Keep Off the Grass!!
LIFE IN THE VILLAGE ISN'T slow sometimes.
Like this last week when we had to respond to a couple of Emergencies here in theVillage and it was quite fun and very much a learning experience.
The most memorable of these events-some crazy white guy from another Village down theRoad, was all wacked out in the Village park when some of us were having a picnic.
My Auntie and I got theCall and responded.
Sure enough, a male caucasian was stumbling around and at first we thought he was drunk. He blew us off, didn't want any contact with us Villagers responding to his emergency, didn't want to talk to anyone.
In my mind I was running over a checklist of steps to follow during contact with a Patient. Steps to take in Assessing said Patient and determining his level of Injury or Medical distress before moving onto Treatment of said Patient.
My Auntie pulled a small necklace out of this guy's hand and she looked at it then quickly handed the broken necklace to me. I read the inscription upon the tiny Medical Alert tag and it read;
Diabetic.
My mind went blank.
I froze.
My Auntie looked at me.
I'm frozen.
My Auntie takes back the Medic Alert tag and she takes over the Patient Assessment.
She calms theMan down and gets him to sit quietly.
All females just have this ability to soothe and quiet down turmoiled situations and this time was one of those situations that needed a Woman's Touch.
I was still frozen.
Oh, god, I'm never gonna live this event down in my life!!
I'm ruined.
By dinnertime that evening Everyone knew about me, theSam!!
but by now I have a different name.
It's Sam Deer-in-the-Headlights.
But I'll discuss this Patient with a Diabetic attack later, because I'm getting embarassed just from thinking of it.
ALPHABET SOUP
As a child I used to eat Mothers food with reluctant obedience as only a little boy could muster. I admit that I never fed my pet dogs any of Mama's cooking, instead I made my little Sister Jess eat what I didn't like. No wonder she's as tall as me and just as big!!, gorgeous woman that she is.
Meals of my childhood were varied and still obviously memorable to my veteran taste buds. Yummy porkchops and buttered rice? I appreciated this on a cold day perhaps.
“Booboo” bread (pan fried) and antelope soup? Only when Granpa was around. It was fun to watch him Salt & Pepper his soup.
Steak cutlets, sweet peas fresh from Granma German’s (a white stepdad’s mother) garden, golden brown oven baked buttermilk biscuits, mashed potatos and gravy and Tang to wash it all down?
We ate good like this when ever Daddy (a white stepdad) cooked dinner and if I got to mix the Tang into the water and stir while little sister watched me. (sorry sis, I get to have first taste of theTang!)
Even though there is much food to eat in most households across America, a child’s appetite is basically wanting for only one thing-Sugar! and lots of it please. I loved Kellogg’s Cornflakes (with Sugar), I liked those Honeycomb sugar laden Smacks.
I was sold on the Candy bar commercials and would sing along with the "I'd like to buy theWorld a Coke!!-and keep it company" jingle on television.
And I do believe “ol’ Toucan Sam!!” was just getting started introducing kids all across America to the concept of “just follow your nose!”, following them straight to the breakfast table for those pink, blue, purple, yellow colored cereal bites.
I loved hot chocolate in the Winter, I loved cool ice cream in the summer.
I was a typical kid back then.
Gee.. as I type this I remember fighting with another boy over a bottle of pancake syrup while eating breakfast in Pre-School. I won the struggle, but squeezed the bottle of syrup so hard that I squirted syrup all over me.
Ms Hart sure had quite a long lecture about “Sharing” as she cleaned me off in the bathroom. Me, a cute lil’ pre schooler-Sweet within AND Without!! Thank you Ms Hart, you taught me to swing, you let me play with the Yellow tonka toy truck at playtime but most of all you were there for me and us, the rest of the children in your care.
Er.. I lost my train of thought. Hot blondes do that to you if you're a male. Short haired, milk skinned, perfumey smelling...*sigh*
Oh yes. Alphabet soup.
I don't recall eating this type of soup really. Maybe a few times in my life.
I certainly never had any leisure time to sit and stare into my soup bowl and spell out words like "C-A-R", "D-O-G", or any of the cuss words I heard adults say.
Maybe I should have done that more often though, eating more soup and playing with the letters to impact my spelling for my future benefit.
But since then, I've encountered a different variety of "Soup" as it were, in my life. And I'm not talking about food.
I'm talking about the various ACRONYMS that we adults have placed upon ourselves with Titles and Rank before or after our names.
Lately, up here in AK I've added some recent "Letters" to my real life personna and will be adding more letters sometime in the future as well.
An Example: SLFlyinghorse, That's ME. Recently updated his/MY ETT credentials with recent relevant ETT training.
