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Actually, it makes perfect sense if you've been critical of an administration which basically handed America, its security, and its economy over to Saudi Arabia so you can make a buck on your oil revenues, you get to be critical of both that administration and the scumbags who run OPEC. Its nice that way.

So, being unemploy... er on leave, right now gives me a lot of time to watch the news. Over the past two days, two headlines stuck out at me. The first was yesterday was when OPEC cut production to raise oil prices which have taken a nose dive due to decreased demand because of the global economic slow down. The second was today when an oil tanker was seized by pirates off of Africa, which contains 1/4 of the daily production of Saudi Arabia, the seizing of which has driven oil prices up. So, lets see... oil prices go down due to lack of demand, and the next day an unprecedently large oil tanker was seized far out side of Somali pirate's usual stomping grounds. What a coincidence. Yes, I sound paranoid, but I trust Saudi Arabian oil producers about as much as a Brooklyn auto mechanic named Rocco. I would not put it past them to pay pirates to seize their own ship to drive oil prices up. Not by a long shot. Anybody else's thoughts?

Yeah, he's probably some retard from East Shithole, Long Island, with half a day's training and a closet full of patches,

Thank you HellsBells, for once I don't have to provide the seemingly paranoid response to the thread. Iamyourgod, I am not sure what your motive is here. Either you are a very uneducated person who just realized the gravity of the decisions a paramedic makes and fails to realize that everyone figured that out many years ago, or you're just trying to piss people off. You've defintiely succeeded with me because you remind me of every single Kool-Aid drinking asshole I had to deal with during my experience with the largest and most inept bureaucracy EMS has to offer. You are the person, who, after a decent, hard working paramedic complains about nearly getting into five traffic accidents rushing to the chest cold call, comes up with something out of the playbook like "It is what it is." or "BS calls keep you in business" or "You don't know you're not a doctor". It is all crap. Before I get into your stupid little debate, and before you attempt to tell me how to do my job, why don't you tell me, when you have to go talk to the family of the paramedic who was killed going to your BS call so you can get your insurance billing, what are you going to say to them? That they sacrificed themselves saving lives? Do you plan on telling that old lie to keep the money coming in?

The one thing I can't find is if the gun was owned legally or not. If it was I'd say, well, this is why its a bad idea to let the drooling masses access to high calibre, high capacity firearms. This is what happens. If it was not legally owned, I'd say, well, then we prosecute every single person who handled this weapon up until it was fired. If the legal owner had it stolen, and reported it, then he's off the hook. The person who stole it should be prosecuted. The person who sold it should be. I think its interesting gun ownership becomes a matter of federal law when the law happens to be one the side of the gun owner, otherwise its a personal freedom dang-that-gummint issue. Pick a side, please.

Somehow someone being the color of a dead fish with every body fluid coming out of every orifice just takes away any hotness factor. My $.02 on this story. Either A. Its bullshit, out and out bullshit, the story told right after the one about the guy who was crushed from the waste down and was still living and right before the one about the hooker with dysentery. Or B. It isn't bullshit, and it was a drunk chick feigning death and an overeager EMT, no CPR was done (remember, in the press, an EMT looking at someone is CPR) and her shirt came off and she was mad. I doubt it happened either way. I call BS.

"In June, a 58-year-old in Huntsville, Texas, with a ruptured aortic aneurysm waited more than two hours for a helicopter to take him to a Houston hospital, 72 miles away. He and three crew members died when the helicopter crashed into the woods two minutes into the flight." Okay, hang on here. The problem was that the hospital did not have a standby ground crew to transport critically ill patients that they could not handle. If there was an ambulance at the hospital waiting, they could have done about 30mph to the hospital and gotten there before the helicopter even landed, There's an idea, require any hospital that cannot handle specialty cases to have a paid crew and ambulance ready to transport to an appropriate facility. Ooooh... I smell legislation. Tack it on to the next round of EMTALA and tie it to Medicare and Medicaid money. When it comes to accidents and fatalities, the biggest factor is the amount of traffic. Increased traffic means increased accidents and fatalities, while decreased traffic means decreased accidents and fatalities. There was a dip in MVA deaths when gas hit $4.00 a gallon. Now the NTSB will investigate and go ever rotor bearing with a fine tooth comb, and when they're done wasting our tax money, they'll come to the conclusion that the only correlation with the increased amount of accidents is that there are more choppers in the air. Unless, that is, principles of deregulation have hit the helicopter maintenance agency too. Medicare recently loosened the payment restrictions on reimbursement for Medivac. Shockingly, the amount of patients being flown has increased. Odd, isn't it? Rules meant to save lives are taking them. That's the government for you.

