Monday 28 February 2011
Wednesday 23 February 2011
Tuesday 22 February 2011
Saturday 19 February 2011
Its been a while due to life getting in the way
Hello brain bucket take this!
Well time has passed by and I have had little to write about, no energy to write or just been lazy? Inquiring minds want to know.
Since my last post, I have finally had another A/E shift although not with my mentor. I worked a 1pm till 1am shift on an ambo. The crew was made up of a paramedic who is a good friend of my mentor and my mentor's normal technician partner.
After smokes, teas, and equipment check, the first call came in.
Well time has passed by and I have had little to write about, no energy to write or just been lazy? Inquiring minds want to know.
Since my last post, I have finally had another A/E shift although not with my mentor. I worked a 1pm till 1am shift on an ambo. The crew was made up of a paramedic who is a good friend of my mentor and my mentor's normal technician partner.
The paramedic has worked in Manchester for the last 10 years, he used to be a marine, lives on a barge and so in my eyes is very cool. He reminds me of McNulty from the wire and I'm not surprised to hear he has a bit of a rep. (Let's just say you would trust him with you life but not with your wife)
His crew mate (a technician) looks like she would be happier working in a violent inner city pub. A heavy set young girl with a smile that seems to come at all the wrong times. Her iphone is permanently attached to her left ear.
Technicians are trained in BLS, Anatomy, Pharmacology, ECG Monitoring and Spinal Immobilization. Which is pretty much the same as paramedics apart from they can't give good drugs (morphine) or intubate (tube down the throat). Their salary is about the same as a first year paramedic and they love pointing this out to students.
After smokes, teas, and equipment check, the first call came in.
An 84 year old lady that had indeed fallen and fractured her left hip (short hand # is the symbol for Fracture for time saving form filling paramedics). She also had tenderness in her neck and lower back so she got long boarded and dog collared. We gave her Entonox for the pain and shipped her off slowly off to A/E.
The day stayed slow with 2 possible strokes, a seizing child and a lady with heart problems. All were pretty much stable by the time we got there (average 7 mins) so we ran our ops and took them to hospital. It's hard sometimes as you might never know what was wrong with these people. More frustrating however was our next type of patient.
The message came up on our screen that patient has had D/V (diarrhoea and vomiting) for the last 4 days. On arriving at the property we were taken upstairs by her husband. She was middle aged female lying partly dressed in bed making moaning noises.
I asked her my basic questions. How can I help? Where does it hurt? For how long? She cried alot and told me that she was in no pain but felt very ill, had seen a doctor and had been told she had flu. The paramedic took her temp, blood pressure, blood sugar, pulse, blood o2. All were normal.
I ran out of questions and started to feel uncomfortable? I told her there was nothing we could do for flu that all her stats were fine and she needed to wait it out. She started crying louder. So like a good member of the ambulance service I gave her the choice. DO YOU WANT TO GO TO HOSPITAL??
For some reason hundreds of people with flu every week think that A/E is a better place to sit for 4 hours rather than being at home. They fill doctors surgeries with their coughs and sniffles hoping for a cure.
Modern medicine is amazing if you heart is about to pack in or you need a new liver. Brain tumor? No problem. We can can grow you a new ear on the back of a mouse should yours get eaten by a rapist boxer. We can't, however, cure you of the flu. You need to wait and drink fluids.
Huge investment has gone into daytime TV so that you can lie on the sofa and die in front of arguing couples goaded by gambling addicts or twats buying planted priceless items at car boot sales normally populated by pirated DVDs.
Don't call 999 and take away an ambulance from somebody that might fucking need it.
I asked her my basic questions. How can I help? Where does it hurt? For how long? She cried alot and told me that she was in no pain but felt very ill, had seen a doctor and had been told she had flu. The paramedic took her temp, blood pressure, blood sugar, pulse, blood o2. All were normal.
I ran out of questions and started to feel uncomfortable? I told her there was nothing we could do for flu that all her stats were fine and she needed to wait it out. She started crying louder. So like a good member of the ambulance service I gave her the choice. DO YOU WANT TO GO TO HOSPITAL??
For some reason hundreds of people with flu every week think that A/E is a better place to sit for 4 hours rather than being at home. They fill doctors surgeries with their coughs and sniffles hoping for a cure.
Modern medicine is amazing if you heart is about to pack in or you need a new liver. Brain tumor? No problem. We can can grow you a new ear on the back of a mouse should yours get eaten by a rapist boxer. We can't, however, cure you of the flu. You need to wait and drink fluids.
