Sorry that it has been so long since my last post. I have been very busy the past few days. I did finally get called with my physical results and I passed. So effective November 26, 2007, I will be a paid firefighter!!! I am really looking forward to it since I have worked so hard to get it. I am really going to miss dispatching. I have made a lot of good friends and had a lot of memorable calls. One of the guys on my shift at dispatch is going to throw a going away party for me which I thought was very cool.
In my new job I will be working straight days 0700-1630 Monday through Saturday. I have to work these hours for 4 weeks. My first 24 hour shift will be on Christmas Day. Once I am on my shift I work 24 hours every other day for 3 shifts and then I am off for 4 days. This ends up equaling out to working right around 10 days per month. This schedule will give me a lot more free time, which I am really looking forward to. Hopefully this will give me more time to blog.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Fire Department Physical
Yesterday I had go for my pre-hire physical for the fire department. Wow what a day that was. The first portion of the physical took three hours. I felt like I was at some sort of assembly line and I was going to be their finished product.
The day started out with me having to fill out about 20 pages worth of paperwork about my health history. So after I develop carpal tunnel syndrome, they have me change into one of the wonderful gowns. Now allow me to tell you a little about myself. Even though I am getting hired on a fire department, I am not exactly a lean and trim guy. In my house we do not use the f word (f word=fat), so we will say I am big boned with a good deal of meat on the bones. Needless to say I look absolutely horrible in the gown.
The physical was done by a Physician Assistant (PA). I have never had a female give me a physical before. I don't necessarily know if I liked having a female doing the hernia check, but women have male doctors all of the time so I suffered through it. But holy cow, I have never had such a thorough physical in all of my life. My blood pressure ended up being a little high, so the PA told me that they would check it again when they were done with everything else.
So next we moved onto the whiz quiz also known as the drug test. The security for that was amazing. I had to empty my pockets and then they patted me down. I felt like I was going to jail.
I then had to do the hearing test. The lady for the hearing test asked me all kinds of questions about how often I wear hearing protection. I then got a 5 minute lecture about using hearing protection more often around home. I passed that test.
The next part was the blood test which went okay. I will not know the results for a few days. Along with the blood test, I had to have a tuberculosis test. If you are not familiar with the tuberculosis test, they inject some sort of fluid into your forearm just under the skin. I have had TB tests before but holy cow it felt like this lady injected the whole bottle into my arm and wow did it sting.
Next I had to do the lung capacity test. If you are not familiar with this, to make a long story short they have you blow into a tube until you nearly pass out. They do this three times.
After this I had to go for the blood pressure recheck. My blood pressure was still borderline high. The PA tells me that if there is any more than just a small rise during the upcoming stress test that I would fail the physical. She told me to just relax. Wow well that is easier said than done. I have been trying for the last 4 years to get this job, invested $8,000 in paramedic school, and lost 70 lbs, and now I am being told that I am on the verge of failing, and I am told to relax, yeah right!!!
Apparently the PA did not know how to take a blood pressure because when I went in for the stress test my blood pressure was just fine and I was able to pass. The stress test was tougher than I thought that it would be, but still was not all that bad.
So I got the preliminary you passed, but it is not official until they get the chest x-ray, blood work, and the cardiologist interpretation of the stress test back. All of the technician that did the x-rays and stress test said that as far as they could tell everything looked okay. So unless there are some big surprises I passed!!!! All that I can say is WOW what an emotional roller coaster yesterday.
The day started out with me having to fill out about 20 pages worth of paperwork about my health history. So after I develop carpal tunnel syndrome, they have me change into one of the wonderful gowns. Now allow me to tell you a little about myself. Even though I am getting hired on a fire department, I am not exactly a lean and trim guy. In my house we do not use the f word (f word=fat), so we will say I am big boned with a good deal of meat on the bones. Needless to say I look absolutely horrible in the gown.
