Posts tagged ems
I will destroy the mantle!
Jan 23rd
I tackled the mantle again today.
Got the cap on and purchased the crown molding. Man that stuff is expensive! It’s a rather intricate design of molding I’ve come up with since the top of the mantle is 6 inches from the top of the brick and 10.5 inches from the wall and the bottom of the mantle is 7 inches from the wall, I’ve designed a 4 layer angled molding pattern that looks good on paper, but will probably fail miserably in reality.
To get the angles right, I borrowed a miter saw from my brother and an air compressed nail gun for the molding work. Of course, I have no means of providing the compressed air for said gun, so I had to borrow his compressor too. 
Tomorrow should be a day of destruction!
I’m surprised I’m up now anyway. I got off a 24-hour shift at 7am today.
One of those shifts where you don’t do anything all day long, but you end up running calls all night long. Those are kind of annoying.
And because Mr. Earnest mentioned it, I did a bit of googling for the Parodi Anti-Embolic System. Interesting reading.
As I’m sure you well know, one of the major risks of any type of surgery is developing a pulmonary embolus, which is basically anything from a fatty clot in the pulmonary circulation to an air bubble. The embolus will get lodged in very inconvenient places such as a lung or ventricle of the heart or perhaps take I-95 up to the cerebrum and cause an occlusive stroke. Sure there are other risk factors for PEs (smoking, birth control, etc.) but surgery seems to be the big one. In my roughly 2 years in EMS, I’ve seen 3 diagnosed PE cases and they all had a recent history of surgery.
It turns out there are several systems currently in practice for reducing the chance of PEs after surgery. Sure you can anti-coagulate the hell out of someone before the surgery (which is usually done), but I’m talking super new systems! One of them is the Parodi system which involves creating a blood flow reversal in the internal carotid artery as a means of preventing PEs.
Anyway, I’m tired and off to bed. Going to try and stick a fork in the fireplace mantle tomorrow.
Termites
Jan 22nd
I finished paramedic school several weeks back and have been enjoying the relative calm afforded by no longer going to classes / clinicals / ride times 7 days a week.
I’ve almost finished filling out the 700 page 18 pound packet that the EMS authority of California has decided that is vitally important for every paramedic of the state to know how to fill out.
Gwyn is very pregnant and ready to pop. Any second now… wait… now! Seriously, I believe this is week 39. There is just not that much room left in there.
I also haven’t been updating a lot, because I’ve been catching up on other computer stuff that I’ve had to put off for the last few years because of school.
For one, this site design is worn. So it’s up for an overhaul, but I’m moving to ASP.NET with SQL Server 2005 as the back end.
One thing I’ve learned is that my first impression of the new Visual Studio 2005 is relatively positive. It’s overall IDE integration with remote SQL and IIS servers is snappy and it’s got some great built-in coding tools to make development easier.
One big con is that VS2k5 automatically installs a local copy of SQL 2005 Express Edition and VS is setup by default to use it. Which is great for new developers wanting to quickly develop database applications, but getting it to run off of a remote SQL server is like extracting a blood clot from the left anterior descending coronary artery with a wire from the femoral artery…
Well, bad analogy, it’s just a pain in the arse.
But it’s up and running now and I’m converting all of my ASP functions over to ASP.NET functions.
There is a lot of stuff that is broken on the current site too. Like the super duper file indexer that I use for photos, music and files. It’s mainly how I’ve had to reorganize my directory structure and it breaks the indexer. I think for the new site I’ll revisit how this is handled but for now, it’s mostly broken and outdated data.
I’ve also registered a web site for our soon to be child and I’ll try to have something up soon with all sorts of cute and cuddly and snugable pictures. I may throw in some charts and graphs and polynomial equations as well, just for the fun of it.
So while I’ve been filling out paperwork on my days off, I’ve also been building a new wooden fireplace mantle for my grandmother. Turns out her old one had been eaten hollow by termites awhile back. So she gets the termites terminated. One thing I’ve come to realize is that these “small” home projects never stay small.
When I pulled down the mantle (which was mostly hollowed out) the sheet rock behind it was damaged as well (probably due to earlier water damage as well as termites). The sheet rock was damaged almost up to the ceiling. Of course when you remove the sheet rock you see the damaged support studs behind it.
