I’m doing a search for an ER doc on when should the lights and sirens be used on ambulances and Ikeep saying “bambalance” in my head. Thank you Boobio. Or is that Bobbio?
The use of lights and sirens is at the discretion of the the crew chief first, and the driver second. Been there and done that.
The term is bambilance, for my former penchant for hitting deer with my ambulance.
At least there was medical help nearby.
Boobio! HAH!! But to be precise, it’s BBBobbio, tho for the life of me I can’t recall what the first 2 Bs are for.
I’m wasting time while allegedly taking training on line. The training sucks and the trainer has an odd accent and lots of verbal quirks. I’m outta here in 3 minutes.
I think I’ll need to re-post a coupla relevant stories tonight.
I hear ya MOOOOOOM we have some online trainin’ stuff from time to time. There’s this one “trainer” I cannot understand at all. Fortunately, I found out there’s a captionin’ alternative so I turn that on and turn the audio off. I also learned that I can click on the “test” portions and just take the dang test until I pass it. I learn as much doin’ that as goin’ through the trainin’.
Grilled poke chops, oven roasted N.O.T., peas 'n carrots and rolls for dindin. YUM!
Home. We’re having teriyaki poke chops, rice, and some veggie matter - depends on what I yank out of the freezer. **FCD **is napping. I’m waiting for my daughter to get here. Very glad tomorrow is Firday.
That’s all I’ve got.
This morning I got all of my Christmas cards sent off. Most of them are for Doper kids.
If I can’t be happy this holiday season, I figure that I can at least try to make others happy. 
Very cool thing to do EmG! Kiddies lurve to get mail and Christmas cards are da bomb!
Dindin was good if’n I do say so myself. 
The orifice has decided what to do by way of a holiday gatherin’. Everyone who wants will bring in an appetizer thingy which will be N.O.L.. December 20th to be exact. Plus also, we will do breakfast that mornin’. We’ll bring stuff in and some of us, yes, I did volunteer, will cook. Aigs, bacon, sausage, grits, bizkits, pancakes, the works! This is the kind of orifice thing I can get on board with. Or should that be with which I can get on board?
didn’t read. very blurfy. my .sig all around.
Home yeah, the vehicle operators here in Houston once again did not, despite their best efforts, kill me while I was on my motorcycle coming from band practice. Practice was kinda meh. Thinking about din din and drinks.
Have a great one all
Jim
Poor kid.
Mrs. Plant v.3.0 has agreed to endure my brisket if I will endure her matzoh ball soup. She bought a box of Manchevitz (sp). I hope she will learn the truth, although she likes matzoh.
I managed to duck out early, so it’s martinis and steak for dinner.
swampy, I like cramming aigs and bacon in my orifice.
Yay MG!
BBBobbio, I do miss the rescue stories. Hockey Lady:) is an ex-EMT.(I’ve been promised proper mouth to mouth if I stop breathing. ;))
FCM, I’ve had my tree up since November 30th…2002. It’s not sloth, it’s Tradition!.
sari, :eek: Your neighbor must be one of my customers.
I just got so sleepy and I have been working so hard today since I got up at 8 that I haven’t taken a shower, brushed my teeth, or done the dishes. I am officially a dirty rotten work-a-holic slob 
Home from school. Tired. Sitting on the couch surrounded by many Schnoodles.
On the origin of BBBobbio:
How I got my Rescue Squad nickname
Iff’n I bore you with my stories of firefighting and EMS, read no further. I’ll address the social obligations in a different post.
I need to set up the story a bit. Steve (his real first name) is the town barber. If I was thinking clearer, I shoulda dubbed him Floyd since I live in Mayberry . He’s my age, as big as I am, and one of the top 10 nicest guys I’ve ever met. In his youth, he was a member of the Mayberry rescue squad, back in the days before there were national standards and certifications. He liked it so much that he spent 20 years or so in the Navy as a Corpsman (medic, for you landlubbers). The only reason he’s in the class is the requirement for class hours before taking the tests. He could do it all from memory and experience.
Bubba Jr. is the teenaged daughter of the same Bubba from the DOA story from last week. She frequently comes to the station to hang out while her dad is doing stuff, and therefore she winds up as the victim when we practice our stuff. For you horndawgs, she’s even cuter than Vanessa, and that takes some doing.
In class, we are done with the bookwork, and now spend our time working scenarios, or taking real runs. Last night was scenarios, and Steve and Bubba Jr. were picked as the actors.
The practice call was for a woman bleeding from the mouth. I was part of a group of 5 responders, and we had to evaluate and treat the patient. We get to the scene, and there’s a young woman sitting very quietly and in pain, while the husband hovers over her.
It’s quite tough to do a scenario because we go in larger groups, and there’s a tendency to want to stand around and pick your butt while you decide who does what. Signs and hints are much harder to pick up on when you’re pretending than in a real call.
