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.