One my favorites:

It finally came to this. http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/10/16/disco...h.ap/index.html I think Dustdevil can give us all a refresher course in disco dancing for CME.

First, I don't think "Islam is the light" is exactly a hateful message. Secondly, to me it sounds more like "We bring good things to life," which is an old GE slogan, but I digress. Lastly, how come every time they do one of these videos its always the most brain dead ghetto trash/white trash/white ghetto trash that they can find to be interviewed? Compared to say, your child dying in a gang fight or quad accident, I think this doll is the least of your worries.

Letting children off themselves is not what Darwin imagined, IMHO. Anyway, to the best of my knowledge, there is at least one video of someone committing suicide on Youtube. Its is of Bud Dwyer. (You all remember Bud.)

If you told us what type of PEA he was in, it might be helpful. The not feeling well all day is almost a sure sign of an AMI... actually, to be more specific, cardiogenic shock and pump failure brought on by a prolonged AMI. The dentist might be off the hook for this one.

They said the blood cultures were negative, but I plan on getting a copy of the lab results whenever I can.

I think you can still run for Congress...

Okay, now that we are firmly in waters over my head here (thanks for making me feel REALLY dumb with all of that, chbare ) Its time to come clean. I only ever present cases I've been involved with. This time, the patient was myself. The only difference is that I called 911 (well actually I called my station... I say by pass the middle man whenever you can) when my fever hit 103.7, not when I had the violent shivering. The reason I wasn't seen when I had the shivering episode was because I thought that perhaps the shivering was indeed withdrawal symptoms from the Vicodin, as someone mentioned before. I actually spoke with an addiction specialist I knew about the possibility of that, and they told me that to suffer withdrawal symptoms from Vicodin you really have to be up to 10 or so a day for a month before you start having withdrawal symptoms like the ones described. So after a Guantanamo Bay like experience in the ER, I ended up being admitted for the weekend having the hospital go over my wound site with a fine tooth comb for infection, and kept me on IV ampicillin. Monday morning I woke up covered in sweat but with for the first time in 3 days with no fever. I feel fine now, whatever I had is apparently gone, I do plan on having my insides checked out from front to back when I get a chance, but either I had one whopper of an influenza type virus, or something was infected and the ampicillin fixed it. Other than that I really don't know and I am just glad I am better.

I fucking HATE Ann Landers.

Its sad to say often I find Guns and Ammo to be far more in depth and objective then Firehouse and Jems.

Great responses! Here's some more information and to answer some people's questions. The surgery was an out patient procedure done with sedation via midazolam and local anesthesia of the surgical area. The patient's residence was the same as the ambient temperature, clean and well kept. The patient also states he did try very much to warm up, drinking some herbal tea, taking a warm shower, but felt the water hitting his skin made his aching worse. Follow up... You see the patient the next day after he has been admitted to the hospital. He is asleep in bed with with an antibiotic infusion. He has thrown all of his bedclothes off and his hospital gown in soaked through with sweat. BP: 100/82, HR 114, SP02: 98%, RR: 16, Temp: 103.0. You bribe the nurse into violating all laws regarding patient privacy and she tells you that the patient today complained only of some diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and a headache, no nausea or vomiting, stated no one around him had been sick, and a surgical consult showed no obvious signs of infection at the wound site. His chest x-ray was clear, he had no pain in the kidney area, his urinalysis was normal, and his bloodwork showed only a slight shift in white blood cell production. He had slightly low electrolytes consistent with a high fever, but nothing else significant in lab results. Any more ideas?