Huge investment has gone into daytime TV so that you can lie on the sofa and die in front of arguing couples goaded by gambling addicts or twats buying planted priceless items at car boot sales normally populated by pirated DVDs.
Don't call 999 and take away an ambulance from somebody that might fucking need it.
Wednesday 9 February 2011
editing and students
Right. I started this blog to help me deal with some of the stressful things I might encounter during my A/E work. I have not, however, had any A/E shifts. As a result, it has become instead a vent of things on my brain that would normally get dumped on a friend during a loud 40 min phone call.
This may have something to do with the fact that it's badly written and in need of tidying up. A kind friend has offered (I think it was driving her nuts) to edit it for me when she has time to. Sorry if posts change and become more readable.
I am a student. It says this on my work shirt in big yellow embroidery. I attend university and learn stuff from books. I could get an nus card but (maybe due to my studentness) have been to lazy to sort it out.
I don't pay council tax but still moan about being skint.
In spite of all this and the fact I would consider myself a big lefty, I didn't go on the student protests. I didn't march on any public buildings and get a bit over excited or join a sit in at my university, sleeping under tables and eating pot noodles and weeing in sinks.
I didn't do these things, not because I didn't want to, but because I would have been thrown off my course and black balled from the ambulance service. My name would have been put in the big book of shame along with that guy who shagged his patients mother and the chap who touched up a patient and explained it to her as a "clinical method used to relax" (only joking he's still working for the service..no really, he is).
Were we told from day one, "Step out of line and that's it. You're gone." "We are watching", and they mean it. Three students have been removed from courses around the UK just for writing things on Facebook. One for just for appearing in her uniform? (and not in a sexy way).
It seems like with everything, at the beginning you need to tread carefully, keep your nose clean and kiss lots of arse. My mentor and lecturers have told me once I am in the service I'm in. I pretty much have to steal a baby, fill it full of morphine, then sell it out of the back of an ambulance to a local skaghead, one who is prepared to use her body as part payment, and let me video it, so I can play it back on the TVs at A/E on a Saturday night. Even then I would end up working on PTS on double my salary.
So when I heard that Nick Clegg was to face students tonight I did feel like justice was going to be done. The only students they will let meet that lying two-faced shit monkey are the ones like me: either somebody's got their balls in their hands or clean nose little boring bastards that wouldn't say smuggle a dozen eggs up their arse just so they could throw them at his puffy car-salesman wax-work face.
This may have something to do with the fact that it's badly written and in need of tidying up. A kind friend has offered (I think it was driving her nuts) to edit it for me when she has time to. Sorry if posts change and become more readable.
I am a student. It says this on my work shirt in big yellow embroidery. I attend university and learn stuff from books. I could get an nus card but (maybe due to my studentness) have been to lazy to sort it out.
I don't pay council tax but still moan about being skint.
In spite of all this and the fact I would consider myself a big lefty, I didn't go on the student protests. I didn't march on any public buildings and get a bit over excited or join a sit in at my university, sleeping under tables and eating pot noodles and weeing in sinks.
I didn't do these things, not because I didn't want to, but because I would have been thrown off my course and black balled from the ambulance service. My name would have been put in the big book of shame along with that guy who shagged his patients mother and the chap who touched up a patient and explained it to her as a "clinical method used to relax" (only joking he's still working for the service..no really, he is).
Were we told from day one, "Step out of line and that's it. You're gone." "We are watching", and they mean it. Three students have been removed from courses around the UK just for writing things on Facebook. One for just for appearing in her uniform? (and not in a sexy way).
It seems like with everything, at the beginning you need to tread carefully, keep your nose clean and kiss lots of arse. My mentor and lecturers have told me once I am in the service I'm in. I pretty much have to steal a baby, fill it full of morphine, then sell it out of the back of an ambulance to a local skaghead, one who is prepared to use her body as part payment, and let me video it, so I can play it back on the TVs at A/E on a Saturday night. Even then I would end up working on PTS on double my salary.
So when I heard that Nick Clegg was to face students tonight I did feel like justice was going to be done. The only students they will let meet that lying two-faced shit monkey are the ones like me: either somebody's got their balls in their hands or clean nose little boring bastards that wouldn't say smuggle a dozen eggs up their arse just so they could throw them at his puffy car-salesman wax-work face.
