The Joys of the Sense of Smell

You know, it’s amazing.

I look back at my life and all that I have done and I’m amazed at everything I’ve been able to do. I’ve accomplished a lot, left a lot undone, and experienced things or a combination of that few others will be able to do in a lifetime.

Probably one of the most rewarding is being a part of EMS. I’ve been in the EMS field since 1988. Hard to imagine that I’ve been doing it for so long yet by industry standards I’m relatively young in age. I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, gotten puked on a lot, and sworn at a lot. The one constant is always, and will remain true, that every run is different. There will be similarities and likes but there will always be one glaring difference in the patient care, the signs / symptoms, incident background or scene, or patient outcome.

It used to be funny that I would be eating with friends or family and discuss some of the nastier parts of EMS and what we’ve seen / dealt with and still be able to eat our food without it making a return visit. I’ve lightened up a little on that respect but I still have no problem doing it. There are still those who don’t like those conversations, especially at the dinner table. I tend to be quite graphic in some of my story telling as I want to make sure the listener hears every minute detail of what it was I got to see or deal with.

Probably one of the funniest was a local trailer park call late at night for a drunk who was vomiting. I met the crew on the scene and they had the guy already loaded up on the cot and needed help bringing him down the steps from the trailer. This gentleman (term loosely used) was obviously inebriated and stated he was. Beer and whiskey were his toxins this night. As we were on the porch area he proceeded to remove all of his stomach contents over the side of the cot on to the porch. I was at the head of the cot as he did this.

One thing about EMS, it gives us another added sense or accentuates our already keen ones. Mine, at times, happens to be smell. At the time this guy urped up I caught a whiff of the pile he left on the porch. I knew exactly what it was. I smelled pizza from a local pizza joint. So I asked him, “You ate Pizza King pizza, didn’t you?” He gave me a quizzical look and nodded hi head before telling me he did. I couldn’t guess what kind it was as it was dark and I couldn’t see the pile, not that I really wanted to.

We get off the porch and are pushing the cot towards the ambulance. He lets loose a second time, yet not as forceful or with as much volume. And again I got a snout full of odor and it was different. Hot damn! I knew this smell too so I asked him again. “Before you had pizza you ate Cool Ranch Doritos, didn’t you?” It was just after I asked that I got slugged in my arm by one of the weak-stomached crew members and was told to stop asking such vile questions. I was told it was gross and that I needed to stop because I was making her sick.

The answer was, “yep, I shore did.”

It’s one of the “not so glamorous” parts of EMS. Being puked on, spat on, shat upon, peed on, or whatever on we sometimes have to deal with. Couple some of these wonderful instances with an occasional mechanical breakdown such as suction, air vent, air conditioning, or whatever and the situation becomes even more dire for both patient and caregiver.

Probably one of the worst was delivering a baby in the back of an ambulance in the middle of a hot, humid, terribly muggy night in south central Louisiana in a backup ambulance that had no air conditioning. Our primary unit had a/c problems and they switched us to this one for the night so they could fix it. These were type I trucks with only a pa to communicate between driver and attendant. No slide windows to easily talk to the driver which made it rougher. All I could do was tell my partner to “DRIVE FASTER!” It wasn’t because of the imminent delivery, it was because of the heat and stench in the back of that truck mixed with everything else that doesn’t smell good.

Stories? Smells? Got lots of them dating back to 1988. I’ll take a break from the nastier parts of it for now. Maybe I’ll hit some glamour later. Nah, we don’t do glamour. If you’re in EMS for glamour then you’re in it for the wrong reasons.

Ah, Fatherhood x 3

A long time ago I never figured myself to be a father. Now I have three kids and I wonder where I went wrong.

No, actually i couldn't be happier. It's not without stress and a lot of work but I wouldn't have it any other way. I used to love thinking about doing things with a son and how I'd teach him to do this or that and impart my experience to him so he would learn and not get hurt.

I thought about having a daughter and when she goes on her first date. How would I react? What would I say? Do I scare the crap out of her date and embarrass the hell out of her?

Just a lot of things I've thought about and now more things are popping in my head.

Seemingly every time we go somewhere someone asks our son if he's playing sports of any kind. "No," is the response. At times we get a quizzical look like saying, "you're kidding? No sports???" He doesn't want to and I'm not going to push him. If he wants to try something then he will. He's a normal boy with normal likes and dislikes but I want him to do some things for himself. I'm not going to push him in to things like that. if he wants to he'll tell us. We do push him a little but not to the point of forcing him to do things. I guess those things are just out of his normal comfort zone.

Now the girls, on the other hand, are all ready to begin playing soccer. Not that either of them know what it is, but they want to do it. They like running and kicking balls so they'll have fun if it's what they want to do.

What I feel really bad about is our son not playing as much as he should. He "likes" working. He says he'd rather work because it's fun. I know I didn't have the best work ethic growing up and was constantly being told to do this, do that, finish this. I was bad about not completing things, as he is today. Trust me, he gets constantly reminded about "half-assing" tasks. He stops what he's doing and finishes the prior job correctly. He likes to help and does a great job when he wants to. But I worry he doesn't play enough. We try to spend one-on-one time with him doing things he wants to do because we understand a lot of that time that should be for him is catering to the whims and cries and screams of two little sisters.

