Morning. I’m going to go watch the unofficial Canes practice, then do laundry.
There was a running joke in VWife’s family that she could cause a hurricane. It seemed that whenever she would go visit her dad on the Gulf coast, there would be a hurricane. The first time I met her dad, in September 1988, VunderKind was a strapping 6 month old baby, her dad lived in Biloxi, MS, and I had company business in Meridian, a couple hours north. I took the whole family along,
We flew into Florence, and when we left, Gilbert was visible to the south, getting ready for his murderous run on Mexico. A couple of years later, we went to a family reunion of sorts out in southern California, and she broke a drought/
It seems that VunderKind not only inherited her talent but added to it. Last weekend, when he decided that he was coming to visit for a long weekend, we went from nothing in the way of tropical weather to 3 tropical storms, one of which became a hurricane, after we booked his flights. Not only that, but he ended a quiet spell for the emergency services in Cottonfield County. The original title for this tale was Mass Casualty Incidents, Real and Imagined.
As always, part of the deal was I had to take him as a ride-along on an ambulance shift. VWife had a fit over the idea of us doing the usual 12 hour stint, so when the opportunity to do the medical watch at the high school football opener, I jumped, because it’s only the time involved with the game. I also knew we were having a mass casualty drill, and he was volunteered as a victim.
He arrived with little fanfare around noon on Thursday. VWife had airport duty, and we all met for lunch 'cuz I was working the day job.
Firday morning, VWife had to go to Hampton for a doctor’s appointment, so being guys like we are, we practiced our slothing techniques around the lair while she was gone. Around 11 AM, my pager went off, for a wreck on the other side of Pixley with unknown injuries. He looked at me and asked, “Are we going?”
“Heck yeah. Put the dogs away.” VunderKind nearly swallowed his head grinning with delight.
The scene was about 5 miles from the house, and we were first on the scene. I started looking for patients, and soon was up to my ass in them. The windshield had two impact points, both of the head-sized, so I was VERY WORRIED. Head traumas are an automagic helicopter ride.
The first patient was sitting in the sliding side door of the van, being tended to by a bystander RN. She was quite out of it, but that was explained by her suffering 2 seizures in short order. I gave her a quick exam, and found nothing of immediate concern. Cool, so I asked where the driver was. She was identified, and out walking around. Another exam showing bumps, and I asked about hitting the windshield. No humans hit, the breaks were from objects.
“Who else was in the van?” I asked loudly. “Me”, “Me”, Me, too…" :eek: This was answered 5 more times, so I had seven patients to deal with. What is this, a freaking clown car? I reported to the crew en route about the driver, the lady in the door, and the sheer number of people involved. Off go another round of pages for more ambulances, the Emergency Management Director, and the Pixley Fire department. I also completely missed the other car in the process, with 2 more patients.
It was bedlam for a while. Eventually we even had an ambulance from Hertford County and one from the local private service. VunderKind and I ended up dealing with the four kids and one aunt who was sixty-ish. He was great, too. Took notes for me without question, and did an excellent job keeping the children quiet.
The direction came from our medical supervisor that everyone gets spinal immobilization and transport to Bugtussel. :rolleyes: I can understand erring on the side of caution, but this bordered on ridiculous. Ten boards came out, and 4 units transporting. The ER just loved us for the patient blizzard. “You know, there are other hospitals to transport to…” Yeah, 30 miles in the other direction.
Just as we were leaving for the hospital with the aunt and an 8 year old boy (“Can you run the sirens? That’ll be sooooo cool!”), another page for another wreck, close to the VunderLair. The dispatcher made a big goof, too, and said over the air that it was a fatality. It was not a good day for us.
VunderKind and I cleared our run and scene, and decided we’d drop by the other scene to rubberneck. It was a fatality involving a neighbor we never met, and we could see skidmarks in the road where she traveled 100 yard sideways to hit a tree sideways with the driver’s door. She never had a chance. I found out last night she had a heart attack, causing the wreck; her foot stuck on the gas pedal. The speedometer was frozen by the impact a 70 MPH. :sad:
it was sobering. The Rugrat and I got home, and we both slept a while in the afternoon before doing fun stuff and watching Balls of Fury. Much pizza was et.
We went to bed. Around 11 PM came yet another call. CPR in progress at the old folk’s warehouse. I didn’t take him along. That trip was another unhappy ending.
No runs Saturday.
Sunday was our big event, a mass casualty exercise. The training officer caught a lot of grief for holding it. “Why have an MCI drill, when we had the real thing Friday?”.
VunderKind was one of the victims, along with several of the juniors. The exercise was a tornado, and we had 11 patients to tend to, 9 humans and 2 Rescue Randys. There was a pregnant lady with trauma and in labor, one dummy was hanging from a grain bin, another under an overturned tractor, my kid was impaled by a pole, a crazy nonagenarian who was not taking her psych meds, and the husband of the pregnant woman running around refusing his treatment to get his wife treated, among others.
