DwayneEMTP

Man, I found this to be so true. I was blessed here as I tried to finish medic school, work 50 hrs/wk and do 48hrs/wk of clinicals. I came here and said, "I can't do it. I may be able to find the energy, but I'm not smart enough. All of the information goes into my head and turns into a big pile of swirling shit!!" Ak, Dust, asysin3leads kept telling me, "Just keep doing what you're doing man. Some day it will all come together and make sense, I swear it will, and when it does, it will be a beautiful thing." I did, and it did and it was. I sometimes get frustrated here, but I can't imagine leaving. I've been made smarter, stronger, made lifelong friends, and continue to grow. How on earth could I ever buy that, regardless of the amount of money I had to spend? Herbie1, you're a great example of that...your posts always have something smart, kind, interesting to say. Thanks for participating brother. Dwayne

Hey Toni, Welcome to the City! But we really do need to do something about all of the Texans sneaking in here. Individually they need constant adult supervision, as a group I'm not sure we're equipped to manage them... Just sayin'... Dwayne

Grin. You're welcome. Actually, you're a great example of the above statements. I've kind of been watching, to see when you will break out and start to take some chances...and that's not a critical statement. There is not doubt that after you feel your way around for a bit that you're going to have so much to offer here. I'm excited to see it... This place can be kind of scary when you're new. At first frustrating and intimidating because people don't want you to just "be" who you are, yet later empowering and inspiring when you discover that you have a whole bunch of people in your corner, to help with your journey, each watching to make sure that you're better tomorrow than you were today. When you get scared in school it's sometimes amazing to have other's watching your back, if even from a distance. Keep doing what you're doing girl. You're going to do great. You just wait and see... Dwayne

They do. We have these on all of our cots. It's just a hard plastic case that fits over the buckles and has a narrow slit in it. You can't push the button to release the belt because it's covered by the plastic, and the slit. When you need it off you push a key, or anything thin, through the slit and it pushes the button. Works awesome. Dwayne

Nod Spenac, I just saw that he was autistic. As an autistic he should have had an escort or been sedated. 'Specially seeing as how his mother had skads of violence issues with him. Take him out of his happy place and his ability to cooperated leaves his control. This is a sad situation... Dwayne

Not a popularity contest. I earned some points because I tried to do something interactive, positive and educational. You took a tiny little beating because you simply whined, tried to do something negative, and then whined again, which is why you'll get negative points again. Your experience here is not normal. Very few of the new members stay and whine. They either need to whine, and eventually leave, or they step up to the plate and try and be productive and intelligent. You've done neither. You don't leave, yet you continue to whine. I hope better for you...I'm just waiting to see if you'll ever want better for yourself. I'm grateful for your posts though as this is an excellent example for the new members that want to do better for themselves. Thanks for participating. Dwayne

46Young, I think this is a great thread. I'm sorry to see it ignored. I've answered the questions above but have submitted my post to management prior to posting here. I'll participate as soon as I have a response, which usually comes within hours at most. Thanks for the idea! I think EMS improves greatly when people know what can be expected, and have the information that they need to leave poor services for better ones if they choose. Dwayne

Now Lisa.....Some of us like to call that good customer service!! I hate dollar stores, hate, hate, hate them. But Babs seems unable to pass one up. And from time to time you do run across the "Oh yeah! Wouldn't mind seeing her naked but have no real desire to take her home" girls..The chicks may be thinking, "Gasp! What a pig!" But there's not a penis in this forum that doesn't know exactly what I'm talking about... C'mon...not saying it out loud doesn't make it go away...Just sayin'.. Actually I loved this story! Well told, tongue in cheek...it brightened my morning.. And nearly anything to do with mammaries is a good thing. The fact that you all found a way to take the yummy, warm, squishy, tube top boob image and drive it so far to the dark side...well, you should be ashamed. Say a bunch of Hail Marys....yeah, ok, I don't know how that works, but you should still be punished, all of you... Dwayne

