Marvin and I Take Temperatures

January came and went without a post - probably because I started EMT school on January 6.  It's a four-hour class, twice a week, with two eight-hour clinical shifts at a local ER on top of that, to say nothing of the textbook (which Ted today thought was the old Las Vegas yellow pages), the workbook, and all the online videos, quizzes, tutorials, blah blah blah.

Class is in Bend, a town I love but which is about 23 miles away and the campus sits on top of Awbrey Butte (seriously, who spells Aubrey with a w?).  Not a big deal except when the weather looks like this:

This was a freezing fog day - I should have taken some pics this past week, because that was a one-feet-of-snow-on-the-ground-and-frozen-parking-lot day, but I was too afraid I'd slip and fall and break a hip or something.

I keep meaning to take some pics during class, but we're so busy strapping each other onto backboards or into KEDs or splinting each others limbs or inserting airways into dummies that I just haven't found the time….  Here's what the white board looks like most days, tho:

Thank goodness for phone cameras.

So, some fun things I missed blogging about:  On my birthday, my friends Jenny, Pat and I took a class at COCC on whole grain breads (shout out to Pat for finding and alerting us to it).  It was at the culinary institute there, and we had a lot of fun, as we always do together.

Check out the dude in the chef's hat on the left.

This was the instructor.  He didn't bother to introduce himself,
which I guess is what led one of the ladies in class to call him
"chef."  I don't call you "chef" unless you have your
own restaurant or a show on the FoodNetwork.

Getting ready for a braided bread

E Voila

Some delish rolls

Jenny brought homemade muffins to class for my birthday, and Pat gifted us (Jenny's birthday is only a few days after mine) with a wonderful book on compound butters - a perfect accompaniment to a day of break baking!  I celebrated by sharing with my friends The Joy of Pickling.  Hey, I LOVE pickles and there's a pickled shrimp recipe in there I'm going to try!

As an aside - the fire department wanted me to do ANOTHER fitness test that day (read about my first one, a mere four months ago, here) but I had plans that involved friends and making, baking and consuming vast quantities of carbs.  I told them I'd call them when I get my EMT certification in July.  As another aside, Ted and I had dinner out in Sisters on my birthday at a very highly-touted restaurant.  I'll just say this:  Someone can start calling ME chef any time.

Our beloved Megan came to visit over MLK weekend with her sweet friend Kelsey, and brought me this lovely addition to my Pandora bracelet:

Love this little Viking next to it, too.

And to seque into February, I had my first clinical shift at our local ER yesterday.

An official Polo shirt identifying me
as an EMT Basic student at COCC Emergency
Medical Services program

The outside temp and time I was driving to Redmond
for my shift.  With lots of blowing snow.  Good times.

I actually had to get up at Four.  Thirty.  In the morning.  First time I've been up before seven in about nine years.    Got cleaned up and to the hospital in plenty of time, and saw an ambulance in the emergency bay so I knew there would be at least one patient there.

I have to say, the nurses were helpful for the most part (with one notable exception being a rather cranky old charge nurse whose only function seemed to be to piss people off because she sure as shit didn't assess/treat/comfort anyone), and there was an EMT basic on staff who taught/let me do things in addition to vitals.  One of the male nurses taught me how to take an orthostatic blood pressure measurement, and frankly, the paramedic student was more helpful than them all - he taught me a lot.  The second shift charge nurse (a male) was also very helpful.  I'm actually looking forward to my shift next week, and dearly hope the same or another nice paramedic student is there; this one could have been a real ass to me, but he was very helpful and forthcoming.  If not, I'll look forward to surprising Marvin the Depressed Robot (my nickname for one of the RNs) with my improved temperature-taking skills.    Seriously, when a cardiac patient came in, he called for vitals and told the paramedic student to let me do them because "Carolyn's good at taking temperatures."

I must say this for Marvin:  Once he was comfortable with  my ability to take vitals(!), and once I pushed my way in to the examining room to listen to his assessments, he asked me questions to test my knowledge of what I heard and saw, and made sure I knew that this hospital's opinion of what constituted vital signs were what ruled here, not what I learned in class (In Celsius?  Where are we,  Canada?)  And what a sense of humor!  As I was leaving, he came over to shake my hand.  I assured him I'd be better next week, and he thanked me for the warning!  Ha!

Seriously, those people are working 12 hour shifts three and four days a week.  During my shift, the pace went from two people for the first hour to an additional ten in the next fifteen minutes, then on from there - and this is a puny town and I'm talking about a Thursday.  I have nothing but admiration for the professionals in that department.   And the food there ain't so hot, but they only get ONE FIFTEEN MINUTE BREAK per eight hour shift so they can't actually go anywhere else, puny town notwithstanding.

 I have nothing but admiration for the paramedic students, too -- after talking to my co-student this shift, I learned that they are logging ridiculously long hours in hospital shifts and ambulance ride-alongs, more than twice what I have to do as an EMT student.  These kids have families, regular jobs, and go to school -- all to HOPE for a job in a field that doesn't pay HALF of what I made as a paralegal in Las Vegas, and that doesn't have a third of the funded openings, whether that be with fire departments or hospitals or ambulance services.  And look at all the good they accomplish!  Kind of turned me off the whole paramedic thing, frankly.

Must be why I never considered this field when I was a kid.  That and the blood and dirt and open sores and….  But then, I didn't live in the middle of nowhere, a good 20 minutes away from the nearest ambulance.  We can die within ten minutes of our pulses stopping with no emergency care, because some poor sleep-deprived, underpaid paramedic can't show up at my door until fifteen minutes after I call 911 (in the summer when the roads are good).  So I wake up at o'dark thirty and drag myself through snow to my clinicals, and up Awbrey Butte to class.  Because that ain't gonna happen at my house.  No way.  No how.