Burned Out

Catching Up

2009-11-13T21:08:00.000-08:00

It has been over a full year since I posted on this blog. It seems that I really could use an outlet to vent. This may just be the perfect way.

First of all what has happened in the last year?
We have a new baby, Victoria Olivia and she is almost 8 months old.
I still do not have a motorcycle.
I am still in school and a few more semesters from med school
I have become completely complacent at work, nothing truly exciting has happened lately.

I am tired as usual, twelve credit hours of school, 48 hours of work, and all of other things that take up my time.

I am hoping to waste ten minutes a day blogging, not that anyone really reads it, but hey if you're bored, check out my tweets on twitter, I can knock them out by phone.

How I spent my Saturday

2008-10-13T22:16:00.001-07:00

Saturday was a great day. I went to get my kids at 9 am. We came home played for a few minutes and went to the grocery store. Harrison and Krista did amazing, they shared pushing the cart, and they didn’t fight, and helped me do the self-checkout.

MacDonald’s: This is usually a chore, ordering two big kids meals and figuring out what I want. But for the second time today my kids did very well. Not fighting sat patiently and ate.

The Children’s Museum of Pueblo
Our next stop for the day was the museum. At the prodding of my wife, I challenged myself and took my ten year old Autistic son and seven year old daughter to a hands on museum. Krista ate this up. There were lots of arts and crafts for her to do. I must say that for years now I have tried to make my daughter be extremely happy with coming to see me. She loved this she said that was her favorite thing ever. I was shocked. I will truly remember the look on her face when she said it.

Home to play the Wii
Harrison, my ten year old, loves video games. I own a Wii, not many games, but enough to keep him entertained. You have to stand up most of time; it involves physical exercise most of the time. This is a great thing for him. He loves it, and it is his favorite thing to do with dad.

All in all the day with my kids was great.

Dy-Anne and I stayed up most of the night to play the Wii after taking the kids home to their mom. We played Mario Party 8 for like three or four hours. This game is just plain fun. I am probably better at video games, in general, but this game keeps things interesting. She stands a chance, the skills she has are amazing. There is no way to let her win. She does it herself.

2008-10-10T23:25:00.000-07:00

Suicide Screening Program
Teen mental health and suicide screening programs
www.TeenScreen.org

by Google ads

i went to check out my newest blog, I went right to my page and found this ad on it. What intuitive ad genius thinks my blog is read by any teenager, or parent that has a teen who is suicidal?

Is Google hinting to me about something?

week in review

2008-10-10T23:22:00.001-07:00

My week in review

Sunday I went out drinking. I did not get totally plastered, and did not end up throwing up. Pretty good night since I was out with a drinking pro. By pro I mean, a guy who can drink Guinness like no other.

Monday, let me just say it was a hangover type day, I skipped all of my classes. I accomplished nothing of importance. I did make it to work.

At work Monday night: Six calls, conveniently spaced out to not allow any sleep. None of those calls were truly notable.

Tuesday, I quickly realized that skipping a math class is hazardous to your grade and the overall goal of passing the class. I recovered by weeks end. I also had a lab and fortunately we reviewed all the stuff I missed.

Tuesday night. While at work, I managed to nap for about five hours. This was a good thing. I had a headache that I can say was caused by lack of sleep. The calls were rather boring but one stands out. Diabetic, Drunk, liver failure, hypertension, general weakness, and through all of it, I determined that he was having a stroke. Not to brag but something in my head said that he was way more jacked up than a hypoglycemic.

Wednesday, made it to all four classes as scheduled. Surprised math instructor by getting 10/10 on a quiz. This is an achievement for me, as I have not had a real math class in over fifteen years. My linguistics class was next, and I was called a terrorist again, for ruining the curve. If Obama can hang out with a terrorist, so can my all my friends. I digress, my bio class was a review (see Monday) I needed all the review I could get.

In between classes on Wednesday, I met up with my wife, she had a nice little ultrasound and blood test, and thus far, Baby Wags is doing fine. He/she will probably make an appearance in April 09. The ultrasound tech showed us how the baby wouldn’t really hold still. Just like me, I don’t sit still well

No work Wednesday. I will make up for that on Sunday night.