Yeah, right?? Aren't you amazed by the folks that say, "Paramedic school was the best time of my life!" Are you friggin' kidding me? Maybe if I hadn't had to work, and didn't worry so much about my grades I would have had a great time, but I did, and I didn't. When trying to finish my medic degree the chair the of EMS dept. kept saying, "It's only one more season, OK? You can make it one more season." At times I went strictly by her word, and those of Dust, Ak, and others, because I couldn't bring myself to believe it..And then one day it's all gone. You wake up and have no more classes, no more trips to the hospital, no more clinicals...it's strange as hell. And for some of us, it truly is worth it. I really dig my life right now...I'm having fun, hanging out with great people and getting paid. I go home safe and relaxed to my family...Life is good. When it's time to go to So Cal see if you can drag Annie and we'll try for a meet up?? I was just mentioning to her the other night that a meet in CO might not go wrong once it starts to get a little warmer. You are about the most stubborn chick I've ever met, so I know you'll do awesome throughout school...but stubborn still needs down time, so don't forget to rest when you can... Dwayne Edited for format change. I seem to be format challenged of late. No contextual changes made.

(Edit: Posted at the same time as akflightmedic, just not as well. This line added during edit. No other changes made.) "It is my opinion that Lone Star has ignorant opinions stemming from his hidden homosexual lifestyle. If he would simply refrain from having sex with men, and instead find the love of a decent woman, all of his issues would certainly be resolved." (Exaggerated for effect. It is not my opinion that LS is gay, and if he was that that would in any way imply that he is ignorant.) If this was my belief, which it is not, shouldn't I be expected to explain why I believe that being gay is relevant? Shouldn't I then be expected to explain why I believe that you are gay? And why I believe that being gay makes one ignorant? And if in some world I could argue all of that intelligently, shouldn't I then be expected to support my thought that 'finding a good woman' would somehow make all right with the world? (Now, I do actually believe that a good woman makes all right with the world.) I think so. And that is not just my opinion, but the opinion of the majority of people that enter into intelligent adult conversation. Do you believe that that statement should go unchallenged? If that is my opinion should it then stand unchallenged because for some reason it's protected by the 'opinion shield?' Of course not. We allow children opinions, for a short while, without defending them because, for a short while, they don't know better. After the age of 2 or 3 or so we expect them to be able to think, and following that to be able to defend the ideas that they choose to release into our world. Are you legally bound to defend your opinions? Not here, at least not to my understanding. But, as you like to declare loudly at times, this is a forum for the exchange of thoughts. The forums are a place for the debating and exploring of ideas. It is not a pulpit where whatever comes out of your mouth is instantly decreed to be worthy of respect. Each idea, this one certainly included, is subject to inspection, dissection, and review. It's a public idea, so the review is public as well. Your ideas earn respect here by being supported with realistic, logical justification. It's your radical liberal side that causes you to believe that anything that comes out of your mouth should instantly be considered intelligent, and it's making you weak. (I do find it interesting that you believe that you should be understood and coddled by those that might offend you, but children and animals that offend YOU should be beaten and/or killed. What's up with that?) Again, to put the lie to your rant, my reply to you was simply my opinion and yet you felt that it was offensive and unjustified, despite the fact that I attempted to justify each point that I made. Why are your thoughts protected by the 'opinion shield' yet mine are not? That's a hypocritical point of view, right? For a while your opinions were much more sound, based on logical concepts and supported with logical thoughts. For some reason you've regressed back to the time where you believe that using a lot of quotation marks and capitalization will somehow confound us and make us believe you whether you support your ideas or not. It's not working brother. If you were one of the asshats that pass through here every now and then perhaps we'd just sigh and let it go. But you've been here a few days. We've gotten used to you, and some of us have even come to like you a little bit, so we hope for more from you, we expect more from you. I saw that you'd added some great ideas to the 'new forum members' thread. Review the part where it explains that arguing against your ideas is about making you and me both stronger, not about me trying to be superior. Try and believe that and I think that you'll look at these conversations in a different, more productive way. This thread has gone off into the ditch, but I think that maybe that's a good thing. The op was posting the story out of general interest so we've not done much harm by hijacking it, and the lessons learned here by all may be put to good use in the forums perhaps. As always, I look forward to your thoughts. Ak, awesome, intelligent post. Not because it can be construed as you defending my point, because those here that know us know that that is not what you were doing, but just because it was. Thorough, intuitive, intelligent. I read it a few times and may need to read it again. Thanks for posting. Dwayne

