I mentioned in an earlier post about the possibility of some some seasonal part time work.  

I interviewed this afternoon and I’ve been hired as an EMT at the local Water Slide/Theme Park.

It’s only a couple days a month and they’ll work around my schedule at OAC. 

Yeah, it could be fun. 

I just got home from taking the EMT knowledge exam. 130 questions, with only a couple that gave me pause… simply because of they way they were written. All in all, I think I did pretty well, even though I was the first person finished. JB Test Prep was a huge help. By a quick count, it looked like upwards of 80 folks tested. As I mentioned, the top 50 get invited to the oral interviews. 24 22 get a seat in class. Also, a very hearty thank you to everyone who provided encouragement. I really appreciate it. I’ll find out next week if I made into the orals. (They’re planning to send out the letters on Friday.)

Also, just got the call from “new job HR”. Orientation at OAC starts on 5/11.

Yeah baby… I’m feelin’ good today!

I worked my penultimate shift at IFT on Sunday. It was a little strange. The normally well ordered station was in disarray. It was obvious that some of the rigs had not been washed in several days, there were half packed boxes of supplies stacked haphazardly in the lobby and a general feeling of disorganization and despair was palpable in the station.

Sunday was slow and for the most part, unremarkable. I did my calls, got some study time in, finished my paperwork and then at the end of the shift, because I still care a little bit and have some pride in the way we look; I washed my truck and did a full rig audit to make sure it was ready for the next crew.

Then, I shut the lights off in the bay and went home.

We all move on to new and exciting things.

I take the paramedic entrance exam this afternoon. Tomorrow afternoon I’ll interview for a seasonal EMS job and I assume that orientation is still set for the second week of May at OAC, even though I haven’t heard back from them in a couple of days.

I’ll let you know how it all goes. I’m excited for the change.

A couple of really nice things happened in the past few days.

I got a text message today from a guy who was one of the IFT folks chosen to go to The Borg. It said “We all think you should be here. It’s not fair that you got f!@#$ed on that deal.” That made me feel good. Thanks Dude. I appreciate the fact that you sent a random text message out of the blue.

There are people coming out of the woodwork to talk to me about jobs. One is a guy who does EMS at motor sports events. He has a new contract and wanted to know if I was interested in joining his team full time. The other is a seasonal job that might be fun for the summer. Maybe I’ll try and squeeze some hours in on my off days at the Other Ambulance Company (OAC). It’s nice to be wanted.

I got a “good luck on the paramedic test” comment from AD! How cool is that? I bought, read and thoroughly enjoyed his book and try to read his blog everyday. It was pretty cool that he stopped by to read my ramblings. Almost as exciting as that time I met Garth Brooks.

Got a lot done around the house. I continue to be a cleaning machine. (If anyone needs old Motorola two way radios, I’ve a garage full to unload!)

The rain is back. After several days of temps in the high 60s, with lots of bright sun, this chilly rainy morning was akin to a slap in the face with a cold wet towel.

At least the rain is damping down the pollen and my nose is somewhat clear. I’ve got the next few days off as I work my remaining shifts in the current set at IFT. It looks as if my last two are this weekend and then I’m free for a couple of weeks until the new job starts.

When I shared this info with my wife over dinner last night, she rubbed her hands together evilly and her eyes glinted. “So, that means you’ll have time to get some things done around the house, hmm?” she asked sweetly. “Sure Babe”, I replied, “Plenty of time.” I immediately slapped my hand to my head. Oh No! What had I done?

When I stumbled downstairs this morning for coffee, I found a long list on the kitchen counter. Yes friends, I have been tasked with completing yet another world famous “Honey-Do” list. I won’t bore you with the details, but the most interesting item on the list is “fix the flat tire on the Power Washer”

It’s gonna be a long couple of days.

Update: Wednesday @ 1520. Power Washer wheels replaced. Power Washer now working 5/5. On to the next item on the list!

It’s been a hectic week.

