18 posts tagged “cert”
Ok, I know it's a few days late, but apparently I've been really bad at blogging lately! Here's the 2008 recap:
January
- January 1st: Shadow breaks my nose. Happy New Years!
- January 13th: I get smacked in the nose again at a CERT drill and realize that my nose really is broken.
- January 17th: I started EMT school - so exciting!
February
- February 28th: My first of many encounters with the neighborhood turkies.
March
- March 8th: Houseboat weekend with Brigitte and Amber!
- March 15th: Mather Air Show Day One: lots of patients to practice on!
- March 16th: Mather Air Show Day Two: more patients!
- March 26th: My hospital rotation - a life changing experience!
April
- April 18th: Rivercats baseball game with Dad, Brigitte and Amber
- April 19-20th: CERT Mobex - disaster drill in Clovis
May
- May 10th: Kati graduates from UGA - Mom, Dad and I flew back for a fantastic weekend in Georgia!
- May 13th: NREMT exam - I passed and am officially an EMT!
- May 24th: EMT party - absolutely hilarious - everyone came dressed as some sort of victim... it was great!
June
- June 10th: Metro's CERT team is called up to help out with the local grass fires
- June 21st: Saved my first patient at a CERT event
July
- July 14th: Visited my customer in Houston. Hot and sticky. Ate more steak than a girl should!
- July 20th: Kati moves home from Georgia!
August
- August 8th: Joanna and Chris come to visit!
- The rest of August - Kati and I go to Germany, France, Italy and Greece... it's the trip of a lifetime!
September
- September 14th: Met Mike! :)
- September 24th: Had a close encounter with a tomato hornworm. Had to call Julie in for backup.
- September 26th: Went to the Neil Diamond concert with Kati!
October
- October 9th: Went to the New Kids On The Block concert with Julie, Mindy, Amanda and Chris.
- October 16th: Selected for the Sarah Weeden jury - little did I know it would last two months!
- October 31st: Halloween party!
November
- November 1st: Went to the Madonna concert with Adam and Eva!
- November 4th: Barak Obama is elected president
- November 26th: Thanksgiving vacation at Lake Almanor
- November 15th: Second Annual Friends Thanksgiving!
December
- December 11th: Sarah Weeden trial ends
- December 30th: Kings game with Mike
- December 31st: Mike's New Years Eve Party - LOTS of pig!
All in all, I'd say it was a fantastic year! Who can complain?!
Hope everyone had a wonderful New Year! Mike's party was a blast - they roasted 120 pounds of pig! It took four of them just a few minutes to cut it all up (lots of practice apparently!). Here's a picture of the pig on the spit:
It was insanely delicious! The party was a blast!
As you probably know, today is my birthday. It's been fantastic... it's 2:30pm and I'm still in my jammies! I've watched a bunch of episodes of "ER" (thanks Mike!) and some "Friends" reruns. It's been wonderfully relaxing!
Once again, another super busy weekend.
On Friday night Brig, Amber and I went to see "Hancock". Absolutely hilarious movie. I love Will Smith - and he did not disappoint as a reluctant superhero. There was a pretty cool twist in the movie - I won't give it away, but I think they did a good job with it.
On Saturday I did some work with CERT - we taught a basic first aid class to the Sacramento Young Marines. They were all between the ages of 8-12 and were a lot of fun. I taught the airway management, choking and how/when to dial 911 sections. I worked with some of the younger kids and we had a blast splinting each other and learning head tilt/chin lifts (sounds a whole lot like my EMT skills class!).
Today I worked a 2am to 10am shift with CERT at the Citrus Heights Community Campout. My little body definitely doesn't like getting up that early (1am came way too soon!), but it was a lot of fun. I got to work with some new people and met a really cute little boy. His name was Bubba and he's 2 years old. I gave him a fire badge and as I got up to leave he yelled for me to come back for kisses... he gave me a great big wet kiss on the cheek followed by a high five. A little later in the morning he burned his little hand on the grill, so he came back over and I got to put some ice on him:
Moments after this picture was taken he leaned over, practically pulled my shirt off and asked where my badge was. Not awkward at all. :)
It was a great weekend, but I'm definitely ready for bed! I spent the afternoon taking a short nap and then heading to the gym so that I'm nice and tired for bed tonight as I have to leave early for Houston tomorrow. Hooray!
