CBEMT

Well, I look at it this way. Where I work, all professional staff didn't get our annual raise this year. Professional, administration, deans, even faculty or so I'm told. There were some layoffs as well, though the number of open positions going unfilled kept that low. Even the President's office lost at least one position. The cops, janitorial/maintenance, and food service did get a raise. And didn't lose any jobs. They have union contracts. Unions aren't the answer to everything, and in some cases make things more difficult and more expensive than need be. But I sure could've used a raise this year. Especially with how well my performance review went.

You mean like with the FEMA debit cards after Katrina?

We had a similar patient, except she wasn't homeless and there were no 12-leads on the trucks at the time. Since it was the 55450345895834985903485th time she'd been to the ED for chest pain, those highly-educated, caring, better-than-EMS providers in the ED parked her against the wall. 'I'd love to send a doctor over there right now so he can tell her she's not getting pain meds and you guys can ship her right back home, but they're all going to be busy for quite awhile." Eventually, their crack assessment skills revealed that she expired while holding up the wall, most likely of the MI nobody thought she'd ever have. Except my partner, who gave her a full workup and treatment, like he always did when she complained of chest pain, "Because you never know." (Silly medic, following silly protocols. What was he thinking?)

No shit. I would've arrested him.

*yawn* Huh? Oh, yeah. That's it exactly Vent. You've got me pegged. Feel better? You know NOTHING about me or what I do. Take your self-righteousness and shove it. Again.

No, I just think it's been a very long time since you pulled a shift in the street with the rest of us common folk. I do everything I can do for my patients. However, I still have enough of a grip on reality to know that for some, there's nothing I or anyone else can do. Sometimes that applies to dead people. Sometimes it applies to the living, if you can call it that.

Parmedic? WTF!? Geez, what was I so scared of back when I was a Basic? ANYBODY can do it!

Funny how everybody who disagrees with you is a whiner, uneducated, etc etc. I live in one of if not the most liberal state in the country. You think nobody's tried? The ones that are still on the street are the ones that will always be there, much like the two skells in the Post article. Those are the ones that you think can be reached, if only we spend a little bit more money. It's just not going to happen. That's the real world.

Hey, you can't say that around here. Don't you know there are people in rural areas who can't wait for the chance to pay higher taxers to afford two paramedics to sit on their asses 325 days a year, if only someone would ask them to?

Happens every day around here. The trauma center even satirically (and unofficially) named the ETOH/drug/psych unit of their new ER after one of the most prolific abusers, "Ron Salvatore." There's no solution for people like Ron. They've been homeless for years, decades in some cases, and substance abusers for longer than that. Despite Vent's good intentions (and mysterious pot of gold to pay for her social solutions), Herbie is ultimately right- most of them will never change. They'll keep bouncing in and out of the ERs, until one day something goes wrong, and they die- just like Ron did, bleeding from the head on the sidewalk after falling down drunk for the 90984357347587345738475th time. And then someone else takes their place, and the cycle begins again. I have an extremely liberal friend who used to live in Seattle. The first time I visited, I commented on the number of homeless in a city with a reputation such as Seattle's. She growled and said, "There are SO MANY social programs here it's crazy. If you're homeless on the streets of Seattle it's because you want to be." Simplistic, perhaps, but even she knew that there's a limit to what good intentions and social spending can do.

Except for the no stress part, that was basically my job before I went to EMT school. After that experience I will do whatever I have to do to avoid such a mundane, micro-managed, every day the same as the last existence ever again. Even in my current job as a supervisor, the desk still makes me itchy sometimes (thankfully I still go to all the calls with my crew). And believe it or not, my first job as a Basic was a pay raise from Corporate Hell, too! I know, one in a million that that happens to. I'm not even that interested in a future "mainstream" hospital-type healthcare profession, at the moment anyway, because I just like being out "in it" too much.

Sorry, sport. You're a 100x as bad of a racist than Archie Bunker on his worst day (who told the KKK to get bent when he was invited to join, or did you not see that episode?). Trust me- you WISH I was racist. All I am is a guy who's tired of you.