The physical was done by a Physician Assistant (PA). I have never had a female give me a physical before. I don't necessarily know if I liked having a female doing the hernia check, but women have male doctors all of the time so I suffered through it. But holy cow, I have never had such a thorough physical in all of my life. My blood pressure ended up being a little high, so the PA told me that they would check it again when they were done with everything else.
So next we moved onto the whiz quiz also known as the drug test. The security for that was amazing. I had to empty my pockets and then they patted me down. I felt like I was going to jail.
I then had to do the hearing test. The lady for the hearing test asked me all kinds of questions about how often I wear hearing protection. I then got a 5 minute lecture about using hearing protection more often around home. I passed that test.
The next part was the blood test which went okay. I will not know the results for a few days. Along with the blood test, I had to have a tuberculosis test. If you are not familiar with the tuberculosis test, they inject some sort of fluid into your forearm just under the skin. I have had TB tests before but holy cow it felt like this lady injected the whole bottle into my arm and wow did it sting.
Next I had to do the lung capacity test. If you are not familiar with this, to make a long story short they have you blow into a tube until you nearly pass out. They do this three times.
After this I had to go for the blood pressure recheck. My blood pressure was still borderline high. The PA tells me that if there is any more than just a small rise during the upcoming stress test that I would fail the physical. She told me to just relax. Wow well that is easier said than done. I have been trying for the last 4 years to get this job, invested $8,000 in paramedic school, and lost 70 lbs, and now I am being told that I am on the verge of failing, and I am told to relax, yeah right!!!
Apparently the PA did not know how to take a blood pressure because when I went in for the stress test my blood pressure was just fine and I was able to pass. The stress test was tougher than I thought that it would be, but still was not all that bad.
So I got the preliminary you passed, but it is not official until they get the chest x-ray, blood work, and the cardiologist interpretation of the stress test back. All of the technician that did the x-rays and stress test said that as far as they could tell everything looked okay. So unless there are some big surprises I passed!!!! All that I can say is WOW what an emotional roller coaster yesterday.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
New Job
I got called yesterday to go take my physical for a new job as a paid firefighter. I have been ecstatic since getting the call yesterday. I have been a volunteer firefighter for 8 years and I am now going to get paid to do something that I love to do for free. I enjoy my current job as a dispatcher but I know that I am going to love my new job. I will probably be starting at the fire department around the first of December. I know that I will be on the ambulance for several years before getting on the engine full time but I love doing ems calls. I don't have much to say today, maybe tomorrow when I come back down from the cloud I am on I will have something intelligent to say.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Not as Smart as Other Dogs of the Same Breed
We have a new puppy in the house she is adorable, but still a huge pain in the butt. The new dog's name is Ethel. Ethel is a Welsh corgi and is now 4 months old. We are having one heck of a time potty training her. We will take Ethel outside she will do her business outside and then she will come in and pee on the floor. I just want to yell at her and say what are you thinking! Another thing that she keeps on doing is chewing through the phone line for DSL for our computer. In the month that we have had her we have went through five phone cords. I swear I am going to be part owner of a phone cord company.
Ethel is our second dog. Our other dog is Lucy (yes we have Lucy and Ethel *think "I Lucy Lucy" TV show). Lucy is an Border Collie Austialian Cattle Dog mix. I am not sure if my readers are familiar with the size of the two breeds but, Lucy is about 55 lbs. and Ethel is right around 10 lbs. Ethel thinks that she is Lucy's size and can take Lucy on. Lucy is very patient and just lets Ethel play and then eventually Lucy has enough takes a swat at Ethel's face with her paw and will bark at her.
Another thing that Ethel does that proves that she is not the brightest star in the sky, is when she is getting a drink of water she will put both of her paws in the water bowl.
According to this website http://www.angelfire.com/vt/labsandpugs/smartbreeds.html
Ethel is supposed to be a member of the 11th smartest dog breed. Hopefully she grows into her alleged intelligence. Lucy depending on which breed you chose from her mix is either the smartest or 10th smartest breed. I just hope when Ethel gets older that the two dogs don't conspire against my wife and I since they are so smart. Heck they will probably be smarter than us.
