SA_Medic

Nope, as a member of the continent that is known as the craddle of man kind,

I am on top

Hate to burst your bubble ladies,

But I am on TOP.

Seems that way,

and nope, I'm on top

That is something you tend not to ever think of. Safety on the rigs are very good in the last bunch of years. The last "major" problem was more than 8 years ago.

Working on a rig (bear in mind, there are diffirent types) is according me is safer than working on the road. A rig is one thing, a platform is something completely different.

Regards

S

I do not think that there has ever been a post in the city that has had this many replies since I have been a member.

TOP

rgds

S

(edited)

AAhh hell, I'll join in. Slow day here in the Caspian.

TOP[/font:9e5a252bc6]

Now that is some scary s*&t, as some said in some movie some years ago. I know I am not allowed to hate, but damn I would love to find that designer of these "characters". I will seriously give a BIG piece of my mind.

Regards

S

One word ........ there are so many to choose form....... one that includes all..........

[/font:3e03b09f5d] FRIEND

I Believe in it.....alot of people that have been with a loved one for years die soon after their partner dies or leaves....its called greiving yourself to death.......emotions and stress can be very bad for our health...I believe that people can die from a broken heart.......just my 2 cents worth......

I am with you on this one Terri, I saw it in the life of a friend of mine. His grandparents were married for over 40 or something like that years. The grandfather died of a massive MI, the grand mother, a very healthy person, died six months later. Her health just went down the drain after the funeral.

Sad to see, but you have admire it. Loving someone so much that you can not exist without him or her.

Regards

S

Ok, I wear a medic alert bracelet, does that make me a worse medic? No, does it make my patients feel I am incapable of caring for them? Not that I know of.

A medic Alert bracelet or necklace is not just for a "Hey look, I'm a sick person" (no pun intended to anyone). I am wearing mine cause I have allergies. I wish I could give a definite answer, but I will be lying. I am sure that more than half the worlds population has some sort of life threatening allergy, who would make our jobs as medics so much easier if they would just wear the damn bracelet or necklace. How may time have given a patient some drug and wondered "What if the patient is allergic to this?" I have on more than one occasion and hoped that the will be no anaphylactic reaction. Medic Alert or any other means of conveying this message, would really make it easier for all medical staff.

As for my reason, being allergies, it is Aspirin, Penicillin (very common allergy) and Codeine. Does that me a lesser medic or make a patient loose faith in me??? [-X [-X

I believe not, as a matter of fact I believe in leading by example. If can wear mine proudly and I get asked, I tell the person my reasons. Hopefully it will make him or her think and get themselves one should the have an allergy.

BTW, my organ donor and DNR orders are linked to my medic alert.

Regards

S

:violent1: :violent3:

Hey Crow,

You might want to get your CV online at one of the following sites:

www.rigzone.com

or

www.oilcareers.com

Hope it helps and good luck with hunting down a offshore job.

Regards

S

We have a local PVT service here, called netCARE,

Saw one of their vehicles a while ago, someone placed a sticker over the n, it read petCARE.

Regards

S

Even though I did not finish my undergrad, I took a number of 4th year courses (in 2nd and 3rd year) and submitted "long" (20+ pages with 30+ references) on a number of topics. Forensic osteology and evolutionary studies, man....I shoulda stayed in that....I could have been in Africa or something....

Why on earth would have the regrets of not being here in africa ?????

Here, nothing happens every ten mintues and lasts for hours on end !!!

We have a degree program here, where you can actually go up to a doctorate. And we practise on our own license.

I suppose it is yet another thing we seem to be better off then....

Regards

S

What is your name? Steven

When is your birthday? 26/07

Eye color? Blue/green

Hair color? Black

What nationality(s) are you? South African

Any piercings? no

Any tatoos? yes

You have three wishes, what are they? i will only need 1

What sound can you not stand? chalk on a black board

Special talents? mmmmmm......

What is the first thing you do when you wake up? pour a cup of coffee

What is the last song you sang? My Emortall - Evanesence

Do you play any instruments? no

Do you know any random facts? lots and lots of useless stuff

BE HONEST- Do you listen to show tunes? yes

Do you want to go to college? been there

Whats the first thing you do when you get home from work? Unpack

Is there anyone you are desperate to meet? Yeah, lots of regulars here.