What is ETT?
It stands for Emergency Trauma Technician.
The ETT designation in Alaska is really nothing more than just a glorified First Responder.
But I'll tell you that us ETT's are much better than basic First Response.
We know many EMT skills and have access to world class medical facilities and medical experts around theState if necessary.
Many of us, myself included, have not only Passed the Classroom practical tests and the written tests, but we've passed the Real World finals test that comes with a real life emergency. It truly is a wonderful feeling to know that you've helped save someone's life.
ETT is a step under the Alaska EMT's, and most recently, theState has been helping to Bridge the long step from ETT to EMT's by providing "Bridge" courses to motivated individuals that want to become state recognized EMT's.
I'll be doing this in the near future, stepping up to EMT.
We have EMT-I, EMT-II, EMT-III and finally MICP, the coveted Mobile Intensive Care Provider/ParaMedic.
Some people in life wanna be Anarchy,
some blessed souls wanna be EOD,UDT,DEA,FBI,CIA,BIA,NBA,PSS/PSD,UDA,HUA,HUD,IRA,etc.
(explosive ordnance disposal, underwater demolition team, drug enforcement agency, federal bureau of intimidation, christians in action, bureau of Intrepid affairs, national bank of alaska, protective security specialist/detail, you dee ayy, head up *ss, housing urban development, indian recognition act, etcetra)
Some SOB's end up DOA, SOL and USC WAP!!
(son-of-a-britches, dead on arrival, shat out of luck, up ship creek without a paddle!)
but for now-I wanna be MICP. But first I gotta be EMT.
Ugnnhh. Enough already.
I'm getting tired of this.
But hopefully you get my point about Alphabet Soup that we adults eat without really knowing that we do indeed eat it, or that we seek it out.
In my own life I've been a PR, an LMP, an LCH,
(Parachute Rigger, Licensed Massage Practitioner, Licensed Cosmetologist-Hairburner!)
I've done these jobs and I've done them well.
BTW, if anyone wants to buy a couple of 200'ft and 300'ft square canopy parachutes I'd be glad to sell them CHEAP!! Used only once, small blood stains.
Life isn't just a bowl of Cherries, and a pile of Lemons or a Pitcher of Lemonade.
Life is also a bowl of Alphabet Soup and it's up to us to make life's experiences
enjoyable or Not.
A few days ago when I was out of Propane fuel for my Trailer and I was cold all night and didn't sleep at all until I finally came into my parents house to sleep for a couple hours, Life was lemons.
I was actually the tiny kernel of popcorn stuck to the bottom of the pan burning up while everyone else in theVillage was popping up beautifully and buttery.
I'm getting hungry just talking of food.
And speaking of food.
The Crazy Man from AnotherVillage!!
This poor white man.
He breaks down in ourVillage, forgets his Diabetic meds, or sugar foods and then has an Episode while we're eating tons of food.
My Auntie looks at me, theMan in Charge, and seeing that I have theDoe-Eyed Look!!, she takes command of the Emergency situation that we responded too.
doh!!
We give the poor guy some sugary liquids to drink and theChange is so obvious.
Complete 180degrees in a few minutes.
"What did I do now??" theWhite man says.
"Did I do it again?" he continues.
Everything is fine we tell him.
"Where's my pickup?" he asks.
By now I'm out of my stupor, I was caught completely off guard by this Diabetic Attack.
Well. We get the Man off to a good start by feeding him some of our food and send him on his way.
A few hours later we get this call about an accident at the Community Hall.
Three other Villagers respond to this event.
It's this Man again!!
He apparently was fixing something in the Ceiling of our Community Hall and fell off a ladder and fell onto a pair of scissors-thrusting it deep into his right thigh.
The Health Aide's and Village Police Officer fix him up.
Then a few hours later we get another emergency call!!
Yep, you probably guessed it.
This poor man that we treated earlier was in an auto accident.
I was there at the scene with two Village women and we extricated the poor fool from
his mangled vehicle.
When we checked him initially for injuries and blood loss his right boot fell off his leg and all 3 of us First Response were staring at an amputated foot still in the boot.
One of theWomen almost freaked out that time, not me thank goodness.
I bandaged the bloody stump and slowed down the bleeding and we back-boarded & C-Collar'd the man and moved him out of his mangled truck.
I tell you that some times life is slow and then when events happen, they hit us at once.
But I tell you this in good fun.
Because the poor victim of the last few days emergencies was our knowledgable ETT instructor from down theRoad.
He pulled out many real life situations from out of his Bag-of-Learning-tricks and really caught many of us ETT students off guard during our Individual and Team practicals.