Thursday. I successfully got a night of decent sleep and made it to my one class to take a lab practicum. In other words, they wanted to test my knowledge of simple biology stuff. If I failed this, truck-driving school is an option (trust me, I did not fail).

Awoke Friday to realize that I had only done half of my homework for linguistics. Went to campus early to get it done and print it out. My handwriting sucks so I try to type or print everything instead, less torture for teachers. I survived all three classes that day and probably didn’t bomb a bio midterm.

Friday night, I climbed into my Paramedic costume and got paid to watch a football game. Two high schools, big crowd, some rivalry, they fought for a cannon, yes a cannon. No kidding, a real, light fuse, cannon go boom cannon. It may be the closest some of those students may get to a real firearm, legally that is. To the winner, a cannon. WTH, I’m surprised that the game wasn’t sponsored by the NRA.

It is now Saturday, and at that, it is a Saturday with my two kids. I’m quite sure that the day will involve a MacDonald’s, my Nintendo Wii, and potentially swimming at the Y.

I am heading off to sleep. No wonder I am exhausted, this was a busy week.

Getting on my shit list.

2008-10-04T07:27:00.000-07:00

I usually ignore stuff that bugs me. If I didn"t, I would simply go insane and probably quit my job. That not being an option, I try to ignore stuff.

This is a long story so please bear with me.

This is not the weekend that we have my wife's kids, it is also not the weekend where I get to see mine. This being said, it should be a nice simple weekend without stress, without swim lessons to drag kids to, no little wrecking crews to mess up the already cluttered house. Now did I have plans for this weekend? Not really, maybe a short trip to the mountains to have some fun outside the aforementioned cluttered house.

Thinking that sleeping in was an option, i tried. THis was ruined by a phone call. Not even a phone call to me. It was to my wonderful wife. It was from her ex. His schedule including taking his kids to swimming lessons, and spending time with them. He called to say that he was a failing them. He took an extra shift at his work.

Timeout!!!!!

Yes I do take extra shifts, I work a lot, but NEVER when I am scheduled to see my kids, never if I planned ahead and had something else to do. I may only see my kids every two weeks, but without fail, unless I am truly sick, I see my kids and do things with them.

Back to story....

He had known for over four weeks that his kids were enrolled in swim lessons on four consecutive Saturdays, we planned to take them THREE out of FOUR. He was responsible for one fn weekend. ONE out of Four.

Some shit about and I am paraphrasing here "he forgot to switch over, SCREW it I cannot even publish his bullshit here.

To get to the heart of this story, if anything in this world pisses me off, it is lying, it is not doing what you say you are hoing to do.

Rules to live by Promise litte, but keep those that you make.

Is that not simple enough?

Okay not feeling any better, but I promised myself that I would blog more and what better motivator than anger.

Wow it"s been awhile

2008-10-03T23:04:00.000-07:00

Ok, I am getting the hang of my classes and work. Might actually have time to work on some blogging, but by far twitter is so much easier.

I am setting a goal of trying to post a blog here once a week from now on.

Smartly looking at the post date, it has been over two months since last post. Not that I have anything really interesting to say. Heck work is work, school is school, and life is life.

Work: I was named the employee of the month. For those who know anything about me, hell must have frozen over, I even got a compliment for dealing with a potentially hostile patient at our local state hospital. I've been working a lot and someone must have noticed. I am shooting for the fact that it was just my turn. I am not the model employee. I was just hoping to show up, do my job and go home. Wanting the paycheck every two weeks or so.

School. Since last post, I have enrolled in classes for Pre-Med. Yes I already have a few degrees under my belt but nothing that comes close to what a decent med school is looking for. So I am in classes with a bunch of young teens and twenty somethings that have no life experience, but could probably drink me under the table. I am kicking ass in most of my classes, but struggling with math. Heck my math is still better than those dumbasses who ran Fanni Mae and Freddie into the ground.

Life: Dy is the love of my life, we don't get to see each other much but year two of marriage is going fine. My kids are good, still with their mom in Colorado Springs an hour away. No social life what so ever, but maybe going out with the boys this weekend to get stupid and find out if I can drink more than one without wanting to go to sleep.