This was a much needed three day weekend - I'm finally feeling rested and ready to go - it's been a while since I've felt "caught up"!
On Friday I hung out at Mom and Dad's - Shadow had the most fantastic time swimming with Darcy and Tucker! I was hoping that all of the running, swimming and playing would poop him out and he would sleep through the fireworks. More on that later. Mom and Dad had Fran and Chuck over and we had a declicious BBQ - nothing says it's summer like chicken, corn and pasta salad!
Mom, Fran and I headed out to the Folsom Rodeo - I got tickets through work. I'm not gonna lie, it's not the best rodeo in the world. In fact, none of the bull riders stayed on the bulls for the full 8 seconds. Most of them were bucked off in about 2. I did get to watch the Folsom Fire Paramedics hard at work - they had a few people in the stands that needed attention and a cowboy who took a nasty fall. My favorite part on that one was the announcers medical play by play ("Ladies and Gentlemen, as you can see, they're putting the collar on. This is just a precaution in the event of a spinal injury"). My favorite part of the whole rodeo was the parachuter that they had - he's done over 5,000 jumps and specializes at landing in small spaces, while pulling a gigantic American flag behind him. As he came down, they played "God Bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood - the ENTIRE stadium was singing along and the whole thing gave me goosebumps. I managed to get some pretty cool video of it:
After the rodeo ended, they did a nice little fireworks display and we headed home. For those of you who missed out on last year's play by play, I had just adopted Shadow and thought I would take him out to see the fireworks, to get him used to it. The whole thing ended up being a total nightmare - he barked and went completely insane and I ended up having to go home. This year I decided to put him in his crate in my room with some music on since I know lots of people do fireworks in my neighborhood. The plan worked brilliantly - when I got home from the rodeo, he was totally calm and happy to see me. I then made the mistake of letting him out into the backyard. At which point some neighbor down the street decided to set off a piccalo pete (Shadow's absolute FAVORITE) and he went nuts. It was all downhill from there. The neighbors did fireworks until 2am and he barked the entire time. I even put him back in his crate with music on, but by then he was all worked up. I ended up sleeping in my guest room.
I had to work a CERT event the next morning at 9am - which amazingly, I was not exhausted for. It was a nice event - nothing really major happened and I got to show a lot of little kids the ambulance. It was still exhausting... I think it was being in the sun and being tired that all hit me on the drive home. I ended up going to bed at about 9pm.
Today was fantastic - I slept in, went to the mall, and took a nap. Shadow got a walk and got to play ball in the yard. Tonight I decided to give him a treat, so I mixed some peas and carrots (from my dinner) into his dog food. Being the genius that he is, he took a mouthful, spit it out on the floor and then sorted through for the peas and carrots. Eventually, he ate the rest of it, but he took his time. Crazy little dog.
Today the CERT team worked an event at a local park. I was quite nervous that we were going to have a lot of heat related issues due to the fact that it was well into the 100's today. I packed my little ice chest with cold compresses and hauled myself out into the heat. The first few hours were not much of anything - some cuts, a bee sting... the normal. Towards the end of the day, we had someone come by telling us that we had a woman laying on the other side of the park that didn't look well. So we grabbed our stuff and headed over (why does the little girl always end up carrying the O2 tank?). As it turns out, this woman was in some serious trouble - heat, diabetes, a possible heart condition and shortness of breath. We started packing her with ice and called into the local fire dispatch to get someone over. I got her on the oxygen and we kept trying to cool her off. She was a large woman, so I had to cut her shirt to get to her armpits (we like to pack your neck, armpits and groin when you're overheated - it's the best way to safely cool you off quickly). When the paramedics arrived, they took her blood sugar and it was at 415, dangerously high (normal is 80-120). All a very bad combination. She was having a very hard time breathing and was not looking good when we got there. I'm fairly certain that without medical intervention, she would have been headed down a very bad road!
That said, we saved her. The paramedics packaged her up and took her off the the hospital.