My unit was first on the scene, and we were a crew of three. The other two went off to survey, and I called out “Everyone who can walk, come to me.” It’s the first step in field triage.
Billy the EM director saw this and said, “You know, that’s a really good idea” in the general direction of the training officer. She did an immediate :dubious:.
“I certainly hope so, Billy. You taught him that in the triage class.” <snerk>
I wound up getting involved with the rescue of the dummy pinned under the tractor. He was critically injured in the scenario, and I had to wait for the rescue guys set up for a heavy lift operation to get him out. Somewhere Billy has a picture of my ass sticking up while I crawled underneath to start an IV. He said that one will be in Facebook soon…
There was not much I could do for my patient except the IV and oxygen until he was extricated, and that took a while. When we finally had the tractor off of him, we pulled him straight onto a backboard, only to find a coiled hydraulic hose in his crotch with a little paper fanged face, and a note that said “Copperhead!”
Billy: “OK, Bob. What are you going to do?”
Me: “Someone get me a fire extinguisher NOW!” Billy gave me points for original thinking.
My patient went to the fictional helicopter for transport, but finally died en route. I was not surprised.
VunderKind was another fatality. He was impaled through a shoulder, and the rescue crew pulled the pole out, which would cause an immediate bleed out.
All in all, we did good. The chaos we encountered was real, and I can testify to that from the Firday wreck. Mistakes were made, some corrected, some not. The kind playing the noncompliant hubby was a real ham, and even carried his act onto the dummy hanging from the grain bin. If you’d gotten here sooner, my Dad would still be alive!" The dummy was dead on our arrival, BTW.
Another weekend in the books where there was not a lot of slothing to be had. My kid was there, and that was fine. We both enjoyed the excitement.
It’s a good thing I wasn’t playing the pregnant woman, cos if I had and I hadn’t been unconscious, I would have been trying to sit on the hubby to let y’all treat him 
Yesterday The Hordie mentioned he’s been watching Dr Who, a friend got him into it. Today I went for a walk and found this. I love it when stuff like that happens 
Sounds like an exciting weekend, VBob! Glad VunderKind had a good time.
There were storms here early this morning so I’ve been awake since before 5. Yippee. I came in to work half an hour early and I’ve gotten some stuff done, which is good. And I’m doing ok right now, but I’m guessing about 3 this afternoon, it’s going to get pretty hard to keep my eyes open. ::yawn::
We picked up a smoked duck at the farmers’ market over the weekend and heated half of it last night. It was good - like ham and duck together. Nice with some mustard on it.
I just had to respond to this. VunderBob, those trainers are sneaky.
When I did a mass-casualty training incident a while back, it was a ‘bomb in the abortion clinic’ scenario. We were at a local firehouse training center.
We went in and started triaging patients. I was the one to find two 2-liter Coke bottles taped together with a watch tied between the tops, and a note taped to the front that said, “Secondary incendiary device!” sitting under a desk, near a ‘patient.’ We had to grab our patients and skedaddle out quickly.
Oh, and hi all. I haven’t been around much for the MMPs lately.
Bibs, dear! How the hell are you?
Sneaky was right. I saw the hose, and didn’t think snake. We just pulled a guy from a wrecked tractor, and I thought the hose was a real hose at first.
Freud said “Sometimes a hose is just a hose”
So what was the extinguisher for? Were you planning to crush the snake right there on the poor victim’s crotch, or were you thinking to blast it off?
There is one thing I won’t miss in Charlotte. I’m assuming there’s a relative lack of bums, vagrants and panhandlers there.
I’m walking down the street to my office this morning, and an older woman flags me down and says she needs me to buy her a cup of coffee and a donut because she’s pregnant. Ummm… how long ago did you hit menopause?
CO[sub]2[/sub], and turn it into a vipersicle.
bobbio, that must have been a delicate operation (the hose next to the hose). <snerk>
First winston and now bibbie. Wow! Next thing you know, welby will drop in. 
I’m very busy today and don juanna keeps whispering in my ear.
Tupug
Second looooong day at work is over. I have no desire to be back at work at all and no motivtion to do any work. I miss my Hubby.
I am going to head home I may eat ice cream or chocolate or both when I get there 
Oops. No CO[sub]2[/sub] here - just dry powder, so shoot the snake with it, roll it in flour, bake and make snakebiscuits*.
TVCTPMO is in full effect out here today. Just tons and tons of stupid is coming into my email and even worse insanity is in my trouble ticket queue. “Something has changed on this ID” reads one ticket. Um, what’s the ID and can you give me a clue of what something is?" “Is this go through” came to me in an instant conference. Is not!
