Responsibility

For the first time I'm going into a field where it really actually matters how badly I mess up at my job. In the grand scheme of things the likelihood that my forgetting you said no lettuce on your taco will have serious ramifications are pretty small. But missing something when I'm doing an examination on someone before we get them to the hospital or giving them too many doses of a medication, that's serious. This time it's literally a matter of life and death that I do things right. Thankfully I'm able to forget that most of the time and just focus on what I need to do. See problem, fix problem, simple. If you concentrate hard enough on what you're doing you can forget all the things that can possibly go wrong on your watch and you always have the "do no further harm" thing floating over your head all the time. All the things I have to learn reach far beyond just remembering them for the next test like I can with every other class I've taken. After all, by and large the things I had to learn in school never had any practical application whatsoever. Ever. I do not use trigonometry in my daily life. Never will. But all these things I'm learning in school, it's actually relevant! Important even! This is a new and fascinating concept and totally awesome. I actually love what I'm doing and love the job I can have when I'm done. I look forward to going to school and not only that but I'm actually doing well in school. This is totally foreign territory here. Even when I was studying English I liked it a lot, but it didn't excite me like being an EMT does. Plus editors don't get to ride in fire trucks and how many people can say that doesn't fulfill every childhood dream? Plus no matter how long my shift is and how tired I am and how many awful things happened I can know I did something really important for someone. I can directly see that I made a difference and that's pretty cool. Of course I'm still a little worried that I won't know enough or I'll completely freeze one day in the field and my partner will have to save me, but hopefully I'll be all right. I've got the lights and sirens to make me happy if nothing else. 

Awesome nerdom

I bought myself a nice new flash drive last week since the one I already had is almost seven years old and is so old school it only holds 128 MB. So I set out to find a nice new one and settled on a 2 gig that can pretty much hold the world. Naturally, I couldn't just buy some boring, plain black one that so many people have, I had to get a special one. So I found a R2-D2 flash drive that is totally awesome. Does it look awesome? Ohhhh, yes it does. Is it practical? Not really. Doesn't fit into the USB ports on the PC, but does just fine with the laptop. But if I cared about things like that I wouldn't own about half of my possessions. It's just fun to look at him sitting there on my desk. I nearly lost his head once, that's the downside, but I found it again sitting on my blue bed sheet. See the problem? Still, I love the thing and I'd love it more if I could figure out how to get rid of the infernal PDF files that came with it full of coupons I don't want for idiotic Star Wars Clone Wars merchandise that I will NEVER buy under any circumstances. George Lucas is busy puking all over the franchise, I don't want to get that on me.

You'll Thank me Later

I've noticed something interesting in the course of my EMT training. Saving people involves a great deal of discomfort and awkwardness for both parties. Putting a K.E.D. spinal immobilization device on someone, for instance, isn't on right unless the person feels like they're wearing the most horrible corset ever invented and the straps around the legs are so tight that they can't stand up. Naturally, we do this for your good. Same goes for the collar. If it feels uncomfortable, it's on right. Basically, most everything is designed to keep you from moving and unfortunately that usually involves very tight straps and things jammed where you'd rather they wouldn't be, but since your leg is broken you have more important things to worry about. In the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter that all the things are uncomfortable since that's what's keeping your spine, broken bones, or whatever from getting even more messed up than they already are. I just find it funny that everything that is designed to keep us safe, from seatbelts to spine boards, is uncomfortable.

Cumulation

Lately I've been thinking that my body holds a grudge against me. It's either that or it's lazy and wants to get everything over with at the same time. I only get sick about once a year, sometimes twice, and always around the same time. Last year it went for broke and I had a cold for three weeks and a small dose of pink eye that went away in roughly 24 hours. This year though, my body decided that just wasn't good enough. This time not only do I have congestion as per usual, I'm not sure if it's allergies or a cold yet, but I'm leaning towards cold, there's a cough too. But in addition to this I got a raging case of pink eye from who knows where, it's not like I hang around people with pink eye, I hate it, and some nice throbbing pain all along my left jawline up to my temple that gets poignantly worse when I blow my nose or dare to bend over. My mom suspects this is an infection of some sort, so I get to to to the doctor tomorrow. I'm sure it'll be really fun too.
Me: "Hello, Doctor, nice to see you again so soon. You know how last time I came it was for a physical and I was in perfect health?"
Doctor: "Yeah..."
Me: "Not so much this time. What do you have for throbbing pain in my face and nasty goo pouring out of my nose and eye?"
Doctor: "There's an app for that."

We are not amused. Just for once, can I get sick like a normal person? Or even just one illness at a time, that would be nice. I do not need a side order of pink eye every time I get sick, thanks. And keep your rotten whatever-it-is infection. The upside to this is that my dad still had some medication from the last time he had pink eye, so I used that and it made my eye stop covering itself with goo and generally throwing a tantrum. The medicine mixed with some rinsing my eye with salt water really made it a lot better. Now can I have something to fix everything else? Please and thank you.