The company finally announced to the staff that they were closing the station. It wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone, except a cabulance driver, who stood stunned in the bay, sobbing, as the President of the company bluntly announced our closure. I mean, the station chief had been blabbing it to almost everyone since the beginning of the month. Or, at least all of the “chosen people”. The folks that weren’t going to be part of the transition didn’t know about it ’til it leaked. Two weeks ago, one of my partners got a call from a buddy on the other side of the state asking about it. The word has been out, and most of us were just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It seems that as the station closes, all bets are off. Apparently, someone in the upper management structure spoke with my station chief about a confidential conversation I had with the HR department. So now it looks as if I’ve been blackballed from joining the “chosen few” who will be employed by The Borg. A week ago I was being recommended as a supervisor, now I’m persona non grata. Hmm. Very interesting, isn’t it?.

I guess the take away is this; if things are getting stolen, crew members are doing drugs and shit is going sideways at the station, it’s better to keep your mouth shut? Ok. Lesson learned.

In reality, I’m not really upset about not going to The Borg, as it turns out the deal the new employees are getting is kind of crummy. The Borg is hiring enough people to run the IFT calls and they’ll be doing that exclusively for at least the next three months. After that, they’ll take a “integration course” and be able to bid an available shift, but there won’t be a real shift bid open for a while. So, most people will be stuck with running the same old IFT calls. I bumped into some of the current Borg employees at a facility where I was doing a transfer and they’re royally pissed that new people are being hired full time, when there are part timers who have been promised FT slots when they open. Awkward. Also, I found out just how much of a douche bag the Station Chief is, and if he’s going as a supervisor, I’m not interested in hitching my wagon to his horse. I give him 90 days before he’s out on his ass for gross incompetence.

The worst part is many of the current IFT employees are not on the “favorite list” so they’re in limbo. They were told that they would be getting jobs with The Borg (or another company), but it may “take a while”. Really, the whole thing kind of sucks. At least the company (IFT) is doing the right thing. They’re paying a month of severance and 100% COBRA for all full time employees for 3 months. That’s way above and beyond the norm. I applaud the owners for stepping up and taking acre of the crew members. Most of them are living pay check to pay check…so that severance is really going help.

Anyway, as I mentioned in a couple of previous blog posts, I had already given my notice to head to the other ambulance company. Orientation for that job starts the second week of May. So, I’m ok. I’ll be running BLS 911 and I should be on a 24 hour car by mid June.

The weather has been great over the past few days. Lots of sun, which is rare for the PNW. I’ve been working on my EMT-I class and studying for the Paramedic entrance “EMT Knowledge” exam on the 27th. I’ve been using JB Test Prep to make sure I’ve got it knocked. I think I’ll do ok.

It’s strange how there’s always a rush right before things go south. Like, have you ever noticed that right before a restaurant goes out of business; it’s always full of people? It has been like that at IFT over the last week or so. I’ve run calls out of facilities that I’ve never been to before. The discharge planners and nurses will make very happy sounding noises when we show up, saying things like, “Wow, you guys are on time! And so polite! We must use you more.” I just say smile and say thanks, knowing that in 2 weeks, we’ll be a different company.

As some of you may know, my current job is IFT. That’s the exciting whirlwind of “Inter-facility Transport”. In the IFT world, there are four basic of levels of patients that we transfer. Here’s the break out of my “Medic 7 classification system”. Level I patients are totally gorked out. One of my colleagues calls them,”self watering vegetables”. Level II are A&Ox1 or 2. That means they are aware of self or place, but not much else. These are typical dementia patients. Level III are pissed off regulars. These are the folks that go to dialysis and hate the world, you included. Level IV are normal folks that need a BLS ride and can’t tolerate a wheelchair or POV.

Level II and Level IV patients are my favorites. The IV folks can have a regular conversation and are usually interested and involved in their own care. Level II folks are usually confused and scared about what’s going on. I really enjoy being a compassionate caregiver in these cases. I transported a 83 year old guy with colon CA that had mets everywhere. Lungs, liver, brain. He didn’t have much time left and he was going to a Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF). He was confused as to time, place and event, but knew his name. When we picked him up, he was crying and scared and confused. I held his hand as we went down the elevator and one I got in the truck, I continued to hold his hand and try to engage him. He started to talk to me and we had a nice “small talk” conversation about the weather and chocolate and the condition of the roads and flowers. Whenever I would ask him something that he was confused about, he would twist it around to ask me a question. “Sir, do you know where we’re going?” I would ask. “Well, of course I do,” he would reply “We’re leaving the place we just were.” I know he was altered, but he was just a delightful man and not in any pain, so I just kept talking to him and we passed the time from the hospital to the SNF. When it comes down to it, isn’t that the most important part of what we do? Just try to make people comfortable and take their mind off what they’re going through? I have some coworkers that don’t (or won’t) talk to patients, or are uncomfortable with making small talk or don’t know how to behave around the terminal patients. When I work with a partner like this, I always hand them my copy of Thom Dick’s People Care. It’s a great book that explains how compassion is the key to success in EMS. If you haven’t read it yet, do it. It’s only 15 bucks, but maybe it’ll change the way you look at the people in your ambulance.