Tuesday 8 February 2011
blog words tired zzzzzzzzzz
I'm tired, very tired. Took me ages to write this as keep hitting wrong keys. Bed now for that nice sleep you get when you're really tired.
Good day today met 3 people who could die by the end of the week. They all had a smile on their face as the sun was out. People can be amazing.
Love the world.
Good day today met 3 people who could die by the end of the week. They all had a smile on their face as the sun was out. People can be amazing.
Love the world.
Sunday 6 February 2011
Frosting hides nothing
As I sat on my toilet, happy of the the fact all that fiber is doing the trick, I found myself staring at the big window to my right. It's completely frosted which is meant to give me total privacy from the perverts and the local peeping toms that have flooded this once great neighbourhood.
Like most people I don't do my business in the dark. It would mean taking a head torch to inspect my offerings and that's just gross. I also like to take my time, maybe reading the paper or a bit of that book I'm not really enjoying anymore but feel I should finish now I've started it.
It was not until the first paper based clean-up operation of my posterior did the first tingles of worry being to twitch.
If you have ever watched old 70 hardcore porn edited for the UK (hang on, that's lost lots of you), if you have ever seen a streaker from a football match shown on TV you will know that you don't need to see anything to see everything.
The pixelation/blurring does little to hide what going on and in fact can draw you eyes closer to the action as you brain tries to sort out what its seeing.
My frosted shield of modesty is in fact nothing more than a beacon to anybody withing 500 meters of my flat. I have lived here for almost 5 months. That's well over 100 toilet based events?
shit.
Like most people I don't do my business in the dark. It would mean taking a head torch to inspect my offerings and that's just gross. I also like to take my time, maybe reading the paper or a bit of that book I'm not really enjoying anymore but feel I should finish now I've started it.
It was not until the first paper based clean-up operation of my posterior did the first tingles of worry being to twitch.
If you have ever watched old 70 hardcore porn edited for the UK (hang on, that's lost lots of you), if you have ever seen a streaker from a football match shown on TV you will know that you don't need to see anything to see everything.
The pixelation/blurring does little to hide what going on and in fact can draw you eyes closer to the action as you brain tries to sort out what its seeing.
My frosted shield of modesty is in fact nothing more than a beacon to anybody withing 500 meters of my flat. I have lived here for almost 5 months. That's well over 100 toilet based events?
shit.
Saturday 5 February 2011
Unwatchable
I like my movies, and at one point I thought maybe I would be a film critic... until I realised that you need to be able to write, and not french phrases like C'est ma cinéaste préférée.
2. 9.2 The Godfather (1972) 437,215
3. 9.0 The Godfather: Part II (1974) 264,733
4. 8.9 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) 175,811
5. 8.9 Pulp Fiction (1994) 447,011
6. 8.9 Schindler's List (1993) 296,639
7. 8.9 12 Angry Men (1957) 131,591
8. 8.9 Inception (2010) 296,186
9. 8.8 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) 231,522
10. 8.8 The Dark Knight (2008)
However as this is my blog and I can write whatever the fuck I like and how I like, here is one for the masses!
Many years ago my mum bought my sister and I a film book. In it were cast lists, budgets, directors notes, etc. Now, my sister is a walking encyclopaedia of knowledge anyway, so armed with this she became a veritable knowledge guru. New films were discovered and new facts about old films revealed. It filled many a rainy day and settled the odd stupid argument.
The birth of the internet reintroduced many things: obsolete porn mags, porn videos, porn chatlines to name a few. It also means that at the touch of a mouse, or the slide of a phone, movie facts are the touch of a button (or 67) away.
As many of you know, the most comprehensive list of movie knowledge and reviews can be found at the IMDB website. I'm pretty sure most of my friends have it set as a fav, if not so high in their history that this is not necessary.
For a long time I have used it as a review source. Anything above a 7 is worth a look, or under 2 for comic value.
Their list of the best 250 films is impressive.
Here is the top 10:
1. The Shawshank Redemption (1994) 560,097Here is the top 10:
2. 9.2 The Godfather (1972) 437,215
3. 9.0 The Godfather: Part II (1974) 264,733
4. 8.9 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) 175,811
5. 8.9 Pulp Fiction (1994) 447,011
6. 8.9 Schindler's List (1993) 296,639
7. 8.9 12 Angry Men (1957) 131,591
8. 8.9 Inception (2010) 296,186
9. 8.8 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) 231,522
10. 8.8 The Dark Knight (2008)
So it was with the utmost confidence that I rented "Unstoppable": A healthy 7 with a strong cast and lots of action.