As much as I would like to get mad and stay mad at Ethel for the annoying puppy things that she does, she keeps doing cute things as well. I work the night shift and my wife usually goes to bed shortly before I leave for work and I will go in the bedroom to tell my wife good bye. The other night when I got ready for work I went into the bedroom and Ethel was laying on her back just like a human sleeping with her head under my pillow. There is no way I could stay mad at that.
I must like dogs since we already have one and then my wife convinced me that we needed another dog or rather told me we were getting another dog. Well I best be going because Ethel is giving me the take me outside or I will destroy something look.
Ethel is our second dog. Our other dog is Lucy (yes we have Lucy and Ethel *think "I Lucy Lucy" TV show). Lucy is an Border Collie Austialian Cattle Dog mix. I am not sure if my readers are familiar with the size of the two breeds but, Lucy is about 55 lbs. and Ethel is right around 10 lbs. Ethel thinks that she is Lucy's size and can take Lucy on. Lucy is very patient and just lets Ethel play and then eventually Lucy has enough takes a swat at Ethel's face with her paw and will bark at her.
Another thing that Ethel does that proves that she is not the brightest star in the sky, is when she is getting a drink of water she will put both of her paws in the water bowl.
According to this website http://www.angelfire.com/vt/labsandpugs/smartbreeds.html
Ethel is supposed to be a member of the 11th smartest dog breed. Hopefully she grows into her alleged intelligence. Lucy depending on which breed you chose from her mix is either the smartest or 10th smartest breed. I just hope when Ethel gets older that the two dogs don't conspire against my wife and I since they are so smart. Heck they will probably be smarter than us.
As much as I would like to get mad and stay mad at Ethel for the annoying puppy things that she does, she keeps doing cute things as well. I work the night shift and my wife usually goes to bed shortly before I leave for work and I will go in the bedroom to tell my wife good bye. The other night when I got ready for work I went into the bedroom and Ethel was laying on her back just like a human sleeping with her head under my pillow. There is no way I could stay mad at that.
I must like dogs since we already have one and then my wife convinced me that we needed another dog or rather told me we were getting another dog. Well I best be going because Ethel is giving me the take me outside or I will destroy something look.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
People not Helping themselves
On the volunteer fire department that I am on we also take care of ambulance service for our town. Even though it is in a city of less than five thousand people, being on the ambulance has proved to be interesting through the years. I have seen things that I never thought that I would. Going through EMT and Paramedic class some of things that we would study, I would sit there and think to myself I am never going to have to deal with that. Wow, have I been wrong.
One of the things that really bothers me is when we deal with people that will not take care of themselves. Recently I had to go to a house that I had been to before, and the last time that I went there the conditions in the house were absolutely horrible and that was about seven years ago. The most recent call was for a person that had fell. When we arrived at the house the person was laying outside near the steps. The door to the house was open, and the smell from inside the house was so bad that we had to close the door.
It was pretty obvious that it had been quite some time since the person had last bathed. The smell of body odor was terrible. The person's skin was so dirty that he was almost black with dirt and and he was a white man. As we were putting the person onto the backboard, I happened to notice a cockroach crawling across the front of his pants. The person's skin and clothes were so dirty that when we moved him onto the cot on the backboard our white sheet on the cot turned black.
It is pretty obvious that this person does not have a lot of money. I can understand when someone does not have a lot of money, but a person can at least try to take care of themselves and keep themselves clean.
I think that the most frustrating aspect of this situation and other situations that I have dealt with is that nothing gets done to correct the situation. In our state as well as most others all police officers, firefighters, and paramedics are mandatory reporters. This means that if we see an abusive or a dangerous situation, or even a situation where someone is not capable of taking care of themselves we are required by law to report the situation to the Department of Human Services. To me it seems like almost every time that we report something to the Department it comes back as unfounded.
