It’s Been 3 Nights:
I’ve been in Flagstaff for 3 nights now and I’ve yet to pull back the comforter on my bed and get underneath it…I LOVE MY INDY BLANKET! It’s not your traditional blanket, in fact some people might just use it for decoration, but maybe I subconsciously picture here with me and that’s what keeps me warm…BARF haha. It’s been 3 nights and I haven’t seen a lick of TV; no football highlights, not even one of my own DVDs. The DVD part better change soon as my car has still yet to reach Flagstaff at this time and my TV better still be in the trunk! (Found out today that it’s not coming til tomorrow morning due to truck complications and they called Jane before calling me…more on that later)
I was up late last night reading for the WFR, I even went a chapter ahead…something new for me. I never read and I usually procrastinate. The text book is easy to read but I find myself skimming through it and jotting down notes on what I think we’re going to be quizzed on. Perhaps I’m not getting the full effect by doing that but what can you do? I have a new respect for what Laura went through at X-Ray school. I used to come over when she was trying to study and even try helping her study, but those few hours (maybe) total blew my mind…she sure is a trooper; getting all of that done and still having to work. That must be why she won that award at graduation. WOOOOOOO!
I can’t believe I haven’t commented on this before, especially being from NJ where until recently this was a rarity, but there is a Sonic literally a minute from my house. Then after school today, we passed ANOTHER one no more than 10 minutes from home. HA! I don’t know if many of you are into mountain biking but it’s like crack to the people of Flagstaff. There are so many bike shops around town and the rec center at NAU is even hosting a mountain bike raffle. Did I mention they have “free air” pumps around campus? Hmmm.
The 3 is apparently the trend for today’s story. It was the 3rd time Nick & I drove to campus and when we got there this morning it was 3 degrees outside! We got 3 grades back today, 2 80s & a 100, the band 3OH!3 is playing here next month, and I got the devastating news about my car that ruined the rest of my day just after 3pm; which I am currently in a funk similar to the one I was feeling all day on New Year’s Eve. Everything was going pretty decent before that.
I was too tired to sing on the way to school & I just knew I’d get some more bad news about my car today…so I couldn’t help thinking about that. We were almost late which meant we would’ve missed the irrelevant quiz but we didn’t, we both got 80s. Stupid jaw thrust method of opening airways when you see somebody fall. After everybody finished their quizzes we had to sign up for those presentations I was talking about; Nick & I got fever and we go Saturday. (Yes school on Saturday…woof!) I’m trying to think of all the ways I can put my Jeffisms into it but I’m drawing a blank…minus doing a PowerPoint presentation and playing that “Fever” song & Nelly’s “Hot in Hurrr”. Once we did that it was time to review a little bit of what we did yesterday, patient assessment, and we worked in pairs. Luckily I was eating a banana in class and saved the peel…he served as our victim. We pretended he had arms, he was in the dysfunction stage at first (all curled up & junk) and we moved him into the function position (flat on his back, arms to the side…it’s always okay to do that) but before we did that we had to assess the scene.
Scene safe?: Yup
Body Substance Isolation/BSI (protective equipment): pretended to put on gloves
Mechanism of Injury/ MOI (injury): he was peeled
# of victims: 1
General Impression: he might not be walking away from this one
Establish Relationship/ Control C-Spine: we talked to the banana and supported his “head”
Then we had to establish his SAMPLE history.
Symptoms: peeled
Allergies: monkeys
Medications: none
Past medical history: No
Last “ins & outs”: drank some water an hour prior, didn’t go to the bathroom yet today
Events: A giant guy from NJ peeled & ate him.
It was goofy & technically we didn’t work on a banana we worked on the peel but it was a fun way to apply what we learned.
The class resumed & we learned about administering oxygen, EVERYONE can benefit from oxygen. We also covered airway adjuncts, which basically require sticking a rubber tube (OPA) in your mouth to assist you in breathing and prevent your tongue from going down your throat…unless of course you have a gag reflex or are conscious. In the event of either of those contraindications, we were shown how to insert similar tubes (NPA) into your nose that extend down to your throat to assist in breathing. Had Matt not been fighting a cold, his TA (Derek) would’ve demonstrated how to do so on him for us…GROSS! I hope I never have to do that!