So after gutting out a roughly 8 foot by 4 foot section of wall, we replaced the 2×4 studs and re-drywalled and re-mudded. Yesterday I finally got started on the mantle and got the base of it done. Hopefully tomorrow I can do the cap and crown molding for it and stain the whole thing. I’ve never done this before so I’m pretty much making it up as I go along.
By the Numbers
Nov 20th
The good news is, school is almost over. The bad news is, things will probably be crazy after school for a good while, too.
Also, the baby is almost here. It’s a girl, if I haven’t mentioned that already. No name, yet. I’m shooting for Larry.
The pregnancy has been an emotional roller coaster. Laughing, crying, screaming, throwing things… and my wife is fine, too.
Anyway, I’ve got 2 more ride times and 1 more clinical left, but I’ve began to tally my folder totals, because that’s how anal I am.
397 patient contacts including:
Ages
- 230 Adult
- 87 Geriatric
- 19 Infant
- 17 Adolescent
- 16 School Age
- 12 Newborn
- 8 Toddler
- 8 Preschool
Types
- 64 Trauma
- 34 Psychiatric
- 34 GI/GU
- 34 Altered Mental Status
- 15 OB/Gyn
Signs/Symptoms
- 47 Chest Pains
- 33 Shortness of Breath Adult
- 28 Shortness of Breath Pediatric
- 20 Syncopal Episodes
- 1 Vaginal Birth
Skills
- 129 Bag Valve Mask Ventilations
- 105 EKGs
- 96 Med Admins
- 62 IVs
- 9 Endotracheal Intubations
- 5 Blood Draws
- 4 Foley Caths
- 3 Lifeport Accesses
- 2 Nasogastric Tube Insertions
- 1 LMA Insertion
That do be all for now!
It’s dusty around here.
Jul 3rd
Things have been incredibly busy around here since the last update, but here’s a brief update:
I’ve got a full time job as an EMT-IV, which takes up 48-72 hours per week. It’s fun. Especially all the blood. Not so much the vomit, but the blood is nice.
I’m in school still, which takes up about 20 hours per week for class time.
I’m doing ride times which take up 12 hours a pop. I need 17 more 12 hour ride times before December.
I’ve got clinicals twice a week starting July 11th for another 24 hours a week.
Plus all of the studying time in between all this crap to maintain a passing grade.
What’s that… about 187 hours per week now? Sounds about right.
I also try to squeeze in some World of Warcraft time as much as possible. I’m addicted to that awesome sweet sexy luscious game.
I’ve got a lot of my friends hooked on it and all of their wives now hate me. Mission accomplished!
<nerdtalk>I’ve got a level 60 paladin with an epic mount 5/8ths of his LightForge armor set and an awesome 2H sword named Destiny. I’ve also started a level 22 priest to play when I don’t have time for full instance run for the paladin or there isn’t a group forming I need.</nerdtalk>
And the most important news for last… my wife is pregnant. As soon as I find the guy who did it… he’s in for a stern lecture, too… or at least a strongly worded letter.
I’m excited about being a dad. I honestly thought you needed a license to breed, though, so I’m not sure how this happened.
Happy Chrismahanukwanzaka
Dec 28th
School is over for this semester and I don’t have to go back until Jan. 18. This makes me happy, but I’ve got a whole stack of drug cards I’m trying to memorize in preparation for the next couple of semesters. I ended up with 2 As and 2 Bs, which kind of makes me sad, cause I was hoping for at least 3 As. Oh well, I guess I’ll just be a very mediocre paramedic.
Rest assured with you call 911, you’ll get my very average skills to help you.
Actually, it was the 2nd highest grades in the class, but I’m pretty sure I could drink the other guy under the table, so that makes me feel better.
Christmas was good. The folks came down and I chauffeured my father around since he has had some knee trauma and surgery and is on crutches. Which was also very entertaining because of the 3 inches of snow/ice/wintry mush that has been on the ground. My dad is a big guy, too, and trying to fit him in the back of my Honda Civic with a leg that cannot bend is the stuff comedic sitcoms are made of.