Just as a refresher - here's my little list of things to do in my lifetime... one more checked off today!
Now, after all the fun and games today, I headed home to cook some dinner and relax. Long story short, I dropped a knife on the stove while adding some onions to my spaghetti sauce. Through some feat of phyics (I've since dubbed it "culinary acrobatics" the knife managed to bounce off the stovetop and slice me across my knuckle. The first thought that went through my head was "WHOA! How did THAT happen?!". The second was "Oh $&@!, I'm bleeding!". At this point, the EMT kicked in and I started working on myself one handed. Of course, the cut was on my right hand, so I had to practice being a leftie. After going through a bunch of gauze, three band-aids and 20 minutes of my time, I was finally able to get it to stop. Crazy!
We've had some serious grass fires up here and on Tuesday night I was given the chance to help out. Our CERT team was called up to assist the firefighters who had been out on the lines for 6+ hours. Our team hadn't been used in this capacity before, but I'm proud to say we stepped up and really made a difference.
I arrived at the high school that was designated as our operations center at 6pm - over the next hour or so, 15 other CERT members showed up. We were tasked with setting up a center for the firefighters who were coming off the fire to eat, drink and rest. We had lots of donated water, Gatorade, soda and sandwiches to prepare and ice down before the first crews started coming in. A little later in the evening, the Salvation Army arrived and began cooking some delicious beef stew that was a real hit! I had a firefighter thank me at about 10:30pm - he said his crew hadn't had food since noon that day and they were not expecting to have a hot meal!
I worked until about 12:30am before finally having to go home (Wednesday was a work day after all!). I can't even begin to put into words what a wonderful feeling it was to be able to help in some small way!
One thing that amazes me is how little some people think of firefighters. Our local newspaper allows readers to leave comments about the stories online - and of course, these fires are pretty big news. I am blown away at how many people think that the firefighters are getting recognition they don't deserve or that they're not heros for doing what they do. These men (and a few women!) were dirty, exhausted, hungry, thirsty and still willing to put their lives on the line to save a perfect stranger or to save someone's home. Tell the captain that has second and third degree burns that he doesn't deserve recognition. I honestly can't believe how ignorant and selfish some people are.
Ok, off my soapbox. I'm super excited about tomorrow - for those of you who don't know, I took a job with a local ambulance company that does on scene standby medical. Tomorrow is my very first paying job! I'm really excited because it will get me a pretty broad range of trauma and medical experience!
Busy weekend? Yup!
On Friday I got my new phone, a Blackberry Curve. I absolultely love it! For those of you who don't know my cell phone woes, my third BlackJack was doing all sorts of funny things, like flashing forward to 2011. Meaning all of my alarms would go off. Yeah, it was fun. The Blackberry is actually way more intutive and the calendar/reminder features are much cooler. There's still a lot more for me to learn about it, but as of now, I'm super happy!
Saturday was the Fair Oaks Spring Fest. I worked standby medical aid with CERT. It was a blast - we didn't have much more to do than hand out some band aids (that's a good thing, I guess!) but the event was really cool. They had a toilet bowl race in which they basically take real toilets, put them on wheels and race on them:
Yeah, I thought it was pretty funny too. The weather was beautiful and we had the chance to talk to a lot of people about our team and what we do! Here are some more pictures:
And finally, today was my EMT skills test. Now, not to brag, but I have a pretty decent grade in my class. So decent that I could pretty much fail the final and still pass the class. Today's test, however, was pass fail. We had to do two patient assessments (one medical, one trauma) and a series of skills (childbirth, splinting, airway management, backboarding, etc). Even with my high grade and if I passed the final, you can't get through the class without passing the skills. The scary part was that there are what are called "critical fails" - basically, a couple of steps in each of those processes that are automatic fails. It was pretty stressful, but I'm proud to say I passed all of the tests with flying colors! Our study group went out for drinks and dinner afterward - all of us passed! There were people in our class that didn't! Now all I have left is the written final on Wednesday and the NREMT test (that's the national test) sometime after that. I can't wait to get it all done!
I'm off to go lay on the sofa... I'm SO tired!