That's a quick little look into my life as it is now.

Twitter direct or email, I might need a reminder to blog more often.

BLOG THE RECESSION

2008-08-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

Ok. So not even with permission of my husband I have taken the liberty to guest post today.

The burned out paramedic is working so much overtime these days in an attempt to not have to decide between food and fuel. Here is a good example of the unnatural hours all paramedics work to be able to live a decent life.

Here are the hours worked this last week:

Sunday: off

Monday: 7pm-7am

Tuesday: 7pm-7am

Wednesday: 8am-4pm and 7pm-7am

Thursday: Scheduled from 1pm-5pm but had to call off after working pretty much 36 hours with no sleep-- 7pm-7am

Friday: 7am-11am and noon to 11pm

Saturday: 10am -3pm

Somewhere in there I do remember him sleeping and maybe even us eating dinner together.

My point in this is with both of us going back to school this fall and only my burned out paramedic keeping his full time job the recession is going to hit us even more then it has previously. So I am taking the advice of Motherhood Uncensored and we are going to blog the recession.

Read this blog, read my blogs at Baby Making 501 and Original Like Everyone Else and poke around. Read the archives. You might just like us.

Read here for more info

First Week of June on the rig

2008-06-05T16:55:00.000-07:00

Two days of work, hell what a short week (more on next post about why only two days).

Monday night was typical, busy at inconvenient times and dispatch sucked. I won't help them at all. Our other car that night kinda pissed me off too. We were closest to a call because they lied about where they were. I'm over it now.

Tuesday ended on an awkward note. My morning nap was interrupted by a call. We were dispatched to a down and out. Those are simple. This was not. We pulled up to find a 40 something beaner, shot near dead in the chest. Single in and out probably a 22 or so. He almost died in my rig due to a retard firefighter who had to ride in. I asked for one rider (she did well) and the other fat retard hopped in and kept bumping into me as I was trying to get shit done. He meant well I am sure, but fuck, get the hell out of my way. Okay over it too.

Next post = my personal ed visit and kidney stone fun.

Last Weekend in May First part of June

2008-06-05T16:47:00.000-07:00

Well, in between fighting what I thought was kidney stones and an infection, I got busy and was unable to post.

My weekend was relatively exciting. I saw my daughter turn 7, and have a little party. I watched my 10 y/o boy attend a birthday party as well. He's autistic and did pretty damn well as I must say so myself.

Baseball: I've been playing on an adult amateur team since april 7 games in now and we finally won. I'm the unofficial manager and let me tell you it's a pain in the ass. Whiney twenty-somethings, who have no idea of commitment.

Hell I played 3rd base and somehow we got lucky and won. It wasn't my offense (I suck) that won the game. It was finally having 9 bodies that knew they had to play the whole damn game without any excuses. I've fine tuned our line-up and it worked.

This upcoming weekend is a different story. I'm expecting 13 or 14 players. I've threatened sanctions to pare down my line-up since most still owe the team money for umpire fees and uniforms, but couldn't enforce it last weekend due to lack of players. This weekend I should have everyone so I can bitch and pick those who have paid up.

Different Partner Different Night

2008-05-29T06:52:00.000-07:00

So yup another night down in the books, a tragic stabbing, non fatal as of this morn, a drunk, a skunk, and a I can't afford a cab.

The night was slow at first as usual, nothing big til about 9 o'clock, tragic stabbing of a young female. Can't really say much about it, but read today's pueblo chieftain for more. Yes I ran that call.

Drunk, duh at least one a night needs a ride

A skunk, almost hit one going code 3 to a call

A drug seeking whore whose legs are paralyzed needed a ride home from the ed

I'd like to say that my night was exciting. It kinda was this time. Not really much to bitch about, dispatch did decent. My partner was cool. I stayed caught up on paperwork. Hell if not for my burned out mentality, I might have to say it was a good night.

