Closer to home

First let me apologize for the last 2 post being published late, just meant to write/add to them later and ended up forgetting that they were not published. Anyways this happened last night, my family and I were up at my aunt's house and my dad told me that he was having chest pain pointing to his left side. I was naturally concerned as my dad is well on in years and has high cholesterol, anyways, he described his pain as coming and going and tried to see if his pain was reproducible and thus maybe not cardiac but this wasn't the case he didn't look like any of the people that I had ever seen having a mci before, he was very calm and his vitals that I could take were all normal. But at the same time older people may not feel their pain as strongly and since we were only a couple minutes from the fire station that I work at, I offered to take my dad up to there to get a quick EKG. It is a whole different ball game when its family, it had nothing to do with how serious it was because I wasn't terribly concerned because he really wasn't exhibiting any other signs/symptoms, when we got to the station I just wasn't a very good EMT, I put the leads on my dad but I didn't really do all the other things I normally do like try to tell him to stay very still during when were running the EKG. Of course everything turned out fine I was just very surprised at myself I just didn't feel like I usually do on scenes, I never really understood why people say you shouldn't treat family, I always thought well it be easier for me to talk to them and for them to me. There was just something paralyzing about it that made me not act as well as I could have.

Taking the meaning home with you.

11/25-Today while driving to U of H to pick up my girlfriend, Shinthia, I stopped at a light and there was a man that was going door to door knocking on windows and generally being ignored as is unfortunately the typical response in this world. I was about to do the same thinking he was begging for money, but as he was turning away from my window I stopped and "rolled" my window down, (now that we don't physcially roll our windows down is that still the term? I wonder if that would even make sense to a person born recently) and I called out to him. He stopped and quickly told me his story, he was a diabetic several walking miles from home and a could feel himself a bit low in his blood sugar. He explained that his place was only several miles down the road. Since I was headed down the same way to U of H I agreed to give this elder man a lift. This isn't my first time doing this in fact several years ago a similar thing happened actually in a similar part of town but not the same guy. Anyways I accepted and it was it was almost dejavu from my last hitchhiker, we talked about the missing kindness to strangers that used to exist but was gone from this modern world. He wished me well for my future, and he went inside his house. What made me so happy about this occasion was that I haven't changed I was glad and proud of myself that this part of me had not been turned off or become jaded from the rough environment that I work in. It is so easy to say that it I do my duty at my job and that is my limit and anything outside of that is just beyond your "scope of practice" as it were. But I was just glad to know that so far so good and I intend to keep it that way.

Thankful for Quiet Days

Today was a quiet day not to say I wasn't busy. Today was the firefighter recruit class graduation and the ceremony took place at station 1. So we had did alot of house work and cleaning the place up. A great deal of pomp and circumstance went into the event and we moved all the apparatuses out. In the bay we set up all the tables and layed out the food. Most importantly absolutley nothing happened during the party/celebration. No calls dropped, no patient walked up to the station. Even the weather was great. A great thanksgiving.