One of the people I work with on the CERT team sent out a video of us that was shown on the local news! Lo and behold, there I am, on the bus wrapping our patient's "bleeding" arm before we transported her. Yes, Mom, note that I have gloves on, even though it's a "fake" patient!
In other fun news, yesterday we did a pretty cool team builder at work. We went out to help with the Sacramento Tree Foundation. There's this beautiful purple vine that strangles the local baby trees... we put on our best blue jeans and work gloves and yanked that crap out of the ground! Let me tell you, that stuff grows thick and tall. There were six foot tall trees that were completely overgrown... we had to actually wade into the stuff to get to it! Definite hard work, but well worth it when we looked back at all the trees we saved!
This weekend I went to Clovis with my CERT Team... it was amazing! This was a disaster drill that focused on what we would do if we were deployed out to an area (for example, if we were sent to the Bay Area after an earthquake). The simulation was that a major earthquake devastated the area, and the Clovis team called in mutual aid.
We met up at the fire station on Saturday morning (at 6:30am!) to check out our gear and get on the road. We met up with some of the other local CERT teams in our area an started a massive convoy down to Clovis. It was a long drive, especially since between all of the agencies we had two ambulances, four trailers, two vans and a ton of pickup trucks. It was impressive seeing us roll down the freeway! I was asked to be a squad leader, so I was handed a radio for the weekend and assigned to be communications for one of the vans. It was a blast - we just learned about radio protocol in my EMT class last week, so it was really neat to be able to practice those skills! I was in charge of two other people and we were a fantastic team (woot woot for squadran 1!).
We arrived in Clovis around 1ish and began to set up our sleeping quarters. They had a local church that was willing to let us take over one of their buildings - we set cots up for around 125 people! After making sure our base was all set, they divided the group into two teams. I was in the first team sent over to the disaster site. Upon arriving, we were formed into teams and sent out with specific tasks. I was assigned to a search and rescue team. Again, I credit the Clovis CERT team with some amazing set up - they had real vehicle fires, buildings in shambles and used their police acadamy as our victims (they had fantastic makeup and really played up their roles). I was sent over to a vehicle accident caused by the earthquake that was a bus vs. a minivan. We got the walking wounded out and then focused on extrication of the critical patients. The EMT skills sessions really paid off... I was the only one on the team with training, so I took over and we successfully transferred the patients to the medical area for treatment. It was such a blast and was really cool working with people that were not on my Metro CERT team.
I was then sent to help another team get someone out of a building that had partially collapsed. We had to crawl through this TINY tunnel with a folding stretcher and then over some water barrels to get to her, but we were able to save that one too - with a whole lot of stopping, adjusting and wiggling back out through the tunnel.
This morning we woke up bright an early (6am!) cleaned up the church and headed over to the site to clean up. After we were done, the fire chief said they had a surprise... right around the corner from us (in fact, AT our staging area) was the Pelco headquarters. They played a huge role in supporting victims of September 11th and happen to have the California Memorial right there at their headquarters. We were invited to take a tour and spend some time there - it was really neat to see it because we're really training to help people in those kind of situations, whether it's a terrorist attack, an earthquake or a flood. It was especially cool since some of the firefighters that run our team were sent to New York just after the attacks happened to help with the rescue efforts.
Here are some pictures of the flag and outside memorial (I didn't take picutures inside the museum):
Here's our Sac Metro CERT team... I'm so proud to work with these people!
I will be getting more pictures as people get home and download them... I took my camera this weekend and really didn't have much time to take pictures - I was so busy running around and looking out for my squad! I know that we had some serious photographers there, and our Captain is going to get CDs with pictures for all of us, so as soon as I have those, I'll post them.
Today did not disappoint either!
First of all, rather than being cloudy and mellow, like yesterday, it was clear and incredibly windy. The ended up grounding parts of the show (the parachuter's, for example) that were too dangerous to do, but almost everything else went up again.