So what? Then you're full of shit about working with wild animals. There is not an animal trainer alive that works with wild animals that has not had mishaps. None! Being bitten or scratched or being killed are just a matter of degree. So what LS? He didn't volunteer for this gig. He was captured and forced to play the game. What is your point? Humans had options, he didn't, they paid a price. What is so hard for you to understand about that? It's been done before successfully, it's just expensive. But it was expensive to catch him, why not be responsible for the expense of letting him go. Don't your own arguments prove that he's not very well domesticated? No one died because he had a poor attitude. They died because they captured a wild animal and then attempted to live with it. And then, for a few moments, allowed the fact that he was a wild animal slip from their mind and paid a heavy price. You have such a strange way of avoiding responsibility. If children are bad, instead of being responsible for their attitudes and behaviors we simply need to beat them more. If an animal, when forced out of it's environment and denied it's instinctual and emotional needs causes harm then instead of taking responsibility we need to kill it. What is wrong with you? Do you know how I can prove that you're lying when you talk of working with wild animals in the past? (Now, not meaning Malamutes that people pretend are wolves) Because if you had you would not only have been forced to develop at least some sense of behavior science, which you've proven over and over not to possess, but you would be shocked not that this happened, but that it doesn't happen more often. Why are you so shocked, with your 'wild animal experience' that this animal behaved in a manner consistent with it's nature? No one, and I mean no one with experience training wild animals would be shocked at such an obvious thing. It's like the old parable of the scorpion and the crocodile. A scorpion needs to cross a river but can't swim. A crocodile (abridged version) offers to take him across but worries that, "If I give you a ride you might sting me." The scorpion says, "Why would I do that? If I did such a thing then we'd both die." The crock agrees and they begin the trip. Part way across the scorpion stings the crock in the head, and they begin to sink. The crock says, "Why did you do that!?! Now we're both going to die!" The scorpion says, "Why did you think I could go against my nature?" I never claimed you placed his rights above that of a human, it's obvious you believe he has no rights. I said you placed his responsibility above that of the human and by doing so have elevated him above human beings. The human created the environment, made all of the rules, was responsible for all of the access yet when a person was killed you blamed the whale. I'm not going to continue to argue this with you LS unless you read the entire posts. Though I have very much respect for the increasing quality of your posts, you still seem to believe that you can twists words, change context, ask silly questions and we're going to be baffled by your bullshit. Read the entire post. Not just parts. And then take a moment to think before replying. When you reply when you're all stirred up you come off as a child in your logic. I hope better for you... I look forward to your thoughts. Dwayne

Kudos x 2. First for not being bated into a name calling shitfest. I've been frustrated with your arguments and what at times seems your desire to ignore mine, but I have a lot of respect for the way that you've conducted yourself all the while. Thanks for that. Second, I think that you've made your point here more clearly than at any other time, and were able to do so without arguing that the union is the only way to accomplish such things, which of course would have voided your point for many. I also respect the fact that you've continued to make your point regardless of it's popularity over and over in different ways. Pretty cool. Side note, do our brothers in Aus and NZ have unions in place as we know them here? Dwayne

