Life Through the Eyes of an Ambulance Driver

For those that may have never seen it, Google changes their logo once a day during the Christmas week. It is kinda cool. See it here. They do it every year for Christmas and also at different holidays throughout the year.

This is a copy of the Christmas email I sent to the people I know who’s email addresses I have

I hope this finds you all doing well.

The last two years have been a big growing experience for me. During this time I have discovered that for most of my life, I have been taking things way too seriously. I’ve been way too concerned with what people think about me. Some may argue that that makes me more compassionate, but I see it as making me too hesitant. I think it’s a fine line. So I am learning to be more relaxed in how I approach things.

I was unable to keep my firefighter job because I had a problem with anxiety. I have since cured my anxiety problem. Anxiety was something that reached into several areas of my life, unbeknownst to me. Life is much more enjoyable without that monkey on my back.

I’m still, unfortunately, working on an ambulance as an EMT Basic. I’m sure most people won’t be able to believe this, but I am incredibly bored with my job.  Last year I had a wonderful Paramedic that taught me how to become a great EMT. She and I have since parted ways to work with other people, but I am indebted to her for all I learned. That by no way means that I am done learning. This is a job that you never know everything. If I were really interested in medicine, I’d go on to get my paramedic, but that is way more responsibility than I want.

In the mean time I am still trying to get hired with a fire department. I haven’t found anyone yet that seems to think that they can’t function without me, but I’m working on it. The only department I have anything going with is West Metro, here in the Lakewood area where I live. I’m #75 on their list. The list is good for 2 years, but with the economy in the tank, I can’t see there being too much hiring going on. I can only hope that there will be a bunch of people retiring from there in the near future.

Wendy and I are still dating. Don’t ask how long we’ve been dating, because I doubt either one of us could tell you when we started. She has been done with her residency for about a year and a half now. She is a pediatrician at an urgent care clinic in Salt Lake City, UT and really loves her job. I’m really glad that she is happy with what she is doing.

We see each other once a month. Our schedules tend to work better with me flying out there. People sometimes tell me I should just move out to Salt Lake. It’s not that easy for either of us. The distance is what is limiting us now. One of these days, someone will move somewhere. We’ll have to see what happens.

We have had some cool adventures during the past year. Earlier this year we went to Grand County, CO where we went to a hot spring, did some snowshoeing, and also went on a snow mobile tour. It was a lot of fun and it was nice to get up in the mountains for a few days. This summer we went to Moab, UT where we did some white water rafting and some sight seeing. Our favorite trip this year was when we went to Grand Teton National Park. We spent 6 days and 5 nights backpacking in the park. On our last day there, I had to chase a bear out of camp. It was a really beautiful place. Pointing the camera in any direction gave you pretty pictures. It was great to get away for a while. I often forget how great the simple life is. Since Wendy and I first met at a backpacking camp, we were both in our element out there. We’ve already decided that next year we are going to Glacier National Park.

If you want to see pictures from our adventures this year, you can go to this link:

http://anvilgear.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=2204

This Christmas is going to be cool. I am flying to San Antonio, TX to spend the first half of the week with Wendy and her family. On Christmas day, we are flying to Jackson, MS to spend the rest of the week with my family. It will be nice to be around family for a change.

I’m still living at the Phat Pad with PJ and Bill “Italian Stallion” Sassani. They are friends of mine that I’ve known since I started working at Philmont. It’s hard to believe its been 5 years since I worked there.

I’m sorry for not being much of a communicator the last couple of years. I plan to be better at it this year. New Year’s resolution maybe?

I’ve become a fan of using Facebook. If you’ve never used it, it’s a social networking site that lets you keep up with people you know. It’s great for seeing what the people you know are up to. I’ve also decided to start writing a blog. Now everyone can keep up with my uneventful life. Yeah!!

Well, thanks for listening to me. May you all have a Merry Christmas and a fantastic New Year!