We got a new kitten for Christmas. There is almost too much cuteness to handle. His name is Bing. Now we have Frankie and Bing as in Sinatra and Crosby. Yes, even more cuteness.
I’ve been playing World of Warcraft on my break. Let me just emphasize the complete awesomeness of this game and the massive time sink that it is. But I’ve managed to get several friends hooked on it, which doesn’t make me feel so bad spending my own time on it.
Ka is like a wind…
Sep 11th
Classes are still going on and the homework is piling up quickly. I’m trying to stay on top of it, because the ever dominant lazy part of me doesn’t want to. And I have a feeling that it will quickly pile up to astronomically out-of-control proportions if I don’t.
Back when I was in the 5th or 6th grade or so, I started reading The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Back then, I believe only 2 of the books were out, The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three. I don’t think I really even understood what I was reading about now that I look back upon it.
Well, the 7th and final book is coming out on the 21st of this month, so I’ve taken it upon myself to go through the entire series in my spare time. I just finished the 6th book today, The Song of Susannah and I’m really looking forward to finishing the series. Highly recommended if you’re looking for a way to kill some time.
Also, Episodes 4, 5 and 6 of Star Wars are FINALLY coming out on DVD on the 21st of this month. Unfortunately it’s the “Special Edition” version, not the original theatrical version. Needless so say, I won’t be buying it because George Lucas pisses me off in more ways than I can count.
I just have to add, the Rio Karma is just about the best thing I’ve ever spent money on.
Nirvana really is overrated.
Sep 7th
We have moved again. About 20 yards to the south, no less. It’s a bigger place, which we needed (at least that’s what Gwyn says). But it was an annoying move. Just far enough away to make it really inconvenient.
I got my EMT-IV cert finally sometime in June, I believe, and I finally started my paramedic classes. Every Monday and Wednesday from 8:30AM to 4:30PM, which make for two very long days. I’ve got clinicals every semester (3 in all), but this first semester is observation only. Unfortunately it’s 138 hours of observation outside of class. Top all of that on top of work and time is becoming a precious commodity.
I’ve had two computers also die in this time period. Roughly about 2 weeks apart. The first was my main one, and the second one was my server. My server’s motherboard finally decided to up and die. It was an i850 Rambus board, which I really liked. A lot of people had some inbred hatred of Rambus, but I really liked that board. Unfortunately no one makes RDRAM boards anymore and it is not pretty impossible to find one online. So I decided it would be a cheaper option to buy an Intel i865 chipset motherboard and a gig of DDR memory.
I’ve also built a Home Theater PC to run my home entertainment setup. It’s a Shuttle Box with Dolby Digital out and a Hauppage PVR250 card. It’s all running on Windows Media Center 2004 (for the moment at least) and it seems to be working pretty well. I’ve got it to access my music and photo collection from my server on the network, so it’s kinda neat being able to play my music collection through my receiver and speakers.
I’ve done some minor work to the website as well over the last 3 or 4 days. Mainly, I had to redo a lot of my media code. The media directory on my server, that holds 99% of my images, files and music was initially a 2 level deep directory tree and was hard coded as such. But it has grown so much over the last year that I’ve had to make it many more levels deep just to keep it organized. So I had to update my code to handle an infinite amount of subdirectories per directory (yay for recursion).
That necessitated a few cosmetic changes on the music, images and files page.
I also put a comptuers page back up that has most of my hardware listed since a lot of it has changed.
The live stats page is working again (it’s actually been broken for roughly a year now), as well.
The only website thing still not functional is the cam page. I tried getting a steaming video solution working using windows media controls, but I’m having problems getting it to work in Firefox. Netscape and IE both work fine, but for some reason, Firefox implements Windows Media 6.4 controls by default and it’s causing me problems. Once I get that figured out (who knows when that will be, I’ll put it online).
Anywho, it’s late and I’ve got class tomorrow.
The Last Days o’ Death
Apr 11th
Tuesday, 4/6/04
Journal of Death
My grandmother’s brother (the one whose youngest daughter just passed away), went to the E.R. today. He had abdominal pains and considering what just happened to his daughter, was pretty scared about it. Turns out he has some type of GI infection so he’ll be staying in the hospital for treatment.