After that we were broken up into groups by our instructor this time and the first time ever, Jerzinois was broken up. As fate would have it, I worked with fellow ranger trainee Travis from NY & an older guy that was wearing an LBI sweatshirt. “Long Beach Island? Are you from Jersey?” He Was! Tim was born in Phoenix, raised in Newark NJ, and has lived in Flagstaff the past 15 years! New York & New Jersey holding it down in the same group! We had a mock scenario where Tim had to play the role of a hiker who got banged up in a rock slide…Travis & I dominated in taking care of him! All of that info that turned my brain into mashed potatoes yesterday suddenly came together and oozed all over the NAU campus like gravy. Even Tim was impressed with us. The point of the exercise was to practice taking SOAAP notes, which basically is a chart with a spot for everything we covered the day before, and then we had to pretend calling them in from memory…once again…I killed it and added some of my own flair to the call in process. Tim’s response, “I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody actually showed up here looking for me.” Hahahahaha.
Once that was done with, it was time to meet our new instructor, Dr. Allison. A 5 foot 1 inch woman in her 50s but more nimble than a high school championship wrestler had a great command presence over the class and if nobody was paying attention during her initial introduction then the flying forward somersault aimed right next to me to emphasize her point on muscle memory sure woke them up! She covered topics dealing with spinal injuries, head wounds (1 of the most common causes of death in the wilderness), & stomach churning dislocations illustrated mostly by PowerPoint and demonstrations. I got to be the “really big leg” victim with the dislocated patella! Woo Hoo! Then things got a little weird. Right before lunch, she made one of the girls lay on the table in front of everybody to show us all her technique for fixing big muscle-y juiceheads and pro athletes. The girl, another future ranger named Laura, did not look pleased. Then to top everything off, Dr. Alison asked for a male volunteer to take off his shirt and lay on the same table….that we are using for desks.
I liked learning about the head wounds because we sort of touched on what’s been going on in the NFL with all of these concussions. Right before lunch, a fellow student shared a story with the class about how he was rock climbing 9 years ago (another huge thing out here that I hope to get the chance to do before I go home), had been climbing all day, wore his helmet all day, and decided he was going to take one more run. Well for this last run he left his helmet in his backpack. Big No No! He’s not sure exactly how it happened but he swung upside down across the rock face and smashed his head into the wall, cutting open his skull and allowing for some brains to come out. There just so happened to be a evac-helicopter in the area that saw the ambulance responding to the scene so they flew down to see if they needed help. Andy (I think his name is) was air lifted to safety, had titanium plates put in his head and eventually made a full recovery. Moral of the story as hinted by Andy & Dr. Allison, the “sky nurse” taking care of him was Dr. Allison’s husband! Small world huh!?!? Although they didn’t actually say that out loud, Dr. Allison told us that that’s how she knew Andy (?) before the course.
Lunch went okay, Turkey & Ham on wheat again with a Diet Root Beer and some pineapple. I went for a walk around campus and on my way back…I had to give somebody directions! Luckily the lady was looking for the same building I was going to. I got back in the room & still had close to 40mins left on break. I checked in on some peeps including my old boss and Laura. I got super bummed when I discovered Laura was having a bad day and I immediately wished I was home. My boss told me that the break room wasn’t the same without me, everybody was mellow, but I knew that was going to happen haha.
Not a bad day so far, we almost had an injury in the classroom when the female component of the older married couple tried to jump on the fitness instructor stage to get to the other side of the classroom but only fell on all 4s, making a big thud; Nick even started showing flashes of my humor. Out of nowhere he asked me “Hey, what’s your highlighter at home look like?” I just looked at him. He asked me again. I replied, “It looks like this. Why would it be any different?” He rolls my highlighter over and shows me the label that simply reads “@ the office”. We laughed, “That’s something I would say!” I added. Then at about 3 o’clock, my entire happy/positive high came crashing down. We were on break and I see the car carrier office calling, here it is! I ran out into the lobby and took the call. “eScott” (no that e wasn’t an accident, that’s how he talked) went on to say that the truck was having complications and wouldn’t be in Flagstaff until 7:30am and that they already cleared pick up with Jane. “What choice do you give me sir? It has to be ok!” Nick walked by me as I was on the phone and his face looked like he thought I was going to murder someone. He practically escorted me back to my seat as I was cursing, mumbling, and expressing my desire to inflict pain. Instructor Matt heard me say, “I’m about to hurt somebody” and he stopped dead in his tracks. Yesterday I had to tell him that I was expecting a phone call in the event I had to run out of the room to answer it so I explained, “my car’s still not here, Matt.” His response, “snow man!” as he walked to the front of the class. Snow is not the issue here, it hasn’t snowed in a week and the roads are all in great shape. AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
It was all downhill from there. We went over a few more slides on doing splints and putting victims on backboards and then it was time to show off what we learned. One group cheated, they had seat belts on theirs. My group had to do it like men, tying ropes together and everything else. That’s something I’ve been meaning to work on, I can hardly tie my shoes. As it goes with most of the class, the dudes in my group have previous experience with this sort of stuff and they just sort of took over the drill. I made sure to work my way in and take over when I could but I was amazed by what they were doing. The dude working down by the victims feet with me made some sort of crazy figure 8 pattern then explained he learned that just by looking at the picture on the PowerPoint, no prior experience. That was good because they didn’t really go into great detail describing how to do it. We finished tying up the victim, lifted him, and then had to flip him upside down and stand him straight up…he didn’t budge. Go us! We failed to prevent him from being able to turn his head upward as if to look at the sky, booo us! Then we did another mock scenario that involved 2 victims, 1 on the ground, the other walking around confused. Tried to throw us a curveball but I smacked it out of the park! The walking around victim ended up being the more seriously injured victim and I got my group mates on board! After that, we had to switch with the other groups and practice our splinting. There wasn’t much time left so everything was rushed and I failed to get a solid splint intact. CRAP!