Do you dance around your house when nobodys home? yep

Favorite quote? sleep when your'e dead

Main source of exercise? Gym - 1 hour a day

Yay or Nay

Diet Pepsi? nay

Kids? none

Bread? yay

Hair cuts? #2 razor

Hiking? hell yes

Black and white photography? depends on my mood

Coffee? yay

What C.D.s are in your sterio right now? none, no stereo's on the rig

Guilty pleasures? A bowl of ice cream while watching a movie

If you had to eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be? Pasta

Speak other languages? French, Zulu and Afrikaans

Favorite song (as of right now)? none, I have wide music taste

Favorite flower? none

Contacts, glasses, or neither? neither

Hometown? Cape Town - I still want it to be some small town with lots of trees and mountains.

Favorite Drink? Fuit Juice

Have you ever been in love? (depending on what your concept of love is) I don't know.

Have you ever been skinny dipping? HEHEHEHE, yes

Assertive or passive? (no idead)

Sing in the shower? no

Any regrets? nah, life is for living and learning. no mistakes, no learning.

Do you swear? yes, sometime i think too much.

Do you have any pet peeves? don't know

Favourite Ice cream flavor? Chock chip

Member of the red light club? Does the 5th amendment apply to South African as well

Hey Guys,

We have been using sprinters for about 5 years now and have recently stated moving over to the VW version of the sprinter. The sprinters never seemed to last long on gravel roads, of which there are quite a lot in SA. THe VW is cheaper to purchase, cheaper on maintenance and lasts longer on the gravel roads. I will check around to see if I can get some photo's fo them, outside as well as inside once I get off the Oil Rig in about three weeks.

All in all, compared to the previous vehicles we had (Toyota Hi-Ace) similar to your buddy vans, only with a raised fibre glass roof. It is a pleasure working in the back of these vehicles.

Regards

Here is something more on it I copied and pasted from another group. Might be interresting to you.

Quote:

Patients without chest pain tended to be older women and to have a

history of diabetes, heart failure, or hypertension, as opposed to patients with chest pain who were more likely to be smokers with plaque buildup in their coronary arteries. Patients with atypical symptoms were also more likely to have the unfavorable outcomes of heart failure, cardiogenic shock, arrhythmias, and renal failure.

I was previously a paramedic liason for a hospital in a large suburban city that specialized in cardiac care.

One of the standards of education with the field medics was to get away from the term "chest pain" (which was the title of the treatment protocol), as we found the above to be true about femals and no pain. The point being, you can ask one of the females in the above catagory if she has any chest pain, and they will say no as she decompensates in front of you. The line of questions we zeroed in on was a "new ill feeling" or "new feeling of uneasiness". In our experience with females coming through the door and going to the cath lab, these two questions seemed to catch the females listed above.

After presenting this info several times, we saw a significant increase in correctly treating the female portion of the MI group pre-hospital, instead of receiving the "ill female" via ambulance with no real treatment.

Thanks

Jerry

Jerry Miller

Medical Base Supervisor

Mercy Air Base 8

/Quote

Regards

S

Found an interesting evidence based medical study, for your perusal.

Heart Attacks Without Chest Pain More Often Fatal

Atypical Cardiac Patients Not Given Proper Drugs or Hospital Treatments

(NORTHBROOK, IL, August 9, 2004) - People who have heart attacks or other heart conditions who do not experience chest pain are commonly overlooked and undertreated at the hospital, often resulting in greater fatality rates in this group of patients. A new study in the August issue of CHEST, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians, shows that cardiac patients presenting to the hospital without chest pain have triple the death rate of other cardiac patients and are less likely to receive medications to slow the progression of a heart attack.

"While the majority of people who have acute coronary syndromes,

such as heart attacks and unstable angina, feel chest pain, some do not, but, instead, may experience atypical symptoms of fainting, shortness of breath, excessive sweating, or nausea and vomiting" said the study's lead author, David Brieger, MBBS, PhD, Concord Hospital, Sydney, Australia. "Other than excessive weating, each of the dominant symptoms of a heart attack not accompanied by chest pain independently identifies a population that is at increased risk of dying."

A group of international researchers analyzed data from the Global

Registry of Acute Coronary Events (GRACE), a registry of 20,881 patients from 14 countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and France. These patients were hospitalized with a variety of heart conditions from July 1999 to June 2002. Of the 1,763 cardiac patients who did not experience chest pain, 13 percent died in the hospital compared to 4.3 percent of those with chest pain. In addition, 23.8 percent of patients without chest pain were initially misdiagnosed when they arrived at the hospital, compared to only 2.4 percent of heart patients who experienced typical symptoms. Patients without chest pain tended to be older women and to have a history of diabetes, heart failure, or hypertension, as opposed to patients with chest pain who were more likely to be smokers with plaque buildup in their coronary arteries. Patients with atypical symptoms were also more likely to have the unfavorable outcomes of heart failure, cardiogenic shock, arrhythmias, and renal failure.