I think I am going to pass another kidney stone, hoping it is over and out soon. What a pain, don't get one yourself, they suck. Hoping to contact doc, who will set up an appt w a specialist. Yippee I hate going to doctors, I see so many people wishing for a miracle cure. They think that the ED doc can save them from thier own stupidity. Stupid can be fixed but people have the varied opinions that they might not be stupid.

Uh, one more night and my regular partner will be back. Not that last nights partner was good, but he doesn't try to nap in the rig. He was kinda hyper. I'm too laid back at this point. In between calls, I try to sleep if I can.

Wow, actually tired, going to bed now.

Cool old lady and crazy twenty something

2008-05-28T07:52:00.000-07:00

Last night was an interesting night on my ambulance. It started with the typical DUI blood draw, and ended with a near deaf old lady with a cold.

The night of course started with an intoxicated driver. We do blood draws for evidence for all the local Law enforcement. This guy was a weirdo, knew all sorts of stuff about drawing blood. Thank God I didn't miss or I would never here the end of it.

The other notable calls were weird enough too. I had a pt in a complete heartblock (very rare) and he didn't die (as of yet). I had a old man fall down and get intubated. We had a crazy half naked chick drunk off her ass in the middle of the road. We had the deaf old lady who screamed to get her point accross.

Nothing really to bitch about it was a little busy but not a big deal.

Todays story is about what really pisses me off.

Just because you have insurance, or medicaid, or medicare, doesn't mean that you are going to ride for free. Some dumbass called and actually said, it's been bugging me for 15 years now and tonight I want to get it checked out. He was proud that the VA would pay for his ride in an ambulance, then had the tenancity to bitch that we used the lights and sirens coming to his house. 450 tax dollars vs. 5 dollar cab ride.

Listen people there are many reasons to call an ambulance but just as many reasons to get your butt into the ED in your own car (or taxi).

Stubbed toe= cab
heart attack= ambulance
hang nail= stay home
breathing problem= ambulance
anxiety attack= stay home
profused bleeding= ambulance
intoxication= stay home
accidental poisoning= ambulance
small laceration= cab or your own car
death= coroners car
diabetic problem= stay home, eat a meal if your sugar is low, go to doc if high.

Now I could go on and on and on about these but please just use some common sense. Oh yeah and don't try to bring your whole family along in the ambulance (especially if your driveway is full of cars) we don't want to drag everyone into the already overcrowded ED's.

We've got eight minutes to get to your house in our city. If it's not serious thats eight minutes that you could have been driving already.

Finally today. Don't meet us at the door with your luggage packed and hair done. You just lost credibility. Stop using the ED as your primary care doc.

day one hoping to blog often

2008-05-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

Can't sleep doc awoke me with a call.

Good news kind of, the tests all showed neg (as I expected). I had kidney stones, and at times it hurt like a bitch.

But what a pain tolerance I must say.
In speaking with her (my doc) it was weird that I had no back pain, no lower abdominal pain, nada zip zilch nothing.

Okay I mainly want to blog about work and life and not my personal issues, so here we go:

I work four nights a week as a paramedic, on an ambulance in a 911 system. Assume nothing, as I am praying this blog isn't really read by the bosses. If it is, good luck, I'll try not to announce names or violate the big hippa thing.

I digress

The fact of the matter is this 80 percent of the time, we hold peoples hands and try to just make the patient feel better, the other 20 percent is real paramedicine. This paramedicine consists of real stuff, IV's, Drugs, Cardiac Monitors, Intubation, and darting chests. I work in a fabulous system (don't assume anything yet) that I do not need med control for every little thing. Our PA (Physician Advisor) trusts us a lot. We have many standing orders.

As mentioned I work nights, a lot of them, and will probably do so for at least awhile (or maybe till I die or retire). I get a lot more of the drunk idiots. I get a few shootings, a few MVC's and occasionally I really need to save a life.

Just hope and pray that I am in a good mood when you call.

Upcoming blogs (ok I am hoping for these):
why I am burned out.
a play by play of my typical night shift
why management is a pain in the ass
getting paid to take naps
why gas prices and how I will ride a bike to work

these are just a few ideas. If you have a question, leave a comment or look me up on twitter (as emtpueblo)