It seems like we've been seeing a lot of new faces lately, and from them gaining a lot of strong, smart new members. In the spirit of the City I thought maybe we could throw out some ideas on how to be successful here? Here are a few of mine.. 1) Welcome. We're glad to have you no matter what your certification level, experience, education or what type of service you happen to work at. The fact that we're glad to have you doesn't mean we don't argue these points, it simply means that we value thoughts, and the people brave and kind enough to share them, from every point on the compass and political spectrum. 2) You can gain very little here if you don't participate. Learn here, where it's safe, to air your ideas and encourage constructive criticism. If you can't push yourself out front here then you need to question if you'll have what it takes to push yourself to the front when people are suffering. Also, doing so causes most of us some pressure, allowing you to learn to think with that pressure and accept the consequences of those decisions. 3) No one here, regardless of how it may sometimes seem, wants to see you fail, here or in your career. Too often it seems that criticism is considered derision when in fact the exact opposite is true. We thrash each other's ideas to make each other stronger, not to try and prove our superiority. There is nothing that makes the smartest people here happier than to see those that have been mentored here succeed and even surpass the high standards most often expected here. I'm always very aware when someone has commented on one of my thoughts that this is a smart, successful person that had better things to do, yet made time to help me try and get smarter. I try and remember to be grateful for that. Nothing makes me happier than to lose an argument, because it means that I've fought with every tool in my toolbox to defend something that seemed perfectly logical and evident to me, yet...I was wrong. And now, thanks to someone smarter, that fought harder, I don't have to continue to be wrong tomorrow. 4) Do not Google your answers and then pretend that they are yours so that you don't feel stupid. Being wrong isn't stupid. Being afraid of being wrong, and so allowing yourself to remain wrong is stupid. Give answers from your head, use your own brain, create your own logic trees, that is how you grow and become stronger. Think I'm kidding? Follow my posting history and you'll see some of the most idiotic thoughts you can imagine, but many didn't remain idiotic because I was allowed to work them out with help from my friends here. And when I say friends? I'm talking about some really smart folks that left my ego bruised and bleeding at the end of some gnarly discussions. 5) Please understand that when we critique your spelling and grammar that it is not to belittle you but to help you grow as a professional and separate yourself from the significant number of your peers that everyone else is laughing at every day. Hanging out is fine, but use that time to improve yourself. We all make mistakes. We're looking not for perfection, but for the effort that says you're trying. Spelling and grammar are a practiced skill. We all make mistakes, that's why we push each other to constantly keep practicing. 6) Chat is chat and the forums are the forums though often the two overlap. Please don't bring your playful chat dialog and insert it into forum conversations. Not because 'chat is stupid' because of course it's not. It's just easy sometimes to take the fun, carefree familiar attitude of chat and allow it to distract from conversation in the forums. Besides, most of the people reading the threads won't get your references anyway. One's not better than the other necessarily, they just don't often mix well. 7) Have fun, be brave, make friends, find mentors, ask for help, help others…but most importantly, use this as a resource. This isn't a place that you come to prove how smart you are, but to prove that you want to be smarter. Almost everyone here respects that. Some of the most intelligent people I've ever met I've met here and my life will never be the same because I was gifted with their patience and advice. Use them, but as you do, remember to be grateful and give back. And in case I was somehow not clear...If you see my posts, and you find a bad idea, wrong thinking, bad attitude, poor logic, spelling, grammar, and choose to ignore it to 'be nice?' I will never thank you for that. I will never be grateful that you allowed me to be weaker today than I needed to be..Just sayin'... I'm hoping that many here will add to my silly little list…what do you think guys and gals? Dwayne Edited about a gazillion times because, for some reason, the text I see in my edit window isn't translating well when posted. I don't think I'll cut and paste from Word next time. No contextual changes made. Formating only.

But again, I wouldn't put this woman in that category. If you're working the streets and a drunk driver creams your ambulance and you get killed, it doesn't imply that you were too stupid to live but that you chose to take a risk and today it caught up to you. You don't play in this chicks world for nearly 15 years without dying if you're stupid. Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear bends you over your pickup and...well, I don't want to talk about it, you get the point. She had a bad day. In my world a bad day is something to whine about, but in hers it's sometimes terminal. And Yeti, you were a pretty friggin' good student I must admit, but your behavior off the leash leaves something to be desired... Dwayne