I like giving him a day off from school. I like the little sheepish grin I see when he comes walking down the hall to meet me. "Daddy, why are you here? We going somewhere?" And then I tell him I just thought he might like an afternoon off to go home and play, have a shake, watch TV or do other things to get a break. The grin on his face is worth it, every single time. He's happy and I love to see him smile.

All of our kids have terrific smiles. They all have their fake smiles and then the ones that are heart-warming, letting someone know they truly are happy.

Our son gets embarrassed easily so we try to not do that unless we're making a point. The girls? Gee whiz, they don't care. The only thing they get upset about is being tickled, told they can't have something they want, or to go to bed by themselves. Sound like a normal girl? It's a constant battle but eventually things will mellow out.

So as the summer begins and one's out of school, the other looks forward to pre-school while the last of the brood waits her turn to begin reading books, learning colors and shapes, and reciting the ABCs. So for now we'll continue playing outside in the little pool we have, eating popsicles, watching one of the many kittens we have in the barn, and enjoying each other's idiosyncrasies as we grow old, all together as a family.

Oil, Oil, Everywhere

My turn, my turn!

Every other blogger or journalist has had their say on the oil spill so let me have mine. I think I’ve earned it. I worked in the oil field all over the world for 14 years. I’ve seen two blowouts with my own two eyes and had a rig close to mine blow up. Hell, two of the rigs I used to work on have been involved in catastrophic accidents after I left them. One had an uncontrolled blowout, caught fire and then sank, the other got mauled by Katrina.

Everyone’s blaming bp on this one. They’re not working fast enough, they’re not moving with enough resources and people. Just read that Transocean owned, operated, and maintained the rig and why aren’t they being held accountable.

Everyone needs to keep their shirts on. There is an investigation ongoing and it will continue to be more in depth once they can get the riser and Bop from the sea floor up for inspection to find problems. Subsea BOPs are a little different than the ones located just under the rig floor. There are a lot of remote controls compared to the ones under the floor. Hoses, wires, tubing, whatever’s used is a lot longer ,exposed to a lot different environments and pressures than that of an above water BOP.

Here’s another one; the rig WAS owned and operated and maintained by Transocean. bp comes along and “rents” the rig to drill the well. They make the final call on what’s done. An OIM, Toolpusher, Driller, or Rig Manager can make any call they want to stop drilling if something’s unsafe or they disagree on something. Yes, bp is paying for things but there’s a lot of people to stand up and say, “something’s not right” for this to have happened. Could that many people not see something happening?

Ultimately what direction the rigs take is up to the Company Man or rep from the production company (bp in this case). They, along with engineers and other people, design the well based on anticipated pressures, reservoirs, depths, and formations they think will be down there based on seismic readings, core samples, or historical data they get from geologists and engineers. This may have been an HPHT well and they didn’t know it. The BOP they had on may not have been rated for the pressures they encountered or the pressure the bubble came up with. The rams might have stuck on a collar or joint and not been able to crush or shear it. Who knows? We won’t for a while yet.

I saw a little part of AC’s interview with 5 survivors. Heart-breaking stuff. I can’t imagine being one of them, one of the survivors. I remember just how tight a lot of us were offshore, anywhere in the world I went. In the GoM we all went out drinking together when we got off the rig. Hell, a couple of them lived with me for a couple years. In the Caribbean I was the only expat on the rig yet I stayed at a couple houses of the locals after I got off the rig. I still keep in touch with some of them today. Elsewhere it was the same. We all got along. We were family. We worked together, ate together, at times prayed together. We spent more holidays together than we did with our own families. We got along and worried about each other. We had to or we didn’t last too long on the rig.

The 11 that died perished doing a job they probably enjoyed. I loved working offshore. For a Midwesterner it was a truly different lifestyle that I miss. I loved the schedule, I loved seeing new parts of the world, meeting new people, experiencing different cultures. It was fun. I had a great job that paid very well plus I got a lot of time off from work.
The spill is tragic, yes, there’s no doubting that. The fouling of the beaches and marshes is catastrophic for economic reasons. The moratorium of drilling is going to create more hardships in a fragile economy than we’ll be able to handle. We’ll lose even more US jobs as the drilling companies move their rigs elsewhere to work.

bp has to move cautiously to take care of this. They have stressed over and over that these methods are untested at depths and pressures like these. ROVs are doing all the work, not divers or sat divers. It’s a lot different. There are a lot of variables and unknowns. It will end. It will stop or be stopped. The cleanup will ensue, bp will pay hefty fines and damage claims and probably change it’s name. I wouldn’t be surprised if bp is given some sort of ultimatum to get out of the US because of this; similar to Occidental in the North Sea after Piper Alpha blew up and killed over 160 men in the worst drilling accident.

Me? I worry about the survivors. I worry about their jobs and if they’ll be able to go back to them having witnessing such a disaster first hand, seeing their co-workers die, hearing one man describe a crane operator being tossed around like “a toy” after an explosion. Could I do it? Possibly but I’d think long and hard. We all have to survive. We all have to take care of our families and for me my family comes first. Jobs always have risks; some are calculated and acceptable, others are not. In the end even though we have lots and lots or rules and regulations, we as people, decide to follow them or not. If this was a human error then shame on that poor soul. If it was a mechanical failure, than shame on the poor soul who didn’t catch it, if it could be caught.

Accidents don’t just happen; they are caused. Pray for the survivors and pray for the families of those who are no longer a part of the oil patch.