… I’ll be on EMS EduCast with Greg Friese and friends tonight at 8:00 pm CST, where we’ll be talking about airway management, and how EMS education gets it right and gets it wrong.

Tune in, and call in!

Funniest damned EMS show since Mother, Juggs and Speed.

Wait, you mean it’s not a comedy?

Oh. My bad.

There is a certain very large after hours club, located in a certain south Louisiana city, frequented by a certain clientele, that if certain Ambulance Drivers and law enforcement officers were allowed to paint with laser designators…

… one well-timed air strike would knock this city’s crime rate in half.

Forget McGruff the crime dog. Give me a Predator drone and a couple of Hellfire missiles, and I can take a big bite outta crime.

It has come to my attention that my Cycles and More post has fallen to #2 on the Google page results, ranked just below their own website.

Well now, if you know me, you know that just chaps my ass like a pair of steel wool underwear.

So if you guys click on the link enough to push my post back up to its rightful place on the Google rankings, I promise I will put up a long, meaningful and entertaining post before the weekend is out.

So make with the clicky!

Courtesy of Bayou Renaissance Man comes the story of Julius Andreas Gimli Arn MacGyver Chewbacca Highlander Elessar Jankov, a Norwegian bus driver who, all by himself, could give Mostly Cajun enough fodder for an entire post of The Name Game.

From the story:

Mr Jankov, of Oslo, says his best loved movies are Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, and also the television series MacGyver.

Jankov said: “I wanted to make a name for myself – literally.

“So I sat down and drew up a list of all my favourite film and TV characters and decided I would name myself after them.

What a touching tribute! In fact, I think I’ll name myself after all of my favorite film and television characters!

So from now on, you may address me as Ambulance Inigo Montoya Spongebob Aragorn Little Oral Annie Driver.

Or AIMSALOAD, for short.

… like Grand Rounds and Change of Shift, Life Under The Lights hosts this month’s edition of The Handover. This month’s theme is Funniest. Call. Evar.

Plenty of funny stories there. Go give ‘em a read.

Four hours on duty so far.

Fourteen post changes, including three times at a posting location I can literally see from the front door of my station.

No more than twenty minutes spent at any one post.

This is not resource management. These are the pointless machinations of a booger-eating cretin with the memory span of a goldfish looking up every five minutes and going, “Look, a map!”


Update 0023 hours: Make that sixteen post changes. We just got moved twice more in the space of three minutes.

Image stolen from Rev Medic.

[teletype sounds]
Breaking news… apparently there is an ammo shortage in the US!

Also reported by AP today, Dewey defeats Truman!

… myself, yet again.

I’ll be on EMS EduCast on September 30 at 8:00 pm, CST.

I’ll be at the Sharon EMS Institute’s 2009 EMS Symposium in Sharon, CT from October 16-18. If you’re an EMT in that area, you can catch an entire day of CEUs for just $25 if you register before October 10. That’s a bargain, people!

Nothing definite yet, but I might be attending EMS Expo in Atlanta on October 28-29. I won’t be speaking, and if I’m there it’ll only be to hang out in the exhibit hall, sign a few books and catch a lecture or two. If I can do it on the cheap, I may hop on the bike and head over there.

After I take a few days at Farmgirl’s shooting doves, prairie dogs and my mouth off with a few of my favorite gun bloggers, I’ll spend November 12-14 in Anchorage, AK at the 34th Annual Alaska EMS Symposium.

And I’ll end the conference year at my favorite one of all, the Texas EMS Conference in Fort Worth from November 21-25. If you’re planning to attend, drop me a line and maybe we can swap a few lies and imbibe an adult beverage or three.

See y’all then…

I have been informed by a certain someone that I must have a Twitter feed, and that thousands dozens of fans, EMSers and laypeople alike, are dying to know what the hell I’m doing from minute to minute.

Problem is, I have barely enough time to read my own blogroll, much less a bunch of other Twitterers, and I’d feel bad about not reciprocating when someone follows me.