Oh yeah, I still really love the new Blackberry Curve. I’ve downloaded the Pandora app and now I stream it in my car while driving. These portable broadband devices are KILLING terrestrial radio and are one of the main reasons I got out of broadcasting.

I replaced my aging Blackberry 8830 with a new Blackberry Curve today. I got the “Hey, why not update your phone for only 49.99″ email a couple of days ago… and since we had a slow shift (ZERO calls, anyone?) I spent 10 minutes with the Verizon guy this morning, and suddenly…BAM! I had a new phone. I received awesome, fast service and the new ‘berry is killer! I highly recommend the Verizon Store at Alderwood Mall.

It’s been a good Friday so far. And since I am a recovering catholic, I’ll bow to the ritual and call it Good Friday. (My mom would be happy.)

I’m on shift today, but I’m currently sitting in my dining room with my partner, both of us tapping away at laptops. I’m busily blogging and he’s working on his security clearance packet for a Sheriff’s job. We just had lunch and now we’re just waiting for that next big call to come. Luckily, I live in our posting area, so when we’re assigned up this way, the normal stop is at the house. When my wife is home, she likes to make dinner or lunch for me and my partners. It’s a perk of working with me that most have my partners have come to enjoy.

We’ve done one call today, It was a hospital discharge, a woman returning home after spine surgery. She was a war vet and a very cool person. We had a great chat in the truck until the Dilaudid and Lorazepam really kicked in and she dozed for the remainder for the 30 mile trip. I’m glad she slept, as the last few miles were bumpy due to the never ending construction. A nice little uneventful transport to start the day, however I think that one call may be it.

So, the big impending station closure has become the numero uno topic of conversation around the station. Everyone knows what’s going on, but nobody is admitting to knowing anything. The Station Ops Manager told me on Tuesday that he is going to The Borg as a supervisor and he was asked to recommend 6 to 10 EMTs to go with him. I’m on the list, as are some of the newer people. I’m happy to say it looks like the SIP and some of the other deadwood won’t make the cut. If all the stuff that the boss is telling us is true, we’ll just go from blue uniform shirts on the 30th to white uniform shirts on the 1st. The new company wants to make the transition seamless, having the same crews transport the patients, even though we’ll be in new, different color ambulances, working for a new, different company. I guess we’ll see how it shakes out. I’m not even going to speculate, as I think the station chief is full of crap most of the time.

My wife is spending a “girl’s weekend” in San Diego with one of her best friends this weekend. That leaves me home, solo, to tend to the dawgs and deal with work this weekend. The neighbor’s have invited me over for Easter dinner on Sunday… and since I only eat ham once a year, I’m rather excited about it.

What an interesting day. I had another interview at the other ambulance company this afternoon. They offered me a position, but said I’d have to drive a cabulance for a month or so while they set up the new 24 hour shifts. Well, I don’t have any issue with cabulance driving. Think about it, no obnoxious partner to deal with, no real BS, I can listen to whatever radio station I want. Nice. I said, “Sure, I’ll drive a wheelchair van for a month, as long as I can have a written agreement that states I move to a 24 in June. When do you need me to start?” She asked me to start ASAP but I told her I wanted to work out a couple of weeks with IFT, as I’m not the kind of guy to leave an employer in the lurch.

She agreed, and when I came home from the interview I wrote my letter of resignation to IFT, telling them that I would work through the end of the scheduled set on the 16th. No more than 60 seconds after I sent the email, my phone rang. It was the big boss calling to ask me to stay on til the 30th. He said that if I did, I’d get a 4 week severance and if I wanted, I could transition over to “The Borg”, who will be buying the company. Hmmm. Not a bad thing. They’re getting a mandated pay raise in June. Close to $16 per hour for BLS. Sweet.

