at least ten degrees below ambient temperature. You go out there right now, dude, and you’ll get the frizzies.

BSHS: There are still plenty of hazards out there, people. Be alert for fallen trees and power lines. Don’t try to drive through any standing water. Since the hospitals are still operating to limited capacity, only transport the life-threatening emergencies. Everyone else can wait.

Drone #1 (raising hand): Define ‘life-threatening emergency’.

BSHS: If you think it’s something that’s gonna get treated and streeted, and it can wait until tomorrow to be seen by a doctor, tell ‘em to call back later. Only transport people who need to see a doctor now.

Bitchy Partner (cackling evilly and rubbing her hands together): Woo hoo! Paramedic-initiated refusals!

AD (dryly): Don’t get too worked up, BP. They’ll still probably count ‘em against our stats.

2330 hours, 9-1-08: On the road to central Louisiana

AD: Uh, remind me how we got stuck with this transfer again? How do we get called to pick up a cardiac patient seventy miles north of our district, who is being transferred to another hospital directly in the hurricane’s path?

BP (innocently): Because you’re the bomb-diggedy shiznit, and you’re the only one they trust with a critical cardiac transfer?

AD: I’m gonna go with ‘because my partner is rude to the dispatchers, and they’re taking the opportunity to exact their revenge’.

BP: Well, the bitch was being stupid!

AD: BP, we never imply that the dispatcher is a fucking idiot. Especially when the dispatcher happens to be a fucking idiot.

BP: Speaking of idiots, lemme tell you about the evacuations yesterday. You know I had like thirty trucks from out of state yesterday, right?

AD: And they put you in charge? The mind boggles.

BP (extending middle finger): So anyway, we’re at Decubitus Mansion (so named because it is a state-of-the-art facility, staffed by the same idiots from the old, run-down former location), and they’re evacuating the whole place.

AD: Yeah? How many patients?

BP: Sixty, in the convoy I had. So anyway, they’re real proud of themselves, because they have an evacuation plan all set up, and they’re putting it into play. They have an agreement with their sister facility to accept all their evacuees. They’ve got it all under control, right?

AD: Sounds like it.

BP: So guess where this sister facility is? In Catfish City. They evacuated sixty old, frail patients, from an area the storm was probably gonna miss, right into the path of where they knew it was gonna hit. How much sense does that make?

AD: About as much sense as shipping a critical cardiac patient from a hospital that has power to one that doesn’t, simply because it’s a bigger hospital.

0130 hours, 9-2-08: On the road in central Louisiana

BP: [Bleep bleep bleepity bleep] wind and [bleeping] dispatch and this wind is [bleeping] crazy, and we’re [bleeping] gonna get creamed by a [bleeping] tree in this shit and this isn’t safe and [bleep bleep bleepity bleep] I can barely hold the truck on the road, and why are all these other [bleeping] idiots running calls in this [bleeping] shit?I can’t even see the [bleeping] road for all the [bleepity] leaves on the ground…

(profanity deleted because even I quail at typing ‘fuck’ that many times - Ed.)

AD: It is a little nasty out here.

BP: Nasty? NASTY??? Those winds are still at least 60 mph! And they have their fucking crews out in it! Hell, they have us out in it!

AD: Maybe this particular hive is ate up with the dumbass.

BP (obviously frightened): I’m serious, AD. We need to get out of this. If these other fools want to risk their lives picking up bullshit – and that’s all they were bringing to the ER, bullshit – they can have at it. They can’t make us run calls in this. It’s in direct violation of company policy.

AD (sighing): Okay, so where do we go from here, BP? At this point, we’re only a couple of blocks from the call. Let’s pick this lady up and skedaddle back to the hospital parking garage until things blow over.

BP: How can you stay so calm? It’s all I can do to keep the truck on the road, and a couple of times it felt like we were gonna get blown over!

AD (shrugging): No sense getting worked up over things you can’t control, BP. I do have a favor to ask when we get to the scene, though.

BP: Name it.

AD: Grab me by the shoulder and rock me a little bit to break the suction. I think I’ve sucked about a yard of naugahyde up my ass in the past hour.

0300 hours, 9-2-08: Somewhere in south-central Louisiana

AD: CCT 12 to headquarters, be advised that we have multiple trees in the road and downed power lines everywhere. The road is impassible here.