I disagree. There are skads of videos online where some chucklehead has crawled into a bear/lion enclosure and been killed. Those animals were not killed, and should not have been. Why should they be punished/eliminated for acting perfectly normal within the context of their species? I don't see the point. These are dangerous animals. People get killed while skydiving, yet we don't execute skydiving instructors, cigarette manufacturers, car/motorcycle producers. Some activities come with elevated risk, it's called risk because some folks are going to die secondary to doing it. Why would you choose to hold an animal responsible for the human's behavior? Doing so elevates the animal above the human, giving them the additional responsibility, something that you claim to hate, right? Yes they should. It's the human that made the choice to take the risk. If there are things that make that behavior riskier then it's the responsibility of the risk taker to consider those factors. If you choose to break into my home, and I shoot you, you should not complain later that you feel victimized because you didn't know that I would have a gun. If you decide to participate in high risk behaviors you need to consider the risks, not doing so can lead to very bad outcomes. Now, I'm not implying in any way that this woman didn't consider the risk. She obviously did as she performed her job for more than a decade and survived. I'm guessing that along with other factors that she considered dying as a possible consequence of training huge, wild animals. If we could Ouija her now I'd be willing to bet that she would be one of the few folks not bemoaning her death. She had to be a terribly smart, committed woman to work at her job for so long without being injured. I refuse to believe she didn't consider the consequences and find it near impossible to believe that she'd blame the animal for her fate. Finally agreed. Though this will certainly be the central issue. This is about personal risk and responsibility, not about the relative value of entertainment. Agreed, but hopefully after giving this some though I think you'll find that that is exactly what you've done. As a long time animal trainer, having trained many, many wild as well as domestic animals I can tell you that these shows are terribly important to wildlife conservation causes. If people don't see wild animals they will not care about them or their protection. And they have needed, and continue to need to be protected in many instances in my opinion. (Ok, so this is often taken to extremes, but the the pendulum swings radical right, then radical left, before eventually settling down to something most of us can consider sane.) I trained some Gorillas once for a private owner. Looking back I remember that as a very liberating, spiritual experience. The risks I took, believing that I was much better and smarter than I actually was, were foolish and irresponsible. But they were also friggin' awesome! I chose to live my life in that way, in that environment, for that time, but had things gone completely sideways it would be not only ignorant but asinine to hold an animal responsible for my poor decisions. Dwayne

Holy crap..I didn't think of that. If I had boobs my productivity would likely drop to near zero! But I'd probably be healthy as I'd spend the work day doing 12 leads on myself.... And faces are highly over rated...just sayin'... Dwayne

Heh...I hear you brother...

Yeah, if I stay long term it would be because of the work environment. There is a large percentage of medic/basic teams that can be a drain to your mental/emotional energy, but the rest, in my experience, tend to be smart, kind, hilariously funny, intelligent, competent, curious, team players. And they seem to find joy in helping those around them be the same. I find spending my days with, and attempting to be like, these types of people is great for my heart and head, as well as my spirit. Management? Nah, if I choose to take a path that continues in EMS it will be because I love these folks. If I choose to take a path with more responsibility and/or pay, then I'll move on to something more lucrative. I'm not the best person to take this advice from. I was exhausted with two years of medic school plus work, reexhausted in Afg, so now I'm just kind of hanging out thinking "Holy shit...I get to run interesting calls, make ok money, spend my days with my family and my nights with interesting/mentally challenging people, are you kidding me?? Did I win the friggin' lotto?" I'm kind of coasting...My thoughts may be completely different after I recharge for a bit... Dwayne

Shoot, might as well. When you're hung like me it's likely an out patient procedure anyway, and I could use the free drinks on ladies' night! Dwayne

Heh..some of the folks I work with would swear to you that I've forgone PO and been put on a pump. Unfortunately my testosterone toxicity is naturally occurring and chronic. No cure in sight... Who in the hell gave you a negative for this post?? I fixed it for ya.. Dwayne Note: Grin chaser. That would be the expected result, though Babs is smart enough to know not to fight a drug/hormone addict. She uses coercion instead and gets everything she want.. :-)

Screw the side effects! http://natebloch.com/

Yeah man, that's interesting. That will (hopefully) be in my head before I open my next suspicious car door, or bathroom door, or...?? Hell. Dwayne

That is just stupid... Any of you, perhaps I'm just less accomplished here, have a spare 3 minutes to give a radio report while working an arrest? Have you EVER had anyone on the other end of the call that would be interested in listening to a 3 minute report? Yeah, me either... "MedicX enroute to your facility emergent with a high profile pt, pulseless and apneic, unknown down time, CPR in progress, 3 rounds ACLS completed without change in pt status, will update upon arrival. Questions?" I'm not sure how anyone can take that recording seriously, but some fuckhead just got himself a book deal and tour of the talk show circuit . Makes me want to spit... Dwayne