Well, if you were to believe the sensation of liberal media news, that’s what you would think. Last night there was a Continental Airlines airplane flight 1404 that skidded off the runway at Denver International Airport (DIA). No one was killed and all the injuries were minor. One trauma red from what I hear, the rest were yellows and greens.

It’s really hard to determine how bad the incident really was. The news media will do its best to sensationalize the whole thing. Its not as if the plane was careening down the runway doing cartwheels with body parts flying everywhere and flames shooting hundreds of feet in the air, but they want you to believe that so you’ll watch their news, up their ratings, and get more sponsors. Its all about money to these folks, not responsible news reporting.

Yes, the plane did skid off the runway, its not in millions of pieces, but its never going to fly again. Some photos from 9news.com. From what interviews with officials are saying, it seems that yes this was an emergency for sure. The passengers were evacuated with emergency procedures and the plane did catch fire. Kudos to Denver Fire Dept’s ARFF team. It sounds like they had a good working fire when they got on scene.

I was working that night and my company sent some ambulances to Denver for mutual aid. It was a Mass Casualty Incident (MCI). We tuned in to the mutual aid radio channel for Denver Paramedics to listen to the traffic. It sounds like they called in a few different agencies to help with transporting patients from DIA and for back-filling for their regular call volume. There was a bit of confusion at first in determining where patients were being transported, but that was corrected shortly. Denver Health hospital is the zone master for Denver. This means that when hospitals are on divert (the emergency room is full and not accepting patients because it is unusually busy) or during an MCI, the ambulance transporting calls to the zone master where they determine which hospital to transport to. This makes sure that one hospital isn’t overrun preventing best possible care for each patient needing care. During an MCI, hospitals are contacted by the zone master to determine how much of what they can handle. Having one person controlling patient destination helps keep everything more organized.

From listening to the radio, it sounded fairly well run. I can’t be for certain as I wasn’t there. I know I got excited when I heard on our radio that two of our ambulances were headed emergent to DIA. I immediately thought there must have been an airplane wreck. I was disappointed I didn’t get to go, but it sounds like I didn’t really miss much.

Well, hopefully  that is the quota for airplane catastrophies for DIA for a while.

My brother sent me a link this week relating to the insane deal that C.C. Sabathia got for signing with the New York Yankees. C.C. is a starting pitcher that went from Cleveland to Milwaukee last year and is now a free agent. He just signed with the Yankees in a record deal of 7 years and aproximately $160 million. It is rediculous how much people are getting paid to play a game. Anyway, the link he sent me lets you enter your anual salary and how long it takes for him to make your salary. At $21,000 a year that I make, he only has to throw 2 strikes, not even one out. I don’t understand how on Earth anyone could ever be worth that kind of money for a game. How about teachers, EMT’s, Police officers, military folk, or anyone who actually makes a difference in people’s lives and have some real value for what their efforts provide. Entertainment should not be that lucrative, but that is what our society has decided is important.

I just heard about this, but there’s a video of a bunch of nerds in their nerd guild playing World of Warcraft discussing their plan for the game when one of the players, Leeroy Jenkins, rushes in against their plan. I thought it was funny

Ever since I resigned from my job with Aurora Fire Rescue, I’ve been trying to get back on to a fire department. My latest endeavor is West Metro Fire Rescue. 

Starting earlier this year they opened up their applications for entry level firefighter. I tried to get on with this department when I first moved out to Colorado, but never got anywhere with it. They have the most difficult physical test of all the departments I’ve tested with. Their test isn’t difficult in the elements that you have to do, but your score is weighted based on your time. This means you have to go as hard as you can to get as low of a time as possible to get a better score. I got a 90% on the test, which is much better than the last time I did it.  I was really happy with that score. Last time I did it I barely passed somewhere in the low 70′s.  This time I had really trained hard to try to get a good score. The written test, I scored a 79. Not as good as I had hoped because I thought I knew almost all of the questions that I answered. Careless mistakes is all I can figure. The oral boards I had never done with this department. When I finished the oral board, I felt really good. I never feel good coming out of my oral boards.