There is another situation that comes to mind involving people not taking care of themselves. We were called to a residence for a girl that was not feeling well. This was a two bedroom mobile home and there were 2 adults and 5 children living in the home. The house was filthy. There was garbage piled up in the living room and in hallway. As a matter of fact we had to move garbage out of the way in the hallway to be able to get our equipment through. The furnace vents were on the floor however, none of them were covered with grates. We had to be careful to not step in one of the vents and break an ankle. In the bedroom that the five kids shared there was a bunk bed that was in horrible shape. The top mattress was held to the top frame with rope that was frayed. Once we got the girl out of the house and into the ambulance she admitted to us that she was faking because she wanted to get out of the house. I could not blame the poor girl. We transported her to the hospital and called the proper authorities. In this situation human services did do something they threatened to take the kids away if the conditions did not get better. Through talking to some of the police officers it did get better. However, we were at the residence again a few months later and the conditions were bad again, not at all like the first time but still bad. A short time later the family moved out and no one knows what happened to them.
Situations like those mentioned above make me feel horrible. I know that I and other people on the police and fire departments want to help people like this, but there is not a whole that you can do when a person will do nothing to help them self. I guess this is all in a day's unpaid work, as a volunteer firefighter.
One of the things that really bothers me is when we deal with people that will not take care of themselves. Recently I had to go to a house that I had been to before, and the last time that I went there the conditions in the house were absolutely horrible and that was about seven years ago. The most recent call was for a person that had fell. When we arrived at the house the person was laying outside near the steps. The door to the house was open, and the smell from inside the house was so bad that we had to close the door.
It was pretty obvious that it had been quite some time since the person had last bathed. The smell of body odor was terrible. The person's skin was so dirty that he was almost black with dirt and and he was a white man. As we were putting the person onto the backboard, I happened to notice a cockroach crawling across the front of his pants. The person's skin and clothes were so dirty that when we moved him onto the cot on the backboard our white sheet on the cot turned black.
It is pretty obvious that this person does not have a lot of money. I can understand when someone does not have a lot of money, but a person can at least try to take care of themselves and keep themselves clean.
I think that the most frustrating aspect of this situation and other situations that I have dealt with is that nothing gets done to correct the situation. In our state as well as most others all police officers, firefighters, and paramedics are mandatory reporters. This means that if we see an abusive or a dangerous situation, or even a situation where someone is not capable of taking care of themselves we are required by law to report the situation to the Department of Human Services. To me it seems like almost every time that we report something to the Department it comes back as unfounded.
There is another situation that comes to mind involving people not taking care of themselves. We were called to a residence for a girl that was not feeling well. This was a two bedroom mobile home and there were 2 adults and 5 children living in the home. The house was filthy. There was garbage piled up in the living room and in hallway. As a matter of fact we had to move garbage out of the way in the hallway to be able to get our equipment through. The furnace vents were on the floor however, none of them were covered with grates. We had to be careful to not step in one of the vents and break an ankle. In the bedroom that the five kids shared there was a bunk bed that was in horrible shape. The top mattress was held to the top frame with rope that was frayed. Once we got the girl out of the house and into the ambulance she admitted to us that she was faking because she wanted to get out of the house. I could not blame the poor girl. We transported her to the hospital and called the proper authorities. In this situation human services did do something they threatened to take the kids away if the conditions did not get better. Through talking to some of the police officers it did get better. However, we were at the residence again a few months later and the conditions were bad again, not at all like the first time but still bad. A short time later the family moved out and no one knows what happened to them.
Situations like those mentioned above make me feel horrible. I know that I and other people on the police and fire departments want to help people like this, but there is not a whole that you can do when a person will do nothing to help them self. I guess this is all in a day's unpaid work, as a volunteer firefighter.