This is effing hilarious. It's so simple. Whitey MADE Shaniqua have unprotected sex and get knocked up at 16. Whitey MADE Shaniqua do the same thing with 3 or 4 other guys over the next few years. Whitey MADE Shaniqua's baby daddy do the same thing with 3 or 4 other girls. Whitey MADE Shaniqua a piss-poor mother who takes the little brats to McDonald's for dinner every 1st and 15th of the month, instead of keeping them home to do their homework (assuming she even has enough control over them to make them go to school). Whitey MADE Shaniqua's baby daddy #1 get thrown in jail for knocking over the liquor store, MADE babby daddy #2 get his head blown off in a drug rip (he was only 6 baggies away from upgrading his 20" chrome rims to the 22" spinners), and MADE babby daddy #3 get stabbed outside of "da club" fighting with some other jagoff over baby momma #2 (they both ended up in jail, in case you were wondering, because babby daddy #3 had a warrant). Whitey MADE Shaniqua's #1 spawn, Tyreese, spend more of his high school career ditching class, smoking weed and chasing other little Shaniquas (quite possibly creating a few Tyreeses and/or Shaniquas of his own) than he did reading books, learning English, or generally applying himself. Given all that, it's CLEARLY Whitey's fault that years later, Tyreese can't pass the fire department test.

First thought: GREAT to have somebody from such a leading third-service EMS agency that high up at the federal level. Second thought: Who will take his place and will they be another Menino political appointment?

*bows*

Yet we're supposed to take you seriously with statements like that? You fail at life. The fact that you REALLY believe this shit means either A) you've spent the last 30 years sitting next to Nobama in "reverend" Wright's cathedral of hate, or B ) inner-city schools really are as bad as you make them out to be, because they turned out a stupid sack of regurgitated puss like you.

Just the fact that Seattle records and analyzes such data puts them above most systems. I know it doesn't happen around here. Even if we take the cynical route and say that the comarisons being drawn are not fair, is anybody really going to support the position that Detroit/Chicago/DC/LA would compare favorably if the same data was gathered?

Are there unicorns where you live? I bet there are.

Yeah, so, we've talked about this already. Still, Have you SEEN the trailer?

Your age is no big deal. The EMTs all seem younger than you because many of them took the class right out of high school or, less often, college. I train basics older than you all the time. The question is, can you live on less than $15 an hour.

Which doesn't even BEGIN to raise a family in CA. With two incomes and two kids, my cousin and her husband had to pick and move from the West Coast to the East Coast just to afford their kids.

The most frustrating part in junior high was that when I actuall KNEW how to do the problem, I'd transpose the number between scrap paper and answer sheet. I'd fail tests by flipping 56 and 65, etc. I don't do it that much anymore but back then it was the bane of my existence. At home doing homework, I couldn't remember how the teacher described how to work the problem, and my notes looked like what was in the book, so no help there. I couldn't remember phone numbers long enough to get to the phone. I had no prayer of learning a musical instrument, and in freshman year high school Spanish, the only tests I passed were the midterm and the final. I somehow managed to keep my head above water by getting lucky on some of the daily quizzes, as the material was what we learned yesterday as opposed to a test covering everything that month. My grandfather loved to play cribbage, and wanted me to learn it from he and my uncle, to pass it on to the next generation. Yeah right. To this day I don't understand poker. Blackjack isn't as hard but I still have to think about it for a minute. My fiance has to figure out restaurant tips for me. Umpiring a little league game one time as a favor, which I'd never done before, I was almost lynched because I lost count of balls and strikes. In 6th grade I was finally diagnosed by the city school department (parochial schools were HORRIBLE with this stuff) and an Individual Education Plan was formulated which the school and my teachers had to abide by. A rep from the city, my parents, and my math teacher had to meet at least once each year to go over it. The city paid for a tutor for a short time as part of the IEP, but the city tutor sucked and my parents shelled out for help from my cousin's math teacher from their school. She got me through high school, no doubt about it.

Between Dyscalculia and problems with short-term auditory memory, I had teachers who didn't think I'd make it through high school. Contributed to losing a scholarship when I got to college. Definitely isn't fun. Many of the symptoms listed on Wikipedia are spot-on for me.

OJ wasn't convicted either.

Some outlets reporting a possible Demerol OD. Wonder if anybody tried Narcan...?