"Often, when a patient arrives at the hospital without chest pain, it is only after blood test results come back or other diagnoses are excluded that the physician reassesses the situation and determines it is an acute cardiac event after all," said Professor Brieger. "We hope that our findings will remind physicians that these events do occur in the absence of chest pain and will prompt them to make the diagnoses and institute the appropriate treatment more rapidly."

Researchers also discovered that patients who did not experience chest pain were often not given proper medication or offered appropriate cardiac medical procedures. Drugs such as aspirin and beta-blockers are usually given to patients with heart problems when they arrive at the hospital because they act as blood thinners, lesson the burden on the heart, and decrease the chances of a future coronary event; yet patients who did not have chest pain were significantly less likely to receive these drugs both during their first 24 hours of hospitalization and throughout their hospital stay. These patients were also less likely to undergo procedures such as coronary angiography and percutaneous coronary intervention and were less likely to receive statins at hospital discharge.

"The current gap in treatment and hospital outcomes for patients

with atypical symptoms is a problem that needs to be rectified," said Richard S. Irwin, MD, FCCP, President of the American College of Chest Physicians. "More emphasis needs to be given to identifying and properly treating heart attacks in patients who do not exhibit typical symptoms."

CHEST is a peer-reviewed journal published by the ACCP. It is available online each month at www.chestjournal.org.

Regards

S

Ok,

I don't seem to follow the whole badge thing. It seems I'm being a slow South African again.

At first I thought you were talking about name badges. Then looking at the sites I figured, "Ok, shield type thing".

I have one question, WHAT ON EARTH DO YOU WANT A SHIELD FOR?

In South Africa we have a law forcing us to wear a name badge, the service you work for provides that, the uniform, shoes, belts etc. Only thing you supply is Undies.

That seems to be good enough for me.

S

Welcome back Woody, glad to see you up and about again.

I can't really comment on how prepared you guys are, what I can highlight here, is the problem South Africa is facing.

We have only one nuclear power station in the country, that is located just west of Cape Town. 10 years after completion of the reactor, they found out that is standing smack bang on top of a fault line. they are currently replacing the original reactor with what they call a "pebble plant" (not sure what the details are).

The original reactor which is still functioning has, as far as I know, not been built to withstand the force of even a minor earth quake.

So yeah, while i was still living in Cape Town, we had a few drills on what to do if something had to happen.

When the then chief asked me what I would do if the reactor blew, my answer was as follow:

I will get in my car and drive upwind for about 50 - 60 km, phone and tel him i a now setting up the JOCC (joint operations communications center)

Doesn't matter... new zealand's gonna own the trinations anyway. :wink:

Oh yeah, and being from the Cleveland area means that anything baseball (or football, or basketball for that matter) always ends up being one big disappointment, so I don't really follow it. It never turns out well.

Well, since I became a refferee myself, I dont support a specific team. It's just a matter of may the best team win (as long as it's not the kiwi's or aussies)

Admin,

To help keep the peace on this, kill this thread now. This is going to turn nasty.

Craig,

that is something I've always been wondering. Thanks for asking the question though.

This is amazing, back here we have saying: Never talk politics, sport or religion at work (or anywhere for that matter), cause it's bound to turn into a mudslinging situation.

I can not for the life me believe that there are still so many naive people in this world, especially from what is supposed to be first world countries. It seems as a third world country, we in South Africa have more respect for freedom of decision and freedom of believe than most the people that have replied to this thread.

Why does anything regarding religion have to end in a mudslinging contest? Are we not all adults?

Seeing that everyone seems to refer to the book of Genesis, I would like to through a spanner in the works, answer me this:

1)After Kain has slain Able, he left the garden of Eden and found a wife, where did his wife come from? (Genesis 4)

2) Take the King James version of the Bible and compare the wording with the new translation Bible, why is it that the wording has been changed?

Every religion has it's good and bad points. As a believer, I don't care what you or any of my friends faith is, so long as you don't force it down my throat.

As for evolution, I know too little about it to say I do or don't believe in it.