My Auntie really stood there waving theDiabetic chain tag around in the air while I'm stumbling around verbally trying to figure out what to do next, finally I shut down completely. Totally unaware of her 4' from me waving the tag at me, I wouldn't have noticed if she threw it at me.
We laughed at that one, me standing there in a daze. Doh!! Eyes.
And another of our Health Aides, she almost dropped thePatient/ETT Instructor when his "fake amputated foot" rolled out from his pant leg.
We students learned never to react like that.
Never utter exclamations or blurt out oaths or expletives in front of a conscious or unconscious Patient.
Finally today, Saturday, was our last day of learning and testing.
I'm happy to say that all of us students for the ETT certification/recertification PASSED!!
As we all ate our lunch and talked about the last week's events I joked a little about "that crazy whiteman from Down-the-Road".
"I saw him earlier around theVillage" I said.
The Instructor, recognizing that I was joking of course, interjected his own humor by saying "that you should have sent him away immediately"
It's all in good humor though.
And finally, the show stopper for us students, especially me.
One humorous story told by the ETT Instructor.
Was from a Dr that had to do an emergency Appendectomy upon a young woman.
The young lady was a punk rocker type of girl because she had wild colored bright green Hair on her head!
And of course with a surgical procedure like removal of the inflamed Appendix.
The Dr's have to dry shave off the Pubic hair of their Patients and they go to shave the young woman only to discover that her PUBES are COLORED the same as her head hair.
And tattooed upon her skin were the words-"KEEP OFF THE GRASS"
So the Dr's shaved her, did their surgery upon her and removed her Appendix and then a Dr wrote in Magic Marker upon her bandages.
"Sorry, I had to trim the Lawn"
I'm still laughing at that one.
Author's Note:
No Villagers, house-dogs, ETT Instructors, Lunch Cooks or Village Officers were harmed or maimed in the events listed above.
Only 3 persons, Kyle Manikin, lil' Timmy Manikan and Adam Manikan were brought back from theDead several times and at Press Time for this blog writings,
Their attorneys are drafting up papers to sue thePants off us First Responders for
Assault, Battery, Fondling and Kissing upon their persons.
YVC Inc (doh!!) will keep you dear readers informed of the Courtroom shenanigans as they happen.
Until then-Keep off theGrass!!!
(inhale sounds)
Like this last week when we had to respond to a couple of Emergencies here in theVillage and it was quite fun and very much a learning experience.
The most memorable of these events-some crazy white guy from another Village down theRoad, was all wacked out in the Village park when some of us were having a picnic.
My Auntie and I got theCall and responded.
Sure enough, a male caucasian was stumbling around and at first we thought he was drunk. He blew us off, didn't want any contact with us Villagers responding to his emergency, didn't want to talk to anyone.
In my mind I was running over a checklist of steps to follow during contact with a Patient. Steps to take in Assessing said Patient and determining his level of Injury or Medical distress before moving onto Treatment of said Patient.
My Auntie pulled a small necklace out of this guy's hand and she looked at it then quickly handed the broken necklace to me. I read the inscription upon the tiny Medical Alert tag and it read;
Diabetic.
My mind went blank.
I froze.
My Auntie looked at me.
I'm frozen.
My Auntie takes back the Medic Alert tag and she takes over the Patient Assessment.
She calms theMan down and gets him to sit quietly.
All females just have this ability to soothe and quiet down turmoiled situations and this time was one of those situations that needed a Woman's Touch.
I was still frozen.
Oh, god, I'm never gonna live this event down in my life!!
I'm ruined.
By dinnertime that evening Everyone knew about me, theSam!!
but by now I have a different name.
It's Sam Deer-in-the-Headlights.
But I'll discuss this Patient with a Diabetic attack later, because I'm getting embarassed just from thinking of it.
ALPHABET SOUP
As a child I used to eat Mothers food with reluctant obedience as only a little boy could muster. I admit that I never fed my pet dogs any of Mama's cooking, instead I made my little Sister Jess eat what I didn't like. No wonder she's as tall as me and just as big!!, gorgeous woman that she is.
Meals of my childhood were varied and still obviously memorable to my veteran taste buds. Yummy porkchops and buttered rice? I appreciated this on a cold day perhaps.
“Booboo” bread (pan fried) and antelope soup? Only when Granpa was around. It was fun to watch him Salt & Pepper his soup.
Steak cutlets, sweet peas fresh from Granma German’s (a white stepdad’s mother) garden, golden brown oven baked buttermilk biscuits, mashed potatos and gravy and Tang to wash it all down?