Problem two, I also despise cell phones, and would gladly chuck mine in the river and remain incommunicado forever if such a thing were possible. I answer my cell phone like Tamara K. answers her e-mails… which is to say, as a celebration of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.

If I don’t forget to turn the ringer back on after a class, then I’m forgetting to charge the thing until someone e-mails me with a pointed directive to, “Answer your voicemails, dumbass!”

It’s around then that it occurs to me that, come to think of it, I haven’t heard my phone ring in three days. So needless to say, getting a bunch of Twitter notifications on my phone is a non-starter, too.

So what say you? Shall I Tweet, even if I’m likely to be that annoying rooster who crows incessantly and ignores everyone else?

… there’s a column with a nifty clinical tip on EMS1.com.

Enjoy.

Seems that Kanye West interrupted Patrick Swayze’s funeral just so he could tell the assembled mourners that Michael Jackson’s funeral was sooo much better.

I tell ya, that guy is everywhere.

… the answer is yes.

[cue Barry White music]

A doctor of love, that is.

[/Barry White music]

1. Post assignments from Dispatch are 25% resource management and 75% mental masturbation.

2. Sumdood is now impersonating off-duty police officers. He stalks innocent youths who were talking smack just minding their own business and drinking way too much beer a wholesome glass of milk, whereupon he sets upon them with a Monadnock baton and beats them silly, shouting, “I’m da pol-leece, beeyotch!”

And the innocent youths meekly accept their beatings because they are spineless wimps would never dream of resisting the police, because they are law-abiding citizens, Officer! Honest!

3. Fake seizures would be so much more entertaining if we just stood back and waited for the faker to open their eyes, and then held up little scorecards:

Commentator: “Ooh, looks like the judges gave Shanequapothophelia high marks for creativity, folks, but she missed two compulsory elements! With the automatic penalties for the missed urinary incontinence and negligible postictal period, the best she can hope for now is a bronze…”

4. A partner that listens to obscure thrash metal bands to psych himself up for calls is more than a little wearying. I need a compilation CD of Slim Whitman, Boxcar Willie and hog-calling contestants to retaliate with. “Crank it up, RP. Yodeling helps me remember my ACLS algorithms.”

5. I wonder if I can slip “polybabydaddia” or “Googlechondria” into the Past Medical History section of my run reports. I’m betting it would pass unnoticed as long as the stretcher certification sections were filled out correctly.

Sorry about the lack of posting lately, folks.

I’m in a rut, plain and simple. Writing, work, personal commitments… they’ve all blended together into a mind-numbing routine of late. Even EMS runs bring no surprises. I figured out long ago that the better a medic I am, the less exciting calls I run…

… and from the ennui I’ve experienced of late, it looks like I’ve gotten damned good at my job.

Rookie Partner says it all the time, “Nothing rattles you. You’re so placid, no matter how chaotic the call.”

He says it with admiration, but I hate to tell the kid that he may one day reach the point that I have, where EMS does not challenge him any more. He doesn’t need to know that never getting rattled also means no more of that adrenaline rush he still craves.

I see no sense in bursting his bubble while he’s still green enough that every call is a new learning opportunity, and honestly, seeing his mental lightbulb switch on is the best part of every call for me.

This feeling isn’t new to me, of course. This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced burnout, nor will it be the last. I’ve come to recognize it simply as a signal that my emotional batteries need recharging.

I need to hit the woods with gun in hand. A four car pileup with six critical victims may not be enough to get my pulse pounding any longer, but the whistle of wind over cupped wings or the stealthy crunch of a hoof on dry leaves has never failed to do the trick. I’ve had far too little of that lately.

I need to watch a few sunrises.

I need to see a few sunsets over the handlebars of my bike.

I need smoke and noise, and the clang of rounds hitting a steel backplate.

I need beer and good food, cigars and outrageous lies shared with good friends.

I need to make some new EMS friends from new places to remind me what it was I loved about this job.