Wednesday, 4/7/04
Journal of Death
According to this site (http://test.thespark.com/deathtest/), I’m going to die on April 23, 2003 at the ripe age of 75. I have a 29% chance of dying from a heart attack and a 23% chance of dying from cancer.
However, according to this site (http://www.deathclock.com/), I’m going to die on May 25, 2001. Seems like somebody needs to work on their death predicting abilities!
Thursday, 4/8/04
Journal of Death
I ran across an article on CNN today where a teen and some of his friends were convicted to 10 years in prison for a failed plot to go on a shooting rampage, Columbine style. Luckily, the kids were stupid and no one was killed, but this is just more evidence for my “you need a license before you breed” plan I plan to introduce to Congress later this year.
Friday, 4/9/04
Journal of Death
It’s hard not to find anything about death in the news these days. Especially with the war in Iraq and the recent uprising by the Shiite militia that has taken many lives on both sides of the war. It seems the militia has taken to capturing foreign civilians and using them as bargaining chips, threatening to burn them alive if their demands are not met. Seems like a cowards way to fight to me.
Buckets o’ Death
Mar 16th
Monday, 3/15/04
Journal of Death
I talked to my ole college buddy today, or as I like to call him, my man-steak stooge88, and it occurred to me that this guy has looked in the face of death multiple times and given him a very stern lecture about politeness.
This guy has survived a kidney transplant, a spontaneous pneumothorax and a touch of diarrhea. And that’s just the stuff I know about!
I only hope that if I was in the same situation, I would have as good of an attitude as he does.
Tuesday, 3/16/04
Journal of Death
We watched a video in class today. It was about Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing. I had forgotten how horrible that bombing was (especially with a day care being in the building) and the video made me very sad. 
Death on Ice
Mar 13th
Friday 3/12/04:
Yesterday was interesting. It was my first IV clinical and I got up at 4:15am and got home at 11:00pm that night. So today has been a pretty big blur. But I got a great entry for my Journal of Death today!
We got to transport a corpse from point A to point B. It was a pickup from a morgue and a drop off at a mortuary. The guy had an autopsy performed on him so he was pretty laid open. It was my first time to get up close and personal with a corpse and it wasn’t as bad as I expected. The idea of death and the visuals of death didn’t bother me at all. The biggest thing that bothered me was the smell of death. Death stinks. Literally, figuratively, metaphorically, allegorically, technically and posthumously.
The guy had his chest opened and plastic bag in his chest cavity that had all of his organs in it (including his brain). We learned later that the organs are meticulously removed from the body and that they are then cut into pieces to let the water / juices drain from them. Then a chemical preservative is added to the parts to keep them fresh and they are put back in a plastic bag. This bag is then placed in the chest cavity and then sewn up. Normally this is the mortuaries job, but the morgue had been nice enough to do it at the autopsy already. Sweet guys really.
Anywho, the body was cut from the groin up to the mandibrum (top of the sternum). From there was a V-Cut that goes around each side of the neck. The scalp is also cut from behind both ears around the back of the head. The top of the skull is cut around the top quarter of the skull to where the brain can be removed.
Any remaining gaps in the chest cavity are filled with what looks like sawdust. In reality it’s a powered formaldehyde concoction that helps keep the body fresh. The top of the skull is held in place with some plastic clamps. There is now a small gap where the top of the skull has been placed. If the scalp was pulled over at this point, we were told by morning you would be easily able to see what the skin had sunk into the gap leaving a funny looking indentation across the forehead. To combat this problem, they used a type of putty across the gap that filled it in quite nicely (and looks fun to play with to boot).
That scalp is then pulled over the skull and a hidden stitch is used to secure it. Normally hair is able to cover any stitching on the top of the scalp, but if the person happens to be bald, then a hidden one it much less noticeable. The two sides of the chest cavity are clamped together (with the bag of organs in it) and are stitched together starting from the groin and going up.
The body was then washed with soap and water and he looked about 100x better than he did when he was brought in!
Saturday 3/13/04:
Nothing as excitingly gory as yesterday, but I got to talk to my grandmother today about when my grandfather died. He died 10 years ago this May 12 of an acute myocardial infarction. That makes me sad.