Class Day 2 in the books, Nick & I tried finding some short cuts to the car, there weren’t any. Tried to find a short cut home, there wasn’t one. Jane requested we finished her box of spaghetti & we were happy to do so. Nick cooked again, we vented about how frustrating this course is and how we can’t wait for ranger training, I loaded up some dishes in the dishwasher and then we retired to our rooms.
Funny Things I Heard Today:
1. “He did his wife at home.” Dr. Alison was sharing another muscle memory story about a cop who used to have nightmares about getting shot at point blank range so he used to make everyone he knew pretend to pull guns on him, some of his coworkers actually did, and he practiced all of these moves to disarm them. “He did his wife at home.” Ironically on a traffic stop, somebody pulled a gun on him, he utilized 1 of his moves, disarmed the guy, gave him his gun back, then his partner shot the bad guy. Aside from this quote the only thing I took away from the story…why the hell did he give him the gun back?
2. “They’re what we call dick heads.” Dick in the instance refers to DIC, Disoriented, Irritable, Confused. If that’s the case then I’m usually a DIC head every morning. This refers to a person with a closed head injury, trauma to the brain without compromising the skull. A DIC head is combative, irritated, & irrational but they must be monitored.
3. “Dowhat?”…or however you say. I first heard this phrase when my cousins from Texas came up for my sister’s wedding. I was like, what the hell is that? Well apparently a lot of people say it. My roomie says it and I heard 2 different guys in class say it today. Its’ basically saying “what” but you add either “do” or “you” in front of it. Jersey is so out of the loop!
4. “Knocks”, for the rest of the time here when I fist bump somebody I will no longer say give me a pound, it is now, give me knocks. It’s an Illinois thing.
Some More Flagstaff Observations:
1. Today was the first time I saw a cop around here, where’d they all go?
2. I’ve been singing the praises of how nice everybody around here is but I saw 4 people, myself being 1 of them, sneeze today and not one of them said bless you. Is this an Arizona thing? Am I being rude by being polite? FUNK DAT!
E-Mails: Some interesting e-mails I've received the past 2 days.
- One came from my dad informing me that the Monmouth County Park System was looking for my dress rain coat...whoops! I actually used the word atrocious in my response e-mail regarding this entire car shipping business.
- Another was the policies of the Park Ranger Training Program. We can have hair & facial hair! It just has to be neat. Good thing too because I was gonna totally commando on the scalp and totally baby faced. It outlined some other rules & regs, putting some fear in some of the more feeble minded I'm sure.
- Got an e-mail from Bleacher Report discussing the possibility of Plaxico coming back to Big Blue! PLLLLLLAAAAAAAAXXXXXXIIIIIIICCCCCOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! Although I'm bummed that the Giants missed the playoffs, and I wasn't able to watch more than half their games this year, I predicted their 10-6 finish in the preseason...GO ME! The only games I got wrong were I thought they'd sweep the Cowboys & split with the Eagles. Pretty good!
Oh look, Fiona’s scratching at my blankets on my bed, she’s my new cat ya jerks.
It’s time to hit the book again, can’t give up!
Catch ya tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll have my car then and I won’t be incarcerated.
MOUNT UP!!!
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