Imagine my horror, when instead of a thrill ride of adrenaline action I got a badly made advert for Fox news, coupled with the message that it's okay to threaten your wife if you're a nice guy deep down. The action is poor, the script is shit, and the direction looks to be straight out of the seventies.
Please avoid this movie.
Instead, watch "The Box": A 5.6, its is also a shit movie that could have done better, but a least it tried to do something other than a sex up Thomas the Tank Engine.
Wednesday 2 February 2011
Angry Man 1 : Happy Man 0
Today was another day of nursing home fun. More tea was made, biscuits eaten, and hygiene laws flouted!
I actually had a good day today considering I spent it in the second worst place in the world. The first worst place is located in the same space and time but with a slight dimensional shift so that time has slowed down and air freshener has not been invented.
I am a part qualified paramedic. I can do stuff to you if you're dead that with luck with make you not dead any more. I can do checks and ask you questions to establish what might make you dead and so need the first of my skills. If you call an ambulance, a person less qualified than me may well be dispatched to you to stop you from being dead, until somebody more qualified can get to you and say that there is nothing we can do and we need to take you to hospital anyway.
However...
I cannot change sheets, help people get dressed, take them to the loo, or do anything else deemed personal care whilst working at this nursing home. I'm not sure why. Nobody will explain, and it seems nobody cares. This has made me and the two other students working with me become a little, how would you say, depressed?
One of my colleagues, let's call him "smiles", is having a really bad time. I have never met a happier more energetic person in my life. He is like a CBBC presenter who has been given a massive line of cocaine and told her arm will grow back by morning. I normally hate this kind of person. OOkay, I DO hate this person. I hate that he doesn't get upset by all the shit and pain in the world. I hate that he sees that I hate this and instead of being upset, he tries to make me feel better.
So, imagine my glee and happiness when "smiles" comes to me today as says that he's not sure he can take it anymore, that he has been hiding from interacting with the patients. That he is feeling a bit down. That all the death and age and shit and piss and anger surrounding him is just all to much.
Well what could I say? What words of comfort did I have?
"Welcome to the world smiles, take a good long look."
The funny thing is I did have nice things to say, I just kept them in. I don't feel angry and useless here. These people don't have a choice about their surroundings. All the things that upset me are not found in them. The system is to blame for treating them like crap and reducing them to livestock.
I have fed an 82 year old lady every day. It takes a long time. She has no top teeth. I talk to her while she eats and hold her hands so she doesn't take the spoon from me and hurt herself with it. She has advanced dementia and it's hard to understand her, but I have had time to see past the shakes and random words. If you look into somebody's face long enough, it's almost like the outside drops away.
Today after her lunch, whilst I took her napkin, she grabbed my hand, and with the most intense stare that lasted maybe a second, whispered, "Thank you for you kindness". Then her hands relaxed and the look was gone.
I'm an angry man. I shout and have hit people in the face, but I could see something "smiles" couldn't. We can't change the big stuff and some of it SHOULD upset you. It's what you do when it does that counts.
I actually had a good day today considering I spent it in the second worst place in the world. The first worst place is located in the same space and time but with a slight dimensional shift so that time has slowed down and air freshener has not been invented.
I am a part qualified paramedic. I can do stuff to you if you're dead that with luck with make you not dead any more. I can do checks and ask you questions to establish what might make you dead and so need the first of my skills. If you call an ambulance, a person less qualified than me may well be dispatched to you to stop you from being dead, until somebody more qualified can get to you and say that there is nothing we can do and we need to take you to hospital anyway.
However...
I cannot change sheets, help people get dressed, take them to the loo, or do anything else deemed personal care whilst working at this nursing home. I'm not sure why. Nobody will explain, and it seems nobody cares. This has made me and the two other students working with me become a little, how would you say, depressed?
One of my colleagues, let's call him "smiles", is having a really bad time. I have never met a happier more energetic person in my life. He is like a CBBC presenter who has been given a massive line of cocaine and told her arm will grow back by morning. I normally hate this kind of person. OOkay, I DO hate this person. I hate that he doesn't get upset by all the shit and pain in the world. I hate that he sees that I hate this and instead of being upset, he tries to make me feel better.