One thing that is constantly beaten into our skulls is scene safety. This could be anything, from broken glass, hazardous materials, or humans. Being n00bs, we know the mantra, but most of the time when we do our scenarios, we ignore the signs. Like we did last night.
One woman in our group was designated the leader, precisely because she’s had no real life experience. We get to our victim, and she and I start working, while the rest stand back and pick their butts. Of course, we ignore the scene safety stuff, and try to work on our victim (Bubba Jr.). The husband (Steve) is acting funny. He got in the way, answered the questions we asked her, and was very agitated. She didn’t say anything but ouch when we found the theatric wounds. The warning bells should have gone off, but they didn’t.
I asked him several times to step back so we could work. I did a trauma check on the victim, and found a compound leg fracture. Bubba Jr. was wearing old clothes that we were told we could cut, so I started cutting one leg of her jeans to examine a spot. I found the fracture at the same time the leader found a back injury. We told the referee (the Chief, our instructor) that she was hurt badly enough that she needed to fly. At that point, the husband got to be a real PITA, and I noticed he had a clue by 4 handy. That’s when all those alarm bells I missed could no longer be ignored.
Husband: “She’s OK. She just fell and bit her tongue.”
Me: “Sir, please step back and let us work.”
The husband reaches down to that piece of 4X4 (IRL a piece of cribbing for stabilizing overturned vehicles), and I thought, this is not going to go well. I reached up and put the husband’s arm into a lock to take him down to the ground, a hapkido move I learned when I was in martial arts training.
Fortunately, Steve (the husband), knew enough of what I was doing and went along with it. He gave up. I heard a 3rd actor announce that he was a deputy on scene, and he ‘cuffed’ the husband.
We splinted and backboarded the ‘victim’, and pretended to load her into the imaginary helicopter.
Then we had to endure the critique. We got points for our techniques, although I was docked some for assuming the bleeding from the compound leg fracture was more serious than the back injury, which was broken vertebrae. Then we got raked over the coals for the scene safety thing.
“What was really the problem?”
“Domestic abuse.”
“Did you consider that when you got there?”
“No.”
“It’s far too easy as new EMTs to take things at face value, which you did. What you should have done was to have someone take the husband away from the area and question him about the incident and her medical history. That would have defused the situation. Did you see the club he had with him?”
Me: “I did, just before I restrained him.”
The chief’s eyes lit up. “And ol’ Bob wrassles him to the ground…”
Me: “Ol’ Bob has a black belt.”
The chief turned to one of the old-timers and said: “Kevin, write this down. He’s now going to be known forever as Black Belt Bob. Put it on his mailbox.” So let it be written, so let it be done.
He then told us that when Steve and Bubba Jr. were briefed, the intent was that the scenario was not to end well. The husband was supposed to go berserk and attack us all if we had not separated them like we were supposed to when we arrived, but they didn’t count on hand-to-hand combat.
My most spectacular ambulance vs. deer tale:
He’s Oh-tay!, May 2010
Memorial Day weekend comes around again, and had a rip-roaring start. I took Friday off, burning a vacation day because, well, I love four day weekends and I needed time off because I’m going bug-forking nuts.
I had let my plates expire on the pickup truck, so that was my big plan of the day before ambulance duty that night. VWife wanted me to go with her to the Suffolk Friends of the Library (otherwise known as ‘Old Women Without Lives’) book sale building and haul boxen for her. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t find a way out without starting a nuclear war.
As the saying goes, ‘the Lord will provide…’. As I was walking out the back door to put something in The Family Truckster (unrelated to the pickup truck, BTW), there was a page for a 2 vehicle wreck kind of close to home, so instinctively I looked in that direction.
“Hmmm. Traffic is backing up.”
“From both directions.”
“SONOFABITCH! It’s right there!”
It wasn’t ‘Five miles west of Mayberry’ as the page reported, it was a half mile across the field from my back door, making it about 2 and a half miles from the center of town. I got on the air real quick and corrected the location, then high-tailed it to the scene.
Two vehicles hit head on, winding up on their sides in a rather substantive ditch on the south side of the road. Nobody was pinned in the classic sense, but nobody was getting out of their cars on their own power through openings created by the manufacturers for that purpose, either. For the moment, I was in charge. I cancelled the helicopter because no one was critical, then called for the equipment truck because we had to extricate from both vehicles, and a second ambulance because there were 3 patients.
I wished I could have called for clean shoes, too, because when I jumped the ditch, I sank halfway to my knees in the mud, which then sucked the shoes off my feet when I tried to get out. :grrr:
There’s not much more to this story, except that I also got my first patient management experience. That’s a pucker worthy job, let me tell you. If there’s a way in, you’re supposed to be inside the vehicle with your patients while extrication is underway, and you’re the boss when they come out to go to the ambulance.
Imagine watching a fat guy pushing 50 climbing into an overturned car. I was surprised at how agile I was doing that, and I was with the two teenagers throughout. You don’t know scary until you see a saber saw blade come through the roof, inches from your body, and you have no way to move to get out of the way. That’ll stop up your asshole better than any dose of Imodium.