We ate good like this when ever Daddy (a white stepdad) cooked dinner and if I got to mix the Tang into the water and stir while little sister watched me. (sorry sis, I get to have first taste of theTang!)
Even though there is much food to eat in most households across America, a child’s appetite is basically wanting for only one thing-Sugar! and lots of it please. I loved Kellogg’s Cornflakes (with Sugar), I liked those Honeycomb sugar laden Smacks.
I was sold on the Candy bar commercials and would sing along with the "I'd like to buy theWorld a Coke!!-and keep it company" jingle on television.
And I do believe “ol’ Toucan Sam!!” was just getting started introducing kids all across America to the concept of “just follow your nose!”, following them straight to the breakfast table for those pink, blue, purple, yellow colored cereal bites.
I loved hot chocolate in the Winter, I loved cool ice cream in the summer.
I was a typical kid back then.
Gee.. as I type this I remember fighting with another boy over a bottle of pancake syrup while eating breakfast in Pre-School. I won the struggle, but squeezed the bottle of syrup so hard that I squirted syrup all over me.
Ms Hart sure had quite a long lecture about “Sharing” as she cleaned me off in the bathroom. Me, a cute lil’ pre schooler-Sweet within AND Without!! Thank you Ms Hart, you taught me to swing, you let me play with the Yellow tonka toy truck at playtime but most of all you were there for me and us, the rest of the children in your care.
Er.. I lost my train of thought. Hot blondes do that to you if you're a male. Short haired, milk skinned, perfumey smelling...*sigh*
Oh yes. Alphabet soup.
I don't recall eating this type of soup really. Maybe a few times in my life.
I certainly never had any leisure time to sit and stare into my soup bowl and spell out words like "C-A-R", "D-O-G", or any of the cuss words I heard adults say.
Maybe I should have done that more often though, eating more soup and playing with the letters to impact my spelling for my future benefit.
But since then, I've encountered a different variety of "Soup" as it were, in my life. And I'm not talking about food.
I'm talking about the various ACRONYMS that we adults have placed upon ourselves with Titles and Rank before or after our names.
Lately, up here in AK I've added some recent "Letters" to my real life personna and will be adding more letters sometime in the future as well.
An Example: SLFlyinghorse, That's ME. Recently updated his/MY ETT credentials with recent relevant ETT training.
What is ETT?
It stands for Emergency Trauma Technician.
The ETT designation in Alaska is really nothing more than just a glorified First Responder.
But I'll tell you that us ETT's are much better than basic First Response.
We know many EMT skills and have access to world class medical facilities and medical experts around theState if necessary.
Many of us, myself included, have not only Passed the Classroom practical tests and the written tests, but we've passed the Real World finals test that comes with a real life emergency. It truly is a wonderful feeling to know that you've helped save someone's life.
ETT is a step under the Alaska EMT's, and most recently, theState has been helping to Bridge the long step from ETT to EMT's by providing "Bridge" courses to motivated individuals that want to become state recognized EMT's.
I'll be doing this in the near future, stepping up to EMT.
We have EMT-I, EMT-II, EMT-III and finally MICP, the coveted Mobile Intensive Care Provider/ParaMedic.
Some people in life wanna be Anarchy,
some blessed souls wanna be EOD,UDT,DEA,FBI,CIA,BIA,NBA,PSS/PSD,UDA,HUA,HUD,IRA,etc.
(explosive ordnance disposal, underwater demolition team, drug enforcement agency, federal bureau of intimidation, christians in action, bureau of Intrepid affairs, national bank of alaska, protective security specialist/detail, you dee ayy, head up *ss, housing urban development, indian recognition act, etcetra)
Some SOB's end up DOA, SOL and USC WAP!!
(son-of-a-britches, dead on arrival, shat out of luck, up ship creek without a paddle!)
but for now-I wanna be MICP. But first I gotta be EMT.
Ugnnhh. Enough already.
I'm getting tired of this.
But hopefully you get my point about Alphabet Soup that we adults eat without really knowing that we do indeed eat it, or that we seek it out.
In my own life I've been a PR, an LMP, an LCH,
(Parachute Rigger, Licensed Massage Practitioner, Licensed Cosmetologist-Hairburner!)
I've done these jobs and I've done them well.
BTW, if anyone wants to buy a couple of 200'ft and 300'ft square canopy parachutes I'd be glad to sell them CHEAP!! Used only once, small blood stains.
Life isn't just a bowl of Cherries, and a pile of Lemons or a Pitcher of Lemonade.
Life is also a bowl of Alphabet Soup and it's up to us to make life's experiences
enjoyable or Not.