Well, I guess I can put up with a few more weeks of IFT-itis for the severance. And if I decide to go work for the other guys, orientation is scheduled for the first week of May. And yes, they’re going to hold my spot. They think I’m a super nice guy for offering to “help IFT through this difficult transition”.

Oh, by the way, this whole “station closing thing” still a big hush hush secret and the supe isn’t telling any of the other crew members what’s going on. I know it has to be that way, but it just feels wrong.

Hello Constant Reader. There are lots of things poppin’ in my world these days. Here’s a quick run down.

I received a letter from the Paramedic program. It looks like my application was in order and I have been invited to move on to the next step in the selection process, the “EMS Knowledge Exam”. It’s about a month away, on a Monday afternoon. I’m guessing it will just be a basic EMT knowledge exam. I don’t think I’ll have much of a problem, but I’ll study the hell out of my textbook none the less.

Over in IFT land; I was invited to a long sit-down with the station chief on Friday afternoon. I have close to 20 years of experience in managing diverse teams and he told me several times that he values my opinions and experience. So, we had a lengthy discussion about his management style, problem employees and morale. It was a good meeting, although I don’t think he heard much of what we talked about. He’s the kind of guy that likes to bluster and pontificate just to hear himself talk. It was an open dialogue that he initiated, so rather than candy coat it, I decided to just tell him exactly what I thought. I mentioned that many of the other crew members, and me, felt that he had been assigning far too many supervisory duties to a couple of unqualified employees, simply because he was buddy-buddy with them. I said to him, in a slightly more diplomatic fashion, “Dude, you can’t invite these two guys over to your house, drink with ‘em, pal around with them both on and off duty, and then expect the rest of the crew to not think that they’re your evil minions”. He got very upset, telling me that “who he hung around with was nobody business and the rest of the crew should mind their own business”. I just laughed and told him that he was making a management mistake that I made years ago.I learned that there is a really fine line between being social and being buddies with your employees… When you’re a new manager, you want to be friends with everybody, and you just can’t. Sure, you can act social, but your friends need to be from outside the workplace. He’ll learn. Or, maybe he won’t. After all, his prior experience consists of a couple of years as a used car salesman.

But then some slightly more exciting news! It turns out that none of that discussion really mattered, because it seems that IFT, as a company, has lost interest in continuing business in this area. The rumor of our impending demise had been floating around for a while, but the boss man confirmed it. No word on when the doors are closing for good, but I expect it to be soon. An interesting point is that he mentioned “The Borg” may be one of the companies interested in buying IFT. The boss will be going to the IFT main office in another state, and he mentioned that I might want to consider the same. “Uhhh, no thanks. But I appreciate the offer.”

As I said, those rumors of the station closing had been around for at least a month or two, so even before I talked to the boss I had that feeling that the end was near. Friday morning I spoke with the HR woman at the other ambulance company that I had mentioned in prior posts. She was very excited to talk to me and couldn’t wait to get me in for a final interview. During the call she said, “There’s some good openings. I know you want a 24 and we can do that. We have lots of stuff happening. We just got a new 911 contract and we’re getting 8 new rigs!”

Hmmm. IFT has 8 pretty new rigs. 6 BLS ambulances and 2 wheelchair cars.

I wonder… nah.

Can’t be

I just received my matriculation packet for the EMT-I course that I’m taking this spring. I still think it’s a good mid level step, in case I don’t make the cut in the medic program selection process. I have my text books and I’ve been reading ahead and doing the workbook activities outlined on the syllabus. Looks like fun. This summer I’ll spend 14 days in Augusta doing my clinicals, National Registry testing and precepting with a medic.

I received my final grades for the Winter Quarter. I ended up with a 4.0 in A&P II and a 3.7 in Medical Terminology. (I always messed up the damn spelling!)

I took today as a “sick day”, and I’m glad I did. It’s a beautiful Sunday, rare for Seattle. There’s lots of sun and my wife and I are heading to a wine tasting this evening. I’m looking forward to interacting with people who don’t need an ongoing assessment or are not wearing polyester navy blue uniforms with trauma shears wedged in their belt.