Funny Article
From Quad Times
http://www.qctimes.com/articles/2007/11/02/news/local/doc472b788c2fa82644819729.txt
I think that this article kind of speaks for itself. What would be really funny is if it was a cardiologist dancing to "Kick Start my Heart" by Motley Crue. I don't have much time I will try to post again later.
http://www.qctimes.com/articles/2007/11/02/news/local/doc472b788c2fa82644819729.txt
I think that this article kind of speaks for itself. What would be really funny is if it was a cardiologist dancing to "Kick Start my Heart" by Motley Crue. I don't have much time I will try to post again later.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
R.I.P. Isabelle
Mooooog35 over at Mental Poo http://midgetmanofsteel.blogspot.com/ inspired me to write today's post about my first car...her name was Isabelle.
First of all I would like to take a random poll to see how many people have named at least their first car (subsequent cars are fine too), and if so what was the name. Please leave this on comments.
Here is Isabelle's name origin from http://www.behindthename.com/nm/i2.php
ISABELLE f
English, French, GermanVariant of ISABEL
ISABEL f
Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, German Most
likely a medieval Spanish form of ELIZABETH, although some
theories state that Isabel actually derives from an old Semitic name meaning
"daughter of BA'AL".ELIZABETH
Gender: Feminine
Usage: English, Biblical
Pronounced:
ee-LIZ-a-beth [key]
('Elisheva') meaning "my God is an oath" or perhaps "my God is abundance".I think the "my god is abundance" part of the origin is very fitting (before anyone freaks out, not in the literal sense) because, when a person first looked at Isabelle they were probably "my god this things is an abundance."
My first car was a 1983 Buick Regal. There was nothing regal at all about her, she was a real piece of crap. I named her Isabelle. I bought Isabelle in 1994 for $200. My uncle was a mechanic at a local car dealership and I went to visit him, that is when I saw Isabelle for the first time. She was sitting out back with all of the other back row beauties.
Isabelle was about the most hideous color that you could have for a car it was a combination of poop brown and gold(look and the picture above and think about ten times crappier looking). I am pretty sure that some poor deer made it's last trip across the highway in front of Isabelle, because on the drivers side the entire headlight assembly was broken out and the fender was cracked. Instead of making the repairs, the previous owner just decided to add above the bumper mounted fog lights to substitute for the missing headlight. Me being the poor high school student I was, I did not fix it either.
Another issue that poor Isabelle had was that she was loud and proud. What little bit of a muffler she had left was almost non existent. I think that Isabelle could be heard coming from a mile away. I did have to find the money to get this fixed since I got a warning from the police.
Isabelle also had other noise coming from her as well. Being that it was the mid 90's I of course had my $250 stereo in my $200 car (I know, makes a lot of sense, right?) Depending on my mood you could hear anything from Snoop Dog, to Nirvana, to Garth Brooks blasting from Isabelle. Yes it is true kids from the Midwest have identity issues when it comes to music. We are only 3 hours from Chicago so we thought we had to be pseudo gangsta and listen to Snoop Dog. We thought we were cool and hip so we needed to listen to Nirvana. Then we brought it back to reality by listening to Garth Brooks which is who we really should be listening to being that we were in a town of 30,000 in a county of 50,000 (read into this, we were a bunch of hicks).
Isabelle's interior was not very pretty either. The roof liner was falling down, so if I had anyone in the back seat they could not see up front. The previous owner had cigarette burns on the arm rest. I had some friends that were underage smokers so we took it upon ourselves to brand Isabelle. We all burnt our initials into the arm rest with cigarettes. Isabelle had about 10 sets of initials on her arm rest.
There is a quote from the movie and book Christine, "You can't polish a turd". I am going to have to respectfully disagree with you Mr. Stephen King, you can polish a turd. As crappy as Isabelle was, I always made sure to wash her at least once a week and wax her once a month. Oh and yeah the inside was Armor-all ed several times. Hanging from the mirror there was always a pine tree shaped air freshener with the new car smell scent. Right next to the air freshener, there was also a miniature disco ball that I bought.
Isabelle took me and my dates from point A to point B several times most times with out any problems. Isabelle served me well for about 18 months until she developed terminal transmission cancer. I kept her on life support for a few weeks by giving her a nearly constant IV drip of transmission fluid. Eventually I knew that it was time and I pulled the plug on the life support and let her go, I was sad but it was her time to go.