A few days ago when I was out of Propane fuel for my Trailer and I was cold all night and didn't sleep at all until I finally came into my parents house to sleep for a couple hours, Life was lemons.
I was actually the tiny kernel of popcorn stuck to the bottom of the pan burning up while everyone else in theVillage was popping up beautifully and buttery.
I'm getting hungry just talking of food.
And speaking of food.
The Crazy Man from AnotherVillage!!
This poor white man.
He breaks down in ourVillage, forgets his Diabetic meds, or sugar foods and then has an Episode while we're eating tons of food.
My Auntie looks at me, theMan in Charge, and seeing that I have theDoe-Eyed Look!!, she takes command of the Emergency situation that we responded too.
doh!!
We give the poor guy some sugary liquids to drink and theChange is so obvious.
Complete 180degrees in a few minutes.
"What did I do now??" theWhite man says.
"Did I do it again?" he continues.
Everything is fine we tell him.
"Where's my pickup?" he asks.
By now I'm out of my stupor, I was caught completely off guard by this Diabetic Attack.
Well. We get the Man off to a good start by feeding him some of our food and send him on his way.
A few hours later we get this call about an accident at the Community Hall.
Three other Villagers respond to this event.
It's this Man again!!
He apparently was fixing something in the Ceiling of our Community Hall and fell off a ladder and fell onto a pair of scissors-thrusting it deep into his right thigh.
The Health Aide's and Village Police Officer fix him up.
Then a few hours later we get another emergency call!!
Yep, you probably guessed it.
This poor man that we treated earlier was in an auto accident.
I was there at the scene with two Village women and we extricated the poor fool from
his mangled vehicle.
When we checked him initially for injuries and blood loss his right boot fell off his leg and all 3 of us First Response were staring at an amputated foot still in the boot.
One of theWomen almost freaked out that time, not me thank goodness.
I bandaged the bloody stump and slowed down the bleeding and we back-boarded & C-Collar'd the man and moved him out of his mangled truck.
I tell you that some times life is slow and then when events happen, they hit us at once.
But I tell you this in good fun.
Because the poor victim of the last few days emergencies was our knowledgable ETT instructor from down theRoad.
He pulled out many real life situations from out of his Bag-of-Learning-tricks and really caught many of us ETT students off guard during our Individual and Team practicals.
My Auntie really stood there waving theDiabetic chain tag around in the air while I'm stumbling around verbally trying to figure out what to do next, finally I shut down completely. Totally unaware of her 4' from me waving the tag at me, I wouldn't have noticed if she threw it at me.
We laughed at that one, me standing there in a daze. Doh!! Eyes.
And another of our Health Aides, she almost dropped thePatient/ETT Instructor when his "fake amputated foot" rolled out from his pant leg.
We students learned never to react like that.
Never utter exclamations or blurt out oaths or expletives in front of a conscious or unconscious Patient.
Finally today, Saturday, was our last day of learning and testing.
I'm happy to say that all of us students for the ETT certification/recertification PASSED!!
As we all ate our lunch and talked about the last week's events I joked a little about "that crazy whiteman from Down-the-Road".
"I saw him earlier around theVillage" I said.
The Instructor, recognizing that I was joking of course, interjected his own humor by saying "that you should have sent him away immediately"
It's all in good humor though.
And finally, the show stopper for us students, especially me.
One humorous story told by the ETT Instructor.
Was from a Dr that had to do an emergency Appendectomy upon a young woman.
The young lady was a punk rocker type of girl because she had wild colored bright green Hair on her head!
And of course with a surgical procedure like removal of the inflamed Appendix.
The Dr's have to dry shave off the Pubic hair of their Patients and they go to shave the young woman only to discover that her PUBES are COLORED the same as her head hair.
And tattooed upon her skin were the words-"KEEP OFF THE GRASS"
So the Dr's shaved her, did their surgery upon her and removed her Appendix and then a Dr wrote in Magic Marker upon her bandages.
"Sorry, I had to trim the Lawn"
I'm still laughing at that one.
Author's Note:
No Villagers, house-dogs, ETT Instructors, Lunch Cooks or Village Officers were harmed or maimed in the events listed above.
Only 3 persons, Kyle Manikin, lil' Timmy Manikan and Adam Manikan were brought back from theDead several times and at Press Time for this blog writings,
Their attorneys are drafting up papers to sue thePants off us First Responders for
Assault, Battery, Fondling and Kissing upon their persons.
YVC Inc (doh!!) will keep you dear readers informed of the Courtroom shenanigans as they happen.
Until then-Keep off theGrass!!!
(inhale sounds)
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