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I am not an expert on heavy metal toxicity; however, I am not sure that elevated ammonia levels often indicate lead toxicity. Neurological impairment and nephrotoxicity are more often associated with lead toxicity.

We are on a slippery slope and I personally feel like the potential for infringement exists. Drawing the line is the toughest part for me as most of the time I'm not sure where I'd draw the line on my personal professionalism let alone somebody else. Problem is we can cherry pick our opinions and inferences. For example, I do not hide the fact that I intend to vote for Gary Johnson on Facebook. Of course, you could question my professionalism based on the Libertarian way of looking at the drug war. Again, social media is a slippery slope and I'm not sure I like the way thing are headed in certain cases. Personally, I like to side on allowing for more freedom instead of regulation, but I'm not qualified to make the judgement on where to draw the line.

I deal with pain most every day, but it's manageable. I am not doing what I was before, but my daily activities are pretty close to what I did. Unfortunately, these thing do not magically heal, but rather slowly get better with good and bad days. I've accepted that I will probably never be in my 20's, but still have a great quality of life. It's been over three years and I think this is probably as good as I am going to get barring a medical breakthrough. Individual mileage will vary.

I do not have much to offer in the way of advice as it's generally good to avoid giving out anything that could be considered medical advice. However, back pain and the neurological issues associated with injuries and degenerative disease vary significantly from person to person. I had a "massive" herniation in my lumbar spine and also have spinal stenosis and spondylitis. However, in spite of an MRI that looks exceptionally ugly, I was able to recover with conservative, non-pharmacological therapy and go on to my current state where I have a good quality of life and manageable discomfort. However, someone with a much less dramatic MRI may experience significant pain and neurological impairment. Good luck, but don't flatter yourself based on numbers. Everybody is different and people respond to different treatments in very different ways, especially when it comes to back pain.

Your best bet is to first obtain national registry credentials. They allow reciprocity on a case by case basis. The policy is linked here: https://www.nremt.org/nremt/downloads/International%20Policy.pdf You will likely have to take the psychomotor and cognitive tests regardless. Once you have registry, you will be better able to license in a state. You will have to contact the specific state EMS board for details. You can easily find that information with a quick Google search. Finally, you will need to go through all the immigration issues and obtain the proper visas. You'll have to do some leg work and find that information on your own as I'm not qualified to discuss immigration in any detail.

Job markets for EMT's are often overcrowded and in many places, you will be hard pressed to find full time employment due to the numbers of volunteer providers willing to take calls for little to no compensation. Unfortunately, the pay is often not particularly good and benefits vary quite a bit as well. If you want a career, you will need to strongly consider paramedic school and even getting a good job is no guarantee at that level. In addition, back injuries are a common problem and frequently cause career ending conditions for many pre-hospital providers. The work varies quite a bit and yes, it can be exciting and quite fulfilling at times.

Welcome; however, you may need to be a bit more specific if you are looking for specific information. I would also suggest you focus on proper use of written language and good grammar. While I do not expect perfection, developing good habits regarding written language will make you appear to be a professional. In addition, the good habits you develop here may carry over to the charting that you will complete as a pre-hospital professional.

Condolences, I am sorry for your loss.

I completed the NRAEMT transition about five months ago. These videos are a review of some of the concepts on the exam, but specific questions are not discussed.

Respiratory tech or respiratory therapist?

In the case of Aspirin, it's one of the only interventions available to us that actually decreases morbidity/mortality in these kinds of patients, so I think you could put up a strong argument for ASA use.

With elevation in said leads, you had best do additional investigating before giving preload reducing agents such as nitroglycerine. Aspirin is absolutely needed assuming no contraindications.

Antivenom treatment is very expensive and highly specific. For example, the crofab that is reasonably effective for pit vipers in the United States is completely ineffective against inland taipan venom in Australia. In fact, Australia has multiple types of deadly snakes to worry about. Therefore, you would need to carry multiple types of antivenom and would need climate control resources in many cases. Next, you would need to effectively identify the venom in the field without the benefit of specialists and technology. Finally, antivenom is not benign and can be associated with many risks and side effects. In conclusion, the logistics, education and specialty knowledge required to have an effective prehospital programme of consistently using antivenom in the field does not appear to be best practice IMHO. I could be wrong as my knowledge of the Australian EMS system is limited; however, this is certainly the case with crofab in the United States where it's potential benefits and significant side effects and cost are notable concerns.

No need to be sorry bro.

I think the issue is one of interpretation of dialogue. For example, I may associate calling a person a chick as being pejorative.(Not that I am saying anybody here thinks women are inferior.) One thing I enjoy about this forum is that I can interface with people and make my initial impressions based on the merit of said person's logic, reasoning and ability to articulate. At least, this is often the case as I do not initially know if people are male or female, only human, presumably. Clearly, gender and the individual interpretation and expression of one's gender brings unique perspective to one's world view; however, I find it quite liberating to simply interact with a human without any preconceptions, sexual or otherwise. For example, one thing I enjoy about literature is it's lack of gender identification. I can judge it on the argument, methods, findings and author's conclusion without any added bias. In other words, judge the ideas and methods to illuminate said ideas.

I think you missed my point. Clearly, we have biology geared toward reproduction. However, my point being that I have higher brain functions and prefer to use them in my day to day interactions. Maybe it's me, but differences in anatomy do not matter much.

Unfortunately, surgery is often not particularly effective as a method of pain management. If you look at the data, after a few years post injury, surgical versus conservative therapy appears to have similar outcomes when considering pain. Surgery does seem to work better for serious neurological problems. I cannot give any medical advice; however, you need to be very cautious about aggressive procedures and cure all your pain super procedures. There are allot of people out there claiming to have a less invasive miracle technique. If there was a miracle cure for back pain, it wouldn't be one of the most common problems that people deal with in the United States. Best of luck.

I don't give gender a second thought when interacting with people on this forum. It's taken billions of years of evolution and natural selection to produce a brain that has the ability to think and reason beyond basic, biological functions, therefore I feel it is important to use this special evolutionary "gift" frequently and consistently.

The concept of delivering a volt is not well understood by most people. A volt is a way of defining a difference in electrical potential. Basically, voltage in a circuit is like water pressure differences in a pipe. One volt means that one joule of energy can be delivered per Coulomb of charge that passes through two points with a potential of one volt.

I was also born in the 70's. Scary thought, but in the next decade or so the Gen-Xer's, on a large scale, will start filling positions of political influence.

A great scenario, thank you for sharing.

This is certainly my general, go to site concerning all things EMS.

Yes, flightweb. It's a site dedicated to aeromedical transport.

Saw this on another EMS related site and had to share:

Announced earlier. You guys remember a the talk about G protein coupled processes during the recent asthma thread? Much of our current understanding of autonomic, postganglionic intracellular signalling is due to the research completed by the two professors who will receive the prize. In fact, around half of all the drugs we use involve G protein coupled responses.