This week I got my score for the oral boards and I scored somewhere in the low 70′s. This puts me #75 on the hiring list. I’m sad that this is my ranking. I want to leave my current job and get on with a fire department really bad. West Metro is a great department, and I would love to work for them. The hiring list is good for 2 years. Normally, I would think OK, I have a chance. But with the economy in the tank like it is now I don’t really think I have a good chance of getting hired. I don’t know how much hiring is going to go on if departmetns are not hiring to expand, but just to replace retirees.

I think what disapoints me the most is that once again, my life is still going to be on hold. Driving an ambulance, I don’t get paid much of anything. Basically all I can afford to pay for is food, rent, gas, and my car payment. There’s really not much I can do with my life. I rent a room in a house from a friend of mine. I really want my own home so I can have a dog and do what I want with my house. I have nothing to show for what I’ve done so far. I’m 32 years old and still living like a college student. Its very depressing to think that this is the best I can do when I know I’m capable of much more. My girlfriend lives in Salt Lake. She enjoys where she is living and I enjoy where I am living. She has more to keep her in Salt Lake than I have keeping me in Denver. She enjoys her job and I am sick of mine. If I can’t ever have a fire department job here, then there is nothing that can really hold me here. Getting a fire job for me is more than just getting a job, its about being able to start living my life the way I want to.

Well the week started out kind of different. Its nice to get some variety as my job is boring me to death.

My regular partner wasn’t able to get into work for the first day of the week as he was stuck at an airport from bad weather. So that left me without a partner for the day. I manged to keep my self entertained. I went on a blood draw for a DUI. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was the person who had hit one of our ambulances that evening. My old partner was on a scene when this guy hit the side of her ambulance. Cops were already on the scene and saw it happen. The crazy thing, is the guy who hit the ambulance tried to drive off. The Cops ran him down on foot and pulled him out of his car to put him in custody. Thankfully no one was seriously injured, but my old partner had some pretty bad back pain as a result.

The next day, thankfully,  my partner was back. We had one call that was interesting. Our patient had had recent knee replacement surgery and had fallen. When we got there, his artificial knee was sticking out of his skin. It looked as if the stitch had ripped open. It reminded me of that scene from the Terminator when Arnold cuts open his hand to show the guy that he is a cyborg. We used the KED to stabilize the injury. Its a shame that we don’t have anything really good for stabilizing this kind of an injury.

On another note, I was talking to a friend of mine this week that works for one of the other agencies. He was transporting a non emergent patient. They stopped at a stop light when two guys opened up the back doors to their ambulance and they threw a guy in who had been stabbed. My friend told his driver to go emergent to their trauma center. The guy who was stabbed was a big guy who was sweaty and bloody, so he was difficult to get up on the bench seat. His driver was driving like a mad man throwing him around the back of the ambulance. Come to find out the guy who had done the stabbing was trying to run the ambulance off the road to finish the job. They finally got the hospital. Lesson learned, lock your doors.

Today, Google announced that they have taken their web browser, Chrome, out of Beta. I know there are concerns about privacy and whatnot, but I still really like Chrome. It has been my default browser for a while now. Its much faster to load the program and then to load pages than the other browsers out there.

Before I was using Chrome, I was using Opera, as it loaded the fastest. Before that it was Mozilla Firefox, and I was using that back when it was called Phoenix and Firebird. I had become a big fan of Mozilla there for a while, but my tastes have changed. I was using Thunderbird for my email client. Now I am using Gmail. I was using Mozilla’s Sunbird/Lightning for my calendar. Now I use Google Calendar. I’m just not the fan of Internet Explorer. My company makes us use it to interact with our scheduling software. That is the only time I use it now.

