Ambulance

I’m riding in the “box” of the ambulance. There’s a call for a 80 year old African American woman with "seizures." Doesn't sound too serious. Besides, an ALS (advanced life support) fire engine is on the way, well before we will get there.

Mid-way there, the driver yells back into the box "they're doing CPR." The driving gets noticeably more serious. We're running red lights like crazy now. Oh boy.

I rehearse what I learned over a year ago in my head. 30 compressions and 2 breaths. Or is it 30 and 4?

We arrive at the scene. The patient is lying on the floor, with a tube into her lungs. Someone is performing chest compressions. A woman cries in the corner. Another man looks forward, blankly, as if nothing is registering at all.

I see a big bottle of oxygen in the corner of the room, as well as a peak flow meter. She must have lung problems.

The paramedics flop her onto the blue backboard. They struggle to keep her lifeless hands from flopping to the side. Someone instructs me to turn the stretcher around, which I do. They place her onto the stretcher. The paramedic I'm with points to me and says "Start chest compressions!" I do. They load her into the ambulance with me compressing away. "Use the heel of your hand! Harder!" I continue compressions for about five minutes until someone else takes over. I’m exhausted. I could feel that some of her ribs had broken (not unusual). And there's no discernable heartbeat pattern on the monitor.

I hand someone a stethoscope. No left lung sounds. Must be a right mainstem intubation. They pull out the tube a bit, and it sounds better. They give her epinepherine and atropine through a needle in her neck. Someone asks me "Do you feel a femoral pulse?" I reach down there. "Um, maybe, yeah, I think so." Indeed, she now had a (slow) palpable pulse. God Damn, I was sure she was going to die. Wow. We saved her!

We arrive at the ER. The doctor looks none too pleased. He asks "how long has she been down?" "About 10 or 15 minutes, but she has a pulse." "Damnit! Well, resume chest compressions, then. We have no critical care beds!"

In any event, she will probably never leave the hospital.

ER tonight

Radio says kid was shot in neck, point blank. Five minutes out. I'm there in the trauma bay, expecting the worst. He must be dead or close to dead. They wheel him in. I'm in full protective equipment, wearing what amounts to a garbage bag and face shield to protect me from flying bodily fluids.

The EMT asks him if he can move over onto the other gurney. WTF? He's conscious?

They examine him all over and take X-Ray films.

He's fine. The wounds are mostly superficial. The bullet is still lodged in his arm, though. To make it from the neck to the arm without hitting anything important is incredible. No one could believe it. If only everyone could be so lucky.

Plastic Surgery

We went into the examination room. A woman was confortably sitting in a chair. I silently thought that she probably wanted a face lift or some such thing, even though she looked fine. This is plastic surgery after all.

How wrong I was. Ten yers ago she was in a car wreck, without a seat belt, and her face was smashed to pieces (the so-called pan-facial fracture). With some surgical wizardry, the plastic surgeon made everything look PERFECTLY NORMAL, at least to me. He still says that her maxilla is a little bit too big. Her only problem that day was that her nose itched a bit.

Damn. The thought that with your knife and skill you can make something look like it never happened. To give someone back their life, free of shame, free of self-consciousness and embarassment. Amazing.

John McCain

I've never been to a political rally before, so I thought I would at least make the effort to walk across the street to my old highschool's gymnasium.

I got there half an hour early. Plenty of people were already there. A woman offered me a McCain sticker, which I affixed to my coat so I would blend in better. "This is my country" was blaring from the speakers by the stage. The backdrop was a huge American flag. I didn't see a single black or hispanic or asian person.

Interestingly, there was NO visible security. None. You would think they would at least check people for guns, especially for a guy who is about to be the Republican presidential nominee.

There were three throat-clearing speeches before McCain took the stage. One guy talked about how he took Sadam Heussein's blood pressure after Saddam was captured. Another read a poem about Tennessee, written buy a POW in the Hanoi Hilton who was in the cell next to McCain's. McCain's wife talked about the daughter she adopted without her husband's knowledge.

"Where's she going to go?"

"I thought she could stay with us, dear."

"Oh, Ok."

Then there was the pledge of allegiance. And then the national anthem.

And then McCain finally took the stage with a huge cheer erupting from the crowd. Cameras flashed from every direction.

He gave his well-rehersed stump speech. Promised to find Osama. Promised to make Bush's tax cuts permanent (I had to concentrate to keep my groans from being audible). Promised to reign in federal spending using the "veto pen that Reagan gave me." Promised to give better healthcare to veterans.

And then he walked into the crowd with his wife, and was immediately swarmed by people wanting an autograph or wanting to shake his hand or wanting a better picture.

It's too bad McCain is a Republican. He would probably make a great president if he weren't so beholden to the conservative right.