Well, I made it back from a week of snowboarding in South Lake Tahoe in one piece. I’m not the world’s greatest snowboarder so I’m slightly bruised and I am sporting a serious sunburn, but it was all worth it. If you’re down with spring skiing, Heavenly at the end of March lives up to it’s name. The conditions were fantastic, the mountain is amazing and the people that staff the place are great. I took a private lesson with a 24 year old woman who was the best snowboard instructor I’ve ever had. She immediately showed me where I was making mistakes and worked on drills with me to make my snowboarding so much better. It was the best $120 I’ve ever spent. My wife is not a snowboarder, instead she strapped on her skis and rocked those long cruisers that Heavenly is famous for. She spent her days exploring the mountain and then we would meet for a cocktail at Snow Beach midway through the day. What a perfect vacation. If you haven’t been to Lake Tahoe, go. Seriously.

In other news, I finally got my Washington State EMT cert. This state amazes me. It took forever for my paperwork to go through the system. I think they still use pack mules to transport the applications from Seattle to Olympia. But, now that I have my card I was scheduled to work with an FTO to show me the proper way to tech calls. Of course, it was a day with the SIP. As I mentioned previously, I’m not new to writing a PCR, so I had one shift worth of “training” before I was cut loose to do it on my own. (Actually, the training was simply how to write a PCR the “IFT way” so we can bill the patient’s insurance and get paid.) So, the end result is that I am now an official EMT/Tech at IFT. Yippee. I plan on not driving again for a LONG time.

We did a long distance discharge from the local University Med Center to a home in BFE yesterday. The woman we were taking home was at the end of her battle with metastatic breast cancer and she wanted to die at her home, in the mountains that she loved. It was a really good trip, as her sister rode in the back with us and we all talked and joked and admired the scenery as we took our 120 mile trip into the Cascades. To be honest, I enjoy Hospice trips when the family is there. I truly believe that when everyone comes to grips with the impending death of their mom or sister and can say goodbye in a positive way it makes the grief process, while never easy, certainly less abrupt. I’ve lost loved ones quickly, and while I was grateful that they didn’t suffer, I wish that I could have had just one more conversation to tell them how much them meant to me.

Anyhow, this run into the mountains was a little different for a couple of reasons. For one thing, for the first time in my life, I had more than a touch of motion sickness. As we were winding our way up the curvy two lane highway, I was forced to concentrate on the cabinet full of 4×4s and breathe through my nose to keep from puking in the back of the truck as we swayed around the corners. I’m not normally car sick, and I still feel a little queasy this morning, so I’m thinking I may be coming down with something. Either that or it’s just too much coffee. I think I was a little green around the gills, because the patient’s sister, who was sitting in the airway seat, looked over at me, smiled knowingly, and said “I get a little woozy on this road too.” Thanks ma’am. Maybe we can share the emesis basin.

We made it to the house with no vomiting and carried the patient into a warm and cozy cabin in the middle of a beautiful 5 acre meadow in the shadow of the Cascades. Not to be morbid, but if you have to die, that’s the place to do it. I know I’d rather be looking out at nature’s beauty from my own bedroom, rather than listening to the ding of unanswered call bells in some shitty smelling SNF surrounded by people I don’t know as I worked hard on dying. The patient’s family gatherd around the bed and her brother watched carefully as I connected a NC to the oxygen concentrator that the Hospice folks had dropped off. I handed him a box of gloves and a couple of bottles of sterile water for the O2 humidifier and then we made our way back out to the rig, ready for he long, twisty drive back to civilization. Unfortunately, it had been snowing and the spot where we had parked the truck had become a slick, slushy, muddy mess. We wound up using our wool blankets as “traction devices”, wedging them under the ties to provide a little bit of grip, as putting a set of chains on the rig would have just dug up the entire yard. Both brother and sister came out of the house to help us push and we all wound up laughing and joking as we spun our way down the driveway. Total miles for the call, 250. Yeah, it was a pretty good day.

Here a couple of pictures to give you an idea of where we went…

The mountains are a special place. I’m glad I was able to help this woman get home to a place she loves, where she can pass on in comfort, surrounded by loving family.