The kids got out; I don’t know what happened with the lady in the other car as far as getting her out, but she was first. My girl, the sister that was driving, was unhurt. The brother had a broken nose, and possible broken wrists. Head-on at a closing speed of at least 90 MPH, they could have been much worse.
I got home right about 9 AM, and VWife was gone to the OWWL building without me. Kewl. I cleaned off mud, got a shower, and gathered my paperwork, then headed off to Bugtussel for plates. I don’t know if my body could handle again a shock like what happened to me next.
I walked in, said I needed to renew, handed over my paperwork, paid cash for the plates, was handed the new registration and endorsement sticker and turned to leave. Elapsed time was, and I’m not bullshitting you the reader in any way, 30 seconds.
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
I had duty that night with Tollie, one of my favorite running partners. We had some administrative BS to take care of at the start of our shift, then headed off to one of the three eating establishments in Cottonfield County for the Firday catfish plate. As we neared the joint on a back road, I slowed down because there was a semi stopped, and it had the required hazard placards out. We rolled up, and asked the old black guy at the back end if he needed assistance. He replied that he had run out of fuel, and was waiting for someone to bring him some.
As we drove on, I glanced at the side of the cab, and broke out into hysterical laughter. Tollie looked at me like I was having a moment of insanity.
“Look at the door, dude.” He did, and saw the name of the company, then turned purple himself. Right there, in big script letters, ‘Buckwheat Trucking’.
Tollie: “Well, he said he was oh-tay!” We were still laughing when we walked in the door of the restaurant.
There was one call. I’m writing this a week later, so I don’t remember what the exact call was, but we hauled an invalid guy to a hospital to our south we don’t normally run to. It was a routine trip taking him, but not the return leg.
There is a closed prison camp between Mayberry and the rescue building, about a mile and a half from the station. While we were passing, there was a big brown blur followed by a
BANG!
that shook the ambulance. We hit a deer.
I called the dispatcher and reported the wreck, then we got out to look. The driver’s side headlight was not just missing, but more precisely amputated. The bumper was bent, and there was some damage on the passenger side from the torque on the bumper. We were marginally drivable, but out of service.
We found Bambi about 100 yards behind us, twitching in the roadside ditch. We called for a deputy or game warden to come shoot it, but the doe didn’t last very long. Then the harassment started. The Hooterville assistant chief asked if we needed a landing zone for the deer via text message, and someone else called on the radio to remind us we needed to run 30 seconds of a cardiac strip and to call the medical director before pronouncing the deer dead on scene.
I had another extra run Saturday night/Sunday morning, but I don’t even remember what that one was. The deer incident blurred that memory for all time…
Nice story Bob!
A day crazy enough to tell about at work.
Part 1 - we have a reletively new GM and he has been very busy trying to improve morale, team build, etc. The whole building is getting re-done (which is important in Part 2), winter gear with logos bought, etc.
Today an email went out saying there would be a Christmas decoration competition pitting floors against each other. That reminded me I hadn’t put lights on my truck like I do every year, so I ran out an hour ago and bought some. Truck now lit (strings of colored lights around the rooftop rack). It counts as 1st floor - that’s where Microwave garage is.
Part 2 - the funny part. I was in the newsroom working on an interesting local story we hope to bring to the DC region in the next few days when an associate producer came running in saying “There’s a leak! There’s a leak! It’s bad!”
After a few moments it became obvious it was not a gas leak but rather a burst water pipe. Or in fact a cut water pipe where the remodeling crew hit a fairly large pipe. I followed the crowd to the Green Room to see contracters scattering to pull equipment out of the way and water flowing down the newly recarpeted hallway.
After a few moments of amusement I thought “Hmm, that’s a lot of water. I wonder how bad it is downstairs?” so I wandered down to the 1st floor and around the corner to see water pouring from the ceiling onto more newly recarpeted floor. While everyone else in the building including our few maintenance guys were trying to deal with ground zero, one heroic tech was trying to mitigate this disaster. I helped her move some trash cans into place and move a sofa out of the way, then we peeked into the engineering office to see what was going on there.
Under ceiling tiles that were dripping and drooping were 15 or so recently retired (but still useable) broadcast cameras and the office space of one of the head maintenance guys. Along with another photog we rapidly moved all the cameras and everything else we could grab, unlpugged all the electronics and positioned more trash cans. Sadly his office is wrecked but we did save some stuff.
In the end the water was shut off in the building for a few hours and emergency crews are still dealing with it as I type this. It was an amusing event and an eye opener to see how various people react in a crisis.
Too bad there wasn’t medical help nearby.
thanks for re-sharing, BBBobbio!.
dinner et, beerverages for dessert.
gigi, wow. We had a drainpipe in the ceiling burst at one of my stores once. cat litter bags make lousy sand bags.