Okay sports, I haven't done one of these in a while, so here it goes. You are dispatched to a 911 call for a patient who could only tell the dispatcher that "Something was definitely wrong with him, but he didn't know what." It is a warm autumn evening and the temperature is a pleasant 70 degrees out. You are met at the door by a 30 year old male, dressed in several layers of clothing, shivering violently, with teeth chattering. It is hard to get a full answers from him because of the shivering, but he states he woke up feeling fine, later in the day had some muscle aches but thought it was due to doing some physical work, had taken some pain medication and eaten a normal dinner. When he was about to go to bed, he suddenly felt extremely cold, and started shivering uncontrollably, as he is now. He does have a history of a recent routine surgery to remove a cyst from his sacral area, which left an open wound that he had been following instructions to care for and allow to drain and heal, no complications or infections had been noted. He had also been prescribed pain medication (Vicodin) for the pain associated post surgery, and had been taking approximately 3 every day, but had cut down to 1 a day yesterday. He has no other pertinent medical history, takes no other medications, and has no allergies. VS: HR: 110, BP:122/82, RR:20, SPO2: 98%, EKG: hard to get tracing due to artifact, appears to be Sinus tachycardia, Temp: 98.6 BGL: 110 PE: PERRL, no cyanosis, no JVD, trachea midline, no accessory muscle use, equal chest expansion, lungs clear bilaterally, abdomen soft, non-tender, no incontinence, PMS present x 4 in extremities, no edema, skin is slightly cool, dry. No obvious DCAP-BTLS noted. You place the patient on oxygen, establish an IV, and transport him to the hospital where he had his surgery done recently. The transport is uneventful, his shivering does stop, but only after turning the heat full blast in the back of the ambulance. What do you think is going on?

If you guys do not know how to deal with a gaggle of rowdy teenagers, I have to say my respect for the machismo of both firemen and Australians has just dropped a peg. :-( Here is an instructional video from the NYPD on how to deal with crowd issues.

Kaisu, like I said, I'm not sure of the requirements of your area but you need to find out. You need to look at your protocols. My protocols say something along the lines of, specifically, "12 lead EKG's must be performed on all stable chest pain or cardiac patients," and from I know it is pretty much the standard of care. It is possible your area has not gotten in line with the national standard, but if it is a requirement, and you're not doing it, that is a major problem. I can't specifically quote the Medicare and Insurance billing requirements from the top of my head, but if your company is billing people for 12 leads and you're not doing 12 leads, this is really an area you don't want to get into and you do NOT want to be signing call sheets that say you did a 12 lead when you did not. The state, the insurance companies, and your medical director will not care what you were told to do by your employer. The onus will be on you. Watch your ass.

Take it... I love popcorn, but only if it has real butter on it. I say if you only hit McDonald's a couple of times a year you can have all the butter on your popcorn you want and your arteries will still be okay. Leave... my old very worn undershirts that throwing away seems to be some form of heresy.

Yeah, I've been printing out those skill sheets like there's no tomorrow. The questions I'm worried about are the ones I call "paramedic Jeopardy questions", like "What is the average volume of air drawn in during inspiration in an adult?" I hear there is no chance to use a lifeline during the test.

Okay, so I have my fancy shmancy letter and I am all set to start the NREMT paramedic testing process, written test first, of course. I've blown all the dust off of my study guides and whatever notes I didn't burn in a bonfire after I graduated class years ago. Anyone have any good suggestions for a first time NREMT paramedic test taker? I usually do well on written tests, and I am going over all of my study guides, but I'd like that little extra edge to see what I'm up against.

As my old instructor use to say, "You didn't fail by one point, you failed by 26 points." (Assuming its 75% to pass)