And all of that means, for the time being at least, my writing is going to take on a decidedly more nostalgic tone. You’re probably going to be reading a lot more about guns and hunting, and less about my latest ambulance runs. If that turns off some of my medical readers, I’m sorry.

But I’ve got to rediscover my muse, and what’s going on currently just isn’t doing it for me.

RIP, Patrick Swayze.

And since Jerry Orbach died several years before you, you can go to your rest with the certainty that no one can put Baby in a corner.

I’m sitting here at the local law enforcement training academy, monitoring vital signs and eating bar food [note to organizers: it ain't real bar food unless you have pickled quail eggs and pig feet], and watching as the LEOs perform field sobriety tests on drunk subjects.

Those subjects, by the way, are off-duty cops, firemen, and their spouses, and I get to watch as they all get totally hammered. They made me leave my camera in the truck, but I still have my camera phone.

This oughta be good…

1100: Candidate #1 starts off with Chivas Regal and grapefruit juice. I know Chivas isn’t what one would consider premium scotch, but they oughta just throw her ass in jail right now on general principles. I mean, seriously, scotch and grapefruit juice?!?

1115: Candidate #2 weighs 285 pounds. He’s been told he’d have to drink 13 shots in the next three hours to blow between a .08 – .12 BAC. Can you say “tore up from the floor up,” boys and girls?

1135: Candidate #5, a cop’s wife, is on her third Crown and Coke. She is not terribly attractive, but Candidate #2 is winking lewdly at her, asking if he can send someone home for his beer funnel.

1145: All candidates must be escorted to the bathroom or to go outside to smoke. Candidate #6, a very comely 22-year-old, just announced she had to pee. Five guys volunteered, including Candidate #4, whose wife is Candidate #1. Currently, he’s nursing an elbow-sized bruise on his left arm.

1210: They are screening the Will Farrell movie Semi Pro, and I am thinking this is the first time someone has laughed at that movie, ever.

1235: Okay, now everyone is speculating about blowjob technique whenever the next candidate steps up to the breathalyzer. Candidate #3 moaned sensuously and fondled a set of imaginary balls on the machine, much to everyone’s amusement. Did I mention that Candidate #3 is a guy?

1245: The deputy administering the breathalyzers just announced that Candidate #4 is officially drunk with a BAC of .085. Problem is, I also just heard that he just did better on his field sobriety test than he did on the baseline test… taken when he was sober.

1305: Everyone is officially drunk, all with BAC of greater than .08. And now, every conversation is now spoken at twice the volume when we started, and every conversation involves sex. I feel like an anthropologist observing sacred tribal mating rituals.

1315: Candidate #3 now has his nametag (actually just his number) stuck to his forehead, and is delivering a rousing rendition of “Ding, fries are done.”

1330: They’re through drinking, and more deputies are conducting field sobriety tests. Candidate #8 failed her field sobriety test with three out of four teams. Her BAC is zero. For the past three hours, she’s been swishing her mouth with Crown Royal and Smirnoff vodka, and spitting it into the sink.

1350: Okay, I’m done. I was checking Candidate #1’s blood pressure while she was having an animated conversation with the person directly to her right. Without looking, she obligingly stuck out her left arm, and groped me right in the balls.

And she didn’t even blush or look apologetic. She just winked and smiled.

I was going to write a post on this yesterday, but I deleted it when I read this.

When you put on the uniform of a cop, a firefighter or a paramedic, or to a far greater extent, a soldier, there comes with it the acknowledgment that you may die wearing that uniform. You come to grips with that, or you don’t put on the uniform.

Dying in the line of duty may be honorable, but it is not heroic. There is nothing heroic about dying. And honoring the sacrifice of cops and firefighters in New York certainly does not extend the same honors to cops or firefighters in Texas.

Or for that matter, paramedics in Louisiana.

You want to look for 9/11 heroes, look no further than the passengers of Flight 93. Those people came from all walks of life. They were not members of the public safety brotherhood, but members of the larger brotherhood of man. They swore no oaths to protect or defend anyone.