We had some interesting patients come through today - two pregnant ladies who fainted (not at the same time), a diabetic who hadn't eaten all day, someone who had something in their eye (I did the eye wash by myself!), an autistic boy who was given his nighttime medicine instead of his daytime medicine by accident and a woman who was having an allergic reaction to a medication she was on. Today I worked with three EMTs, so it was really great to get their advice and watch them work. They let me do a lot of stuff (hooray for practicing my vitals!) and kept quizzing me with little scenarios. Here's our crew (that's our cool little cart right behind us that we haul people on backboards around in):
I also got to see stuff I didn't yesterday. I finally got to see the helicoptors showing off the guys that hang by a little line to rescue people (my head trauma guy hit the deck about that time yesterday) and I got to take a trip over to the C5:
Let me tell you, that is a BIG airplane! They let us walk right through it... it's enormous! The fire captain I was working with said that he was one of the firefighters that flew to New York just after 9/11... and it was on one of these - they were one of four planes allowed in the air. I can't imagine riding in one for that long!
This weekend was incredibly amazing. I'm really sad to see it over - I absolutely love the work we did and I feel like I made a big difference, even if for only a little while in a few people's lives. I will definitely be back at the air show next year and will try to attend anything that CERT medics at! I have tons of pictures from the whole weekend... send me a note if you want to see them!
Today I got to treat my first patient!
Let me start at the beginning. Our CERT team has worked the medical tents for the last two years and the EMS folks love it because it it allows them to go off and do all their other jobs. We love it because we get to practice our medical skills. We got to park at the sheriff's hanger and hang out with just about every law enforcement agency on the planet! After our morning briefing, we headed out to the flight line to our tents. We staffed two this year - I was Medical Tent #2. Here's our crew:
Notice that we have some really cool vests on - they're brand new. We get issued them when we're out on assignment and they hold just about everything! We got radios (the cool kind that have the little clips on your shoulder like the police have) and got to hear the radio traffic all day. The police were out on all sorts of fun stuff... they had their own special little segways that were outfitted with lights and sirens, the motorcycle officers and even the mounted police:
Before the show started, Lucinda and I took a little trip around all the planes that were parked... there were some pretty neat aircraft out there!
It was definitely cool getting to walk around and see all of the different planes (note my red medical bag... that will come in handy later). It was really neat to go inside the C130 (I can't remember if that's what it really is) - they let us look in the cockpit and go back where all the soldiers sit. When the gates finally opened, we had a few people come by for the normal stuff - bandaids, water, etc. Our first medical patient came in after something flew into her eye. We flushed it out using saline, put on a patch and sent her on her way.
At around 11:15am, we got a real medical call. Someone came running towards our tent yelling that a man had collapsed. I grabbed our trusty red bag (told you it would come in handy) and took off running towards the man. He was a diabetic who had passed out and cracked his head open when he hit the tarmac. I was all goved up and immediately put him in manual c-spine (for those of you who don't know, that means manually holding his head and neck in place until we could backboard and collar him). Mark (who's already an EMT) took his pulse. I talked to the guy and tried to get information out of him, but he was very disoriented. We radio'd for the bike paramedics (we had firefighter paramedics that were assigned to our team - they rode around the show all day on bikes with their equipment strapped to the back). They came and started working on him - taking blood pressure and trying to get him to talk. We decided that we needed to transport him to the hopsital, so we backboarded him. The good news is that my EMT training kicked in and I took control of the backboarding process (for those of you who don't know, the person at the head is always the boss - they're the one holding the most critical part of the body, so they tell everyone else when to roll, etc). I was told later that I had a great instinct and did a fantastic job with the call. We got him boarded, placed on our golf cart (the fire department has it outfitted so that the whole right side of the cart can hold a backboarded patient - we're able to get them out to the ambulence much easier than trying to get the ambulence in to them). I was totally shaking by the time we were done... this is the first real patient I have worked on! I actually liked being at the head because it gave me a chance to listen to the paramedics ask their questions and watch them at work. I asked everything they did!
I also did get to see the airshow. :) In between all the medical stuff, of course. Here's a video of this really cool plane that can take off and hover like a helicoptor! This is it going backwards... it was cool because it could go all directions!
Here's the Blue Angels:
Here's a really cool picture of the Blue Angels... it was overcast for part of today, and the sun glinted off these at just the right time... it looked so beautiful!
What a fantastic day! I can't wait to go back tomorrow!