In hindsight, I am lucky that I did not get in more trouble with the police while driving Isabelle than what I did. As big of an automobile as she was I am sure I probably should have had a commercial drivers license (CDL) to drive her. Along those lines since I should have had the CDL, I should not have bypassed the several weigh stations on the interstate that I went by with her. Heck I am lucky, that the Coast Guard isn't mad at me for not having a pilot's license for that big old barge. She was so big that on windy days I would have to wait for the wind to calm down to dock/park her so that I did not make the boat go out of control.
Isabelle was buried at the local junk yard in late 1995. She had a huge impact on my life. Isabelle made me decide that I would never own a car that crappy again!
Isabelle may have been a turd, but in my opinion at the time she was the best looking turd in all of eastern Iowa.
R.I.P. Isabelle. God Speed,
Your Former Owner
Using Kids as Pawns
I finally had to come back to work tonight after having nine days off for vacation. One thing I have discovered is that vacation and days off always go way too fast.
One of the most frustrating things that I have to deal with in my job is dealing with the same people over and over. We can always tell when a couple is going through a nasty divorce. We usually get numerous piddly calls from each half of the couple. Tonight we had a husband call and tell us that we needed to go check on an 11 year old girl that was left home alone. Well first of all, in our state it is not illegal for an 11 year old to be left home alone. We did send an officer to check to make sure the child was okay. When the officer got to the house the child was with her grandparents. The husband originally did not want to let us know who was calling so we sent the officer on an anonymous tip. Once the officer cleared the house the husband called back and now all of the sudden he wanted to leave his name to complain about the officer not doing anything.
I find this absolutely sickening that people constantly use their children as pawns. This brings up another issue, kids see things like this happening and they begin to think that this is normal behavior and then they pass this on to their children and it just becomes a continuous cycle. I guess I should look at the bright side of the continuous cycle it is job security for me.
If I had to pick one part of my job that I hate the most it would have to be dealing with domestic abuse. The thing that I hate most about domestics is when we keep talking to the same people over and over because they keep going back to the abuser. I feel sorry for people the first couple of times but I am not sure if it is cold and callous of me but I stop feeling sorry for people after a certain point. You know the first time that there is abuse it could just be an argument that got out of hand (not that there is ever a good excuse for domestic abuse). I can maybe see working things out and getting back together. However, if there is a second instance to me that is the start of a pattern and I can not fathom a valid reason for getting back together with the person who is abusing you. Like I said earlier job security.
One of the most frustrating things that I have to deal with in my job is dealing with the same people over and over. We can always tell when a couple is going through a nasty divorce. We usually get numerous piddly calls from each half of the couple. Tonight we had a husband call and tell us that we needed to go check on an 11 year old girl that was left home alone. Well first of all, in our state it is not illegal for an 11 year old to be left home alone. We did send an officer to check to make sure the child was okay. When the officer got to the house the child was with her grandparents. The husband originally did not want to let us know who was calling so we sent the officer on an anonymous tip. Once the officer cleared the house the husband called back and now all of the sudden he wanted to leave his name to complain about the officer not doing anything.
I find this absolutely sickening that people constantly use their children as pawns. This brings up another issue, kids see things like this happening and they begin to think that this is normal behavior and then they pass this on to their children and it just becomes a continuous cycle. I guess I should look at the bright side of the continuous cycle it is job security for me.
If I had to pick one part of my job that I hate the most it would have to be dealing with domestic abuse. The thing that I hate most about domestics is when we keep talking to the same people over and over because they keep going back to the abuser. I feel sorry for people the first couple of times but I am not sure if it is cold and callous of me but I stop feeling sorry for people after a certain point. You know the first time that there is abuse it could just be an argument that got out of hand (not that there is ever a good excuse for domestic abuse). I can maybe see working things out and getting back together. However, if there is a second instance to me that is the start of a pattern and I can not fathom a valid reason for getting back together with the person who is abusing you. Like I said earlier job security.
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