Dispatch Monkey: Duhr, 10-4 CCT 12. Just take the Interstate south.

BP (fuming): That stupid little bitch! Didn’t she just tell us -

AD (keying the mike with my left hand while holding my right over BP’s mouth): Uh, headquarters? Would that be the same Interstate you told us not to take five minutes ago? You know, because you said it was closed?

DM: Uh, stand by, CCT 12.

AD: I wonder if they even understand the concept of maps. And will they send the next crew right back down this road, even though we’ve told them it’s impassible?

DM: ="font-style:italic;">Duhr, headquarters to CCT 12. Be advised that the Interstate is now open. We got some bad information before. The Interstate is open.

AD: So I suppose now we crawl back through four miles of downed trees and power lines until we see that Interstate sign we passed a while back.

BP: We’re gonna die, AD. I just know it.

AD: We couldn’t be that lucky, BP. At most we’ll get mildly injured. Enough to be uncomfortable, but not enough to keep us from running calls.

0330 hours, 9-2-08: Somewhere in south-central Louisiana

AD: CCT 12 to headquarters. What exit number was that again?

DM: Uh, that’s Exit 183, CCT 12.

AD (confused): Is that the exit number, or the highway number?

DM (firmly): That is the exit number, CCT 12.

AD: Uh, then you’d better turn your map right side-up, headquarters. These exit numbers are counting downward from fifty. I’ll have to circumnavigate the globe before I come back to Exit 183.

DM (not so firmly this time): Uh, stand by, CCT 12.

BP (darkly): She’s gotten us lost. In the middle of nowhere, lost in a hurricane.

AD: Lost in the remnants of a hurricane. The winds are almost gone. Nothing but rain now.

BP (gloomily): And downed power lines. And flooding. And downed trees. All of which will be present in spades where she’s sending us.

AD (cheerily): Buck up, little life saver! This is the life we lead.

DM (apologetically): Uh, CCT 12? The highway number is 184, but the exit number is 20.

AD (sighing in exasperation): Ten. Four. Headquarters. Turning around at this time and heading thirty miles in the other direction.

DM(cheerily clueless): 10-4, CCT 12!

BP (yawning): It must hurt to be that stupid.

0400 hours, 9-2-08: Back where we started

BP: Uh, this looks eerily familiar.

AD (fuming): It should. It’s the place we got on the Interstate.

BP: Gimme the fucking mike.

AD (pushing her away): Uh, headquarters? Do you recall me advising that a certain road was blocked by fallen trees and power lines?

DM (cheerily): 10-4, CCT 12!

AD: Well headquarters, you’re sending us back. Down. That. Same. Road.

DM: Uh, stand by, CCT 12.

AD (all patience gone): Don’t tax your remaining brain cell, headquarters. Just send a tow truck to this location at your earliest convenience. CCT 12 is 10-7.

DM: Repeat your traffic, CCT 12?

AD: You’ve run us out of fuel, DM. You can go back to your coloring book now.

Hurricane Gustav: Ooooh baby, I’m gonna give it to you so good...

Louisiana Gulf Coast: Oh, Gustav! You’re such a bad boy!

HG: You don’t know how bad, baby. I’m gonna pound you silly. I’m gonna screw you like you haven’t been screwed since those twin dominatrixes, Katrina and Rita!

LGC (breathily): Oooooh, Gustav! You’re so….forceful! Please be gentle with us! We’re not sure our levees can take it!

HG: Say my name, bitch! Who’s your daddy?

LGC: Gustav… always you, Gustav…

HG: That’s right, you little minx. Gustav’s your daddy, and I’m gonna punish you like the bad little Gulf Coast you’ve been. Just look at these rain bands! You want this storm surge, baby? You know you do! Just look at my big, throbbing…eye wall.

LGC (whimpering): Do it to us, Gustav. We’ve been prepared for so long… come ashore, baby…

HG: Oh yeah baby, here I come…I’m gonna…uh oh.

LGC: What’s wrong?

HG: Wrong??? Nothing’s wrong! I’m just…tired, that’s all. It was a long trip across the Gulf.