And yet, when the situation called for it, they rose up and fought back. When faced with the prospect of dying themselves to save thousands of others from a similar fate, they did not shrink from the task.

They were heroes.

When I listened to the politicians and pundits bloviate yesterday, I was struck by two realizations:

First, none of them – not a single, blow-dried, vacuous, morally compromised one of them – are worthy of the sacrifice of those men and women.

Second, if America is still capable of producing citizens like the passengers of Flight 93, we are still strong indeed. I suspect there are many thousands more just like them, found pretty much anywhere in America outside the DC Beltway.

… or does Liquid Plumr’s “Foaming Pipe Snake” make a dandy euphemism for a penis?

It’s crude and sophomoric, I know, but I possess a Y chromosome. Crude and sophomoric is encoded in my DNA.

You see, we EMS folks like to apply numerical grades in a vain attempt to quantify stuff, including that which cannot really be quantified. Like the 0-10 pain scale, for instance.

From burns to liver injuries, edema to diaphoresis, heart blocks to intracranial bleeds, we use numbers to classify the severity of a problem. Generally speaking, the higher the number, the more severe the condition.

So, based on that premise, “PMS x 4″ in this report would indicate a really, really bitchy female patient*. Modern medicine prefers the term premenstrual dysphoric disorder to describe this degree of PMS, but only because Mad Cow Disease was already taken.

Prehospital treatment in such cases is usually supportive, and is aimed toward counseling the involved spouse to administer liberal doses of chocolate and repeated screenings of Hope Floats until symptoms resolve. For cases refractory to conventional therapy, reverse isolation may be effective.

Limit contact with the PMDD sufferer in question. The presence of beer, NFL football, farting, toilet seats left up, and statements like “Whaddafuck is your problem???” have been shown to aggravate the symptoms of PMDD, often resulting in physical harm to the male spouse in question.

*Um, not really what it stands for.

… and then there’s kinky.

I may just have to shell out the ducats to purchase the full-text version of that article, boy.

High school football star faces down armed student, herds 22 kids to safety, and then disarms the assailant.

Well done, young man!

* Undoubtedly, that is the sound his big, brass balls make when he walks.

… who are contemplating taking a critical care course, or currently enrolled in one, I hear there’s an excellent test prep and certification review manual available now.

Let’s take a hypothetical patient we’ll call Bob.

Bob calls an ambulance because he isn’t feeling well. And when the very courteous, conscientious paramedic questions Bob in an effort to ascertain the nature of Bob’s current illness, he learns that Bob suffers from high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, diabetes, congestive heart failure, hypothyroidism, restless leg syndrome, arthritis, peripheral vascular disease, multiple neuropathies, demonic possession and cooties.*

Bob’s been feeling less than sporty for the past couple of days. He gets tired easily. He has a productive cough, but has no idea what the sputum looks like. He’s been having chills, but is unable to tell whether he’s had a fever, because he never bothered to use the thermometer in his bathroom. He has aches and pains, and says he took Tylenol for them, but he doesn’t remember how much, or when.

When it comes to that, he doesn’t remember what medications he takes, or how often, or even why. He does, however, remember that the tally is thirteen different medications. When the paramedic asks where they might be found, he can only shrug. When asked if he might have a list somewhere, he can only shrug again, saying, “The hospital has a list.”

This is the hospital he hasn’t been to in three months, during which time his medication regimen changed significantly. Several drugs were discontinued, and several new ones prescribed. When asked where he usually keeps his medications, he says, “I’ve got them scattered all around here,” forcing the paramedic to go on a scavenger hunt for medication bottles that was every bit as red-assing as obtaining what little history the patient could provide.

So riddle me this, Batman:

Does he find it difficult to keep track of his health problems and medications because he’s a medical train wreck with too many diseases to count… or is he a medical train wreck with too many diseases to count because he’s an apathetic, lazy bastard who can’t be bothered to take an active role in managing his own health?

* Okay, I added those last two. But I’m also reasonably sure he has a couple more diseases that didn’t make the list, so it’s a wash.