- I was once “bequeathed” a cubic foot box of fire extinguisher filling. I read the label and found it was something like 99% sodium bicarb and 1% other stuff (might have been talc) to keep it from caking up. Not knowing the environmental effects of putting 50 pounds of the stuff into the landfill, it instead went to the household hazmat collectors.
Oh, can it be? Yes! First on Second.
And take a left on Right Street.
Seriously, who in their right mind sends out a meeting invite literally two minutes before the meeting is scheduled to start? Even assuming everyone actually checks their email as soon as it comes in (something I don’t make a habit of doing), the likelyhood of them being able to drop what they’re doing right then and there to dial into the bridge is pretty damn low.
Sigh.
In other news, I bought a super-awesome retro 70s coffee pot at Goodwill during my lunch break. It’s mustard yellow pottery and it’s gor-gee-ous. Best $4.99 purchase EVER.
Also… smoked duck is Teh YUM!
That is all.
Argh. Nat has decided that he is Too Good to Nap today.
Argh. I need to sleep.
Uh oh, Muppet, now you gotta watch that smoked duck around your kitties!
Happy Tuesday all! I had my appt. with the podiatrist bright and early this morning. All looks okay with the toesies, although the one was a bit ingrown; hopefully I will not have to lose the nail. And she cut all my nails, yay! She also explained that the curly nails are probably genetic–I know my Mom had problems like that as she aged. And apparently my feet do look pretty good and the pulse points (is that right?) in them all feel good and strong. Good news for pre-diabetic/diabetic.
Sending sleepy vibes to Nat, hope that helps out some, LiLi. Emmmms, so glad to hear that you and hubby had a great vacation. Yay for Rigs meeting going well! Puggy, sending good thoughts your way.
I know I’m forgetting others - I apologize. 
Hugs and good thoughts to those who need them.
The baseball bat did the trick. Or maybe it was the gin?
See, LiLi? If you’d just listened to me when I told you to get him hooked on heroin all those months ago, you wouldn’t be in this situation right now.
tarra, I gotta watch the kittehs around all sorts of things. Especially Ariel the Wondercat, who will filch random foods like chickpeas and corn when you’re not looking. That’s on top of the episodes which have involved her rolling around on cutting boards that have been used for meat, licking leftover grease out of frying pans, dragging an entire pork loin around the house, pulling discarded meat packaging out of the trash to chew on, and generally just being a menace in the kitchen.
How a five pound furrball can wreak such havoc is beyond me. 
Howdy Y’all! Home from [del]the bowels of hell[/del] work. I’s hongry and all alone tonight. I might just go up the street and get me a Subway sammich cause I don’t wanna make anything.
mmmmmm’s it’s not chocolate or ice cream. It’s chocolate and ice cream. Have we taught you nothing?!?!?
LiLi a little scotch in the applesauce works everytime.
Muppet I am not a big fan of duck but I will admit it is teh num smoked.
Ummm… gotti stoopid and work email are the same thing. Just sayin’.
BBBobbio glad the visit with Vunderkind went well. I like the pregnant woman’s husband’s hammin’ it up. That’d be what I’d do. I’d also be all like, “Where’s my little FiFi! Life will end if you don’t find my precious little toy poodle!” Or, “Can y’all tell me if the tornado got that S.O.B. neighbor, cause that’d be a good thing.” Yeah, I know, I’d never be invited to play again.
Gasp! A Haze and a Bibkitty sighting! It’s a fine day for rare Mumper watchin’!
Can we add to the list of What Not to Ask People (the list that includes “Are you pregnant?”) “Do you have a cold?” I get that (the cold question, not the preggies question!) way more often than I’d like. I don’t know if I have a nasal voice or a smoker’s voice or what, but something makes people think that I sound like I have a cold, and I Really.Don’t.Like.It.
There’s regular stupid. I’m used to the regular stupid. But the level of stupid expressed in these support tickets is horrifying.
“I don’t get the downdrop” - the what? Presumably, they can’t see some sort of drop-down menu. So now I need to play 20 Questions and coax their ID out of them as well as what system they’re in, and eventually sort out who the ticket really needs to go to as I don’t support drop-down menus.
“My ID still doesn’t work” - Gee, I can log in just fine with your ID and the new password I set for you. Should I ask your manager to get with you and make sure you’re actually logging into the right thing? Wow, they smarted right up! :dubious:
A college friend, who is now a doctor, used to teach me first aid things here and there - he’d been volunteering since early in high school. One thing that sticks in my mind is “Never remove an impaled object from the body, unless it’s in the [facial] cheek.” (I emphasized the word in print to indicate the emphasis he would put on it as he said it.) You’d like him, I think, and vice versa.
Tell you what - call me sometime and leave me a voice mail - I’ll tell you what the stoopits are hearing. If it’s any consolation, I’ve always thought Tom Brokaw has asthma - he always sounds like he’s using his last breath to speak.