LGC (sympathetically): And you really pounded Cuba just a couple of days ago. You poor thing.

HG: I don’t want your pity! I’m a hurricane, dammit! I’m powerful! I’ll…I can… tornados! Yeah, I can spin off tornados! And rain bands! Don’t forget the rain!

LGC (insincerely): It’s okay, baby. Rain and tornados are bad enough for now. You know, they say this eventually happens to most hurricanes. It’s not unexpected at your age.

HG (mournfully): Yeah, well it’s never happened to me!

LGC (sighing): Come ashore, Gustav baby. I’ll be satisfied if we can just cuddle. Really.

…just a little worn out. Thanks to all of you who expressed concern for my safety. Those of you who hit the tip jar, many thanks as well. I’ll be sending out personal thank you notes in the next few days.

As far as damage goes, it wasn’t too bad. My shack house stayed intact, although the power went out and spoiled my food. I had sent most of it north in ice chests with The Ex, and her house wound up getting lashed worse than mine.

That seemed to be the story of Hurricane Gustav. Aside from the coastal parishes directly in the path of Gustav’s landfall, the most damage was done north of us, in central Louisiana. Peter’s home took a beating, and what I saw of central Louisiana while running calls up there looked far worse than it did in my area of operations in the southwest part of the state.

Here at Casa de Ambulance Driver, we had sustained 60+ mph winds, with gusts well above 70, for several hours, as well as torrential rains. All it wound up doing was turning my yard into a swamp and ripping some tin off the roof of the carport. The motorcycle and my camping gear got rained on, but nothing that can’t be cured with a day or two of sunny weather.

Not that Hurricane Gustav came and went without exacting a toll in bodies, however. A tree fell on an elderly woman’s house, killing her, up in Peter’s neck of the woods. About seven miles from my house, a tornado wrecked a couple of homes and injured the occupants.

And hitting particularly close to home, a local deputy and his father died of carbon monoxide poisoning while taking shelter in their home. Apparently, exhaust fumes from the generator found their way into the room where they were staying.

When the deputy didn’t show up for work the next morning, the sheriff sent a co-worker to check on him. The co-worker found his friend and fellow deputy, and his father, dead in their beds.

I didn’t know Eric Bellard, other than to recognize his face at the occasional scene we worked together, but obviously his family and fellow deputies are devastated. Keep them all in your prayers, would you?

Hey everyone, I just got a call from AD asking me to update his legions of readers (My words, not his).

He wanted everyone to know that he’s fine, he and some coworkers are taking shelter in a casino/racetrack in Vinton, La until the winds die down.

Apparently ambulances don’t fare so well when the winds are raging. He said something about them turning into giant kites.

He also said that the center of the storm will be going right over his house with winds around 60 mph. He doesn’t know what kind of damage there will be.

What I took away from the conversation was that he is safe, and he’s doing relatively well so far.

–Epijunky

…rockin’ like a hurricane.*

In 1992, I drove to Hackberry and helped a dog training client board up his camp and move his yacht pleasure boat inland ahead of Hurricane Andrew. I remember the sense of fear and urgency as we tried as best we could to prep for something you can’t realistically prepare for. As it turned out, Andrew had pretty much petered out by the time it reached Hackberry. Both camp and boat survived relatively unscathed.

In 1998, I drove into Hurricane Georges. Helped run a shelter for patients with special health care needs at the Superdome. By the time I got the call, they had already shut down all Interstate 10 traffic east of Baton Rouge. Our state EMS director passed my truck tag number and description to the Louisiana State Police, and told ‘em to let me through any roadblocks I encountered. For the entire stretch of I-10 between Donaldsonville and Metairie, I was the only vehicle on the road. It was surreal.

I spent the weekend watching refugees bitch about being fed jambalaya and hot dogs while I ate cold MREs, and I ran the New Orleans Unprepared Diabetic and PID Sufferer Free Clinic. In the end, all we got was a little wind and rain.

And most of the wind emanated from New Orleans mayor Marc Morial.

In 1999, I drove into Orlando as Hurricane Floyd barreled northward just off the Florida Atlantic coastline. Thirty EMS instructors from Louisiana sat in two hotel rooms waiting for 24 hours to see if we’d have to evacuate. In the end, we stayed put, played Trivial Pursuit until everyone got tired of me spanking their Trivial asses, and we drank beer in mass quantities. As I recall, the weather wasn’t too bad. Universal Studios was open two days later.