So, imagine my glee and happiness when "smiles" comes to me today as says that he's not sure he can take it anymore, that he has been hiding from interacting with the patients. That he is feeling a bit down. That all the death and age and shit and piss and anger surrounding him is just all to much.
Well what could I say? What words of comfort did I have?
"Welcome to the world smiles, take a good long look."
The funny thing is I did have nice things to say, I just kept them in. I don't feel angry and useless here. These people don't have a choice about their surroundings. All the things that upset me are not found in them. The system is to blame for treating them like crap and reducing them to livestock.
I have fed an 82 year old lady every day. It takes a long time. She has no top teeth. I talk to her while she eats and hold her hands so she doesn't take the spoon from me and hurt herself with it. She has advanced dementia and it's hard to understand her, but I have had time to see past the shakes and random words. If you look into somebody's face long enough, it's almost like the outside drops away.
Today after her lunch, whilst I took her napkin, she grabbed my hand, and with the most intense stare that lasted maybe a second, whispered, "Thank you for you kindness". Then her hands relaxed and the look was gone.
I'm an angry man. I shout and have hit people in the face, but I could see something "smiles" couldn't. We can't change the big stuff and some of it SHOULD upset you. It's what you do when it does that counts.
Tuesday 1 February 2011
Subscribe NOW
Stop trying to sell me your life it sounds dull.
Why are people always obsessed with my life being more like theirs?
Backmasked messages stuffed into tracks from Iron Maiden to Cake are meant to have caused everything from suicide, and mass-murder to increased yoghurt sales and yet I seem not to have donned a trench coat and killed my enemies or become lacto-loving. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a controversial approach used in advertising that can apparently allow you to brainwash people into buying any old shit that makes you feel sexy and fulfilled, yet adverts make me feel angry and turned off. While the BBC and other broadcasters thought the mere sound of an Irish hate field Gothic Cartoon Mouse's voice could cause people to blow up schools and hospitals, I'm not sure the same can be said for you. Yes, you.
There are many happy couples in my life that I love and respect and wish nothing but the best for. I listen to there couples chit-chat and talk of "when will you find a girl" and "you're just too picky" or "you always let the best one go" with the kind of reserve that belongs when you know somebody loves and you can forgive them for wanting you to be happy.
My problem came today with the idea, from a group of strangers, that there is no way I could be happy alone and that to be alone for as long as I have means I'm some how broken??? "Put yourself out there", "Make an effort", "Let us set you up".
Mmmm.. how to put this subtly: GO GET FUCKED.
I have no interest in your self-serving in a relationship facebook status, your hop from rock to rock or your just plain denial that you're only with them because you're afraid to be on your own.
Backmasked messages stuffed into tracks from Iron Maiden to Cake are meant to have caused everything from suicide, and mass-murder to increased yoghurt sales and yet I seem not to have donned a trench coat and killed my enemies or become lacto-loving. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a controversial approach used in advertising that can apparently allow you to brainwash people into buying any old shit that makes you feel sexy and fulfilled, yet adverts make me feel angry and turned off. While the BBC and other broadcasters thought the mere sound of an Irish hate field Gothic Cartoon Mouse's voice could cause people to blow up schools and hospitals, I'm not sure the same can be said for you. Yes, you.
There are many happy couples in my life that I love and respect and wish nothing but the best for. I listen to there couples chit-chat and talk of "when will you find a girl" and "you're just too picky" or "you always let the best one go" with the kind of reserve that belongs when you know somebody loves and you can forgive them for wanting you to be happy.
My problem came today with the idea, from a group of strangers, that there is no way I could be happy alone and that to be alone for as long as I have means I'm some how broken??? "Put yourself out there", "Make an effort", "Let us set you up".
Mmmm.. how to put this subtly: GO GET FUCKED.
I have no interest in your self-serving in a relationship facebook status, your hop from rock to rock or your just plain denial that you're only with them because you're afraid to be on your own.
Dead peoples things
I keep dreaming about my father who died about 10 years ago now. It's odd because I hardly think of him anymore. My dreams are always slightly different. In them he is alive and we are normally doing something mundane like washing up or DIY. They are always set in this time, these are not distorted memories. During these dreams I seem to know in the back of my mind he has died and time is short and precious.
I often wonder how many simple tasks we carry out with people who leave our lives and should we know would we pay more attention to that time. Lock it away or slow it down.
I cannot remember times I did these things with my father when he was alive but I'm sure we did.
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