Once again, Ron Santo was denied entry into the Hall of Fame. I’m not quite the die hard fan of Santo, but as a Cubs fan, I still think he was a great player and would be deserving of a spot in the Hall of Fame. There certainly is a following of people who are wanting to see Santo inducted in. He was the Cubs’ 3B from 1960-1973. His career numbers are:

• .277 BA
• 342 HR
• 1331 RBI
• 1138 R
• .826 OPS
• 9 All star appearances
• 5 Gold gloves

I imagine the majority of the people who are pulling for him to get in are Cub fans. His numbers are good, but they aren’t astounding. Maybe that’s why he isn’t getting voted in.

Another player that I would really like to see get in from the Cubs is Andre Dawson. Also known as “The Hawk”. Dawson spent most of his career between the Montreal Expos and the Chicago Cubs. His last years were with the Florida Marlins and the Boston Red Sox. Dawson was old school. When Ryne Sandberg was elected into the HoF, he mentioned Dawson in his induction speech saying how he believes Dawson should be in the HoF as well.

Andre Dawson, the Hawk. No player in baseball history worked harder, suffered more or did it better than Andre Dawson. He’s the best I’ve ever seen. Stand up Hawk. The Hawk. I watched him win MVP for a last place team in 1987 and it was the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen in baseball. He did it the right way, the natural way and he did it in the field and on the bases and in every way, and I hope he will stand up here someday. We didn’t get to a World Series together but we almost got there, Hawk.

Dawson had a quirky batting stance where he placed all his weight on his back foot and then pushed off with it as he swung. He struck out a lot, but he was a power hitter. His defense was outstanding. Unfortunately, his knees were shot from the years of playing on the turf in Montreal. This slowed him down in the second half of his career limiting his range in RF. But his arm was unmatched. The Hawk would routinely take away singles from guys who didn’t hustle to first base when the ball was hit in front of him. Plays at the plate, I saw numerous times when he’d throw out a runner at home plate from RF on the fly. Ryno made a great point about him in his induction speech, Dawson won an MVP for a last place team one year. That says a lot about how much he contributed to the team.

A future Hall of Famer, Greg Maddux, retired this week as well. He started his career with the Cubs where he won his first Cy Young award. He was then let go and went to Atlanta where he had the best years of his career. The Cubs’s GM Larry Himes, an idiot, was responsible for letting him go. Maddux wanted to come back to the Cubs after getting a deal from the Braves, asking the Cubs to match it. Himes told him the money was already spent. Himes was eventually run out of town.

Maddux was a brilliant pitcher. He knew more about pitching, location, and how hitters think than anyone. He didn’t have overpowering stuff, but he could put the ball exactly where he wanted it and make the player hit his pitches. There’s even a story where a bet was made that Maddux’s catcher had the easiest job. They blindfolded his catcher one day in the bullpen to test a theory. All he had to do was hold his glove up there and Maddux would hit it. It happened. Maddux will be voted in his first year for sure. He’ll be an invaluable asset to any club who wants a pitching coach.

There is talk of the triumvirate of Maddux, Smotlz, and Glavine all retiring and all being voted in on the same day for the Hall of Fame. Those three were solid pitchers for several years in the Braves organization. When they left Atlanta, it was definitely an end of an era.

Calvin and Hobbes has always been one of my favorite cartoon strips of all times. Its a shame Bill Watterson only did it for 10 years. The official site is now at gocomics.com. I use Google Reader so I can see a new strip every day.

My mom has always said that she thinks the author of Calvin and Hobbes is really a friend of mine named Ford. It is kind of scarry how similar Ford’s childhood was to Calvin’s, I must admit.

A few years ago, someone sent me a seires of Calvin cartoons depicting Calivn and Hobbes making snow people. I always find it really funny and like to recirculate it around Christmas time (yes that’s right I say Christmas, not holiday). So I’m inclucing that series here. Hope you laugh as much as I do everytime I see it.

Buy Calvin and Hobbes Books at Amazon.com