In 2005, I bugged out of New Orleans 24 hours ahead of Hurricane Katrina. I was recently separated, and thinking of nothing but getting back to central Louisiana to pick up my daughter and head further north.

When I got KatyBeth squared away, I reported to work and signed up for the relief crews our company was sending to New Orleans. In the end, our senior supervisors went in the first group, and wound up playing disaster tourist in Gulfport and Biloxi. They might have run three or four calls each in 72 hours. They spent their days taking photos of the devastation, and their nights sleeping in a sweltering high school gymnasium and rehearsing their war stories: “So there I was during Hurricane Katrina, a mob of looters on one side and a overturned bus full of hemophiliac kids on the other, and me armed with nothing more than a box of 4x4s and a tube of Neosporin…”

Only by now, the size of the mob has grown in the re-telling, and the tube of Neosporin has been replaced by an M-16 plucked from the clutches of a dead National Guardsman.

And not only did they fight off the mob and rescue all the kids, but managed to resuscitate the Guardsman, too.

I stayed behind in north Louisiana, filling open shifts and waiting for that mythical C-130 full of critical ventilator patients. When it finally came, after a week and a hundred false alarms, there were only a dozen or so on ventilators. I transported two of them, and one old comatose man with a note pinned to his chest that read, “Please, someone dialyze this man if you can. Godspeed.”

It was written in red Sharpie on the back of a Wal Mart receipt for twelve cases of bottled water, signed by some doctor whose name was illegible. That one note told me all I needed to know about what it was like in New Orleans.

It was bad enough that our service area tripled in population and run volume for close to a month. I didn’t need to go to New Orleans to work my ass off. I was up to my neck in sick Katricians right there at home.

And in all those times, I’ve never actually experienced the hurricane.

All that changes Monday morning, which is why I’m publishing this post now instead of right before I leave tomorrow. I doubt I’ll have power by then. Originally, I was to report to work at 0600 Monday, prepared to stay for three days. I’d have assisted with what little evacuations are left, and had a front row seat to watch the hurricane roar through southwest Louisiana.

With Gustav’s increase in speed bumping up the landfall by 24 hours, that would have put me driving to work in hurricane-force wind and rain.

Ain’t gonna happen.

As it stands now, I’ve been told I’ll only need work my regular shifts tomorrow night and Tuesday night. The wind models The Borg is using predict 40 mph winds to begin around noon tomorrow in my service area, lasting for God only knows how long. Most of the day, at least. When that happens, all our crews will caravan to a local casino, garage the trucks, and hunker down until wind speeds drop below 40 mph.

We won’t be doing any ambulance calls in the bad weather, folks, so those of you who have called or e-mailed concerned about my safety, worry not. Ambulances become very big, ungainly kites when wind speeds get well over 40 mph, and The Borg is not going to risk damage to its trucks ambulance crews. We’re brave, not stupid.

My only dilemma is when to report for work. Will wind speeds have dropped to manageable levels by the time my shift starts? Will I be able to negotiate downed trees and power lines, and flooding I’m likely to encounter between here and my station?

God only knows.

I’ve taken the precaution of replacing a couple of worn tires on my truck and getting the 4WD fixed, spending money I really didn’t have in an effort to take Anarchangel’s advice. I’d rather my checking account take the hit than me.

I have my weapon, my bugout bag and plenty of water and snacks. I’m good to go. Right now, I think my best option is to snooze until the power goes out, then hop in my truck and head to work early – whenever that is. Hopefully I’ll be far enough ahead of the eye that the winds won’t be likely to deposit me in a rice field somewhere.

Hopefully.

When it’s all said and done, I’ll be back posting again. That is, if my house is still standing when I get back. It’s an old house, and I don’t have a lot of faith in its structural integrity. The latest storm track puts Gustav’s eye passing di-reck-ly over Casa de Ambulance Driver.

Y’all wish me luck. And for those that don’t believe in luck, I’ve added a tip jar on my sidebar. I’ll be posting again soon.

My apologies to the Scorpions for shamelessly lifting their lyrics.