Need help please....personal matter.....

[DwayneEMTP]

Jenn,

Keep your chin up, remember to cut yourself and those around you some slack when you hit those times when you want things to make sense...but they just don't...And as others have said, there should be a special place in heaven for Hospice workers...I hope you'll use them...

Prayers for you, your dad, and those who love him, from the Womacks in Colorado...

Dwayne

[SarahT]

Sis,

Here's another good site. Their message boards are very informative. Cancer.org. Will talk with you tomorrow. Have fun at orientation. :wink:

Thanks to everyone for the prayers, links, and info. It is greatly appreciated.

[WendyT]

When you realize how it can be chaotic and stressful, I've been there, having both parents with teminal illnesses.

I walk daily with my lord Jesus and I will tell you if it wasnt for him, yes I'd be a basket case too.

So much will cross your path in time and you may say it really isnt fair, for once I wish God would allow everything that has gone from good to worse, to stop and be good again, great is even better.

All that's left in my family is my 2 older sisters, our mother and me. I'm getting married in June 07 and being told that now that I have my life back, I dont really care. Talking to people who knew my Dad and Mom, I told them I'm lonely and wished my Dad was still here, and if his illness came back I'd do it all over again, I miss my coffee trips with him to Tim Horton's. I always felt my mother was dealt something she did not deserve and dementia really sucks, she may live 7 to 8 more years or 1 or 2 because she has an aorta aneurysm, she is on borrowed time.

If my Dad was alive today he would of been 80 yrs old, but he was 75 yrs old, 76 short of his b'day in feb, one whole month away (2003) My mother is 77 yrs old and even though when I ask her about this purse I have and who it belongs to, or used to, she'd say what are you doing with my purse and even though the dementia she has, she was robbed and I was robbed of my parents.

I am so sorry to hear about the heart-ache you are going through my dear friend and the loss of your mother and now your dear father.

May you all find the peace with things around you rise above the matter and stand firm above the clouds and when rain feels eminent, take hold of the rainbow for it is your peace at the end of the storm.

God Bless

[parabrandi]

So Sorry about your dad's present situation. M D Anderson is one of the top (if not the top) cancer research and treatment facilities in the nation. Besides having state of the art facilites, their website has SO much information. Ya'll are in my prayers.

P.S. Looking into hospice really is a great idea.

[ladyemt51_2000]

Your situation breaks my heart. I don't have much else to say or add to what the others have said but that you and your family will be in my prayers.

[Richard B the EMT]

I include a link here, to the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Care Hospital, here in New York City. To the best of my knowledge, it is the biggest and perhaps best cancer care and research facility on the east coast of the United States.

I also add my prayers for your family.

www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/44.cfm

[JCicco345]

Prayers to you and your family. IF you need anything let us know.

[WannaBEMT]

Thanks you guys so much. Today was so hard. I again am in the middle of orientation at my new job that I was in for 2 days when this happened during the orientation process. Now understand this this is the ONLY place in GA that the EMT-I's are within guidelines for the state/national criteria but they have the EMT-I's doing basically everything but ET tube, needle decompression, and cardio-pacing. I might have left one thing out as we just went over ACLS today, so I feel like there is one more but I cannot remember at this point. So because of there testing schedule changes, we were supposed to have a 3 day class but because of time restraints, we had all of this crammed in 2 1/2 hours today. THEN, we had to run a "mega code" immediately after this lecture today. Included in this mega code, was everything a PARAMEDIC would do on a patient from start to finish of a cardiac arrest patient, with the patient crashing as time went on, etc...OK I am straight out of school, with NO street experience, no ACLS schooling other than what I have researched and picked up on my own, and some things SLIGHTLY touched on in my schooling that would make us help anticipate the needs of our medic better, so for lack of a better word I do not know sh*t! Ok so when they tell me this I am sh*tting in my pants thinking how I am going to run a mega code when they want us to drop a ET, and I have never done that before obviously, and know the protocol with the rounds of drugs in between the shocks up until the max, with Epi, Atropine, etc....

So I go into this thing blind! My scenario was a man, c/o "just not feeling right" and then all the other info I would get would be from the instructor acting as a the patient and I would only be able to ask the questions a patient could answer, the only exception was I would know R/R/Q on all all vitals. Ok so I start my assessment and went down the whole BLS guidelines, then I move on to the ALS guidelines, this is when it went downhill, I told the instructor, I could stick a blade in but I do not know what I am looking for or anything else that has to do with the ET tube, he said OK, we will go over it and told me to pretend there was a ET established and properly ventilation is being handled, then he had this damn box and told me this was the portion of "lighting the patient up" and what drugs and doses I am going to start and how long in between, the max dose, and then any kind of rhythm he pick out on that box would show on the monitor, so I also have to name the rhythm, etc I mean down to turning the patient over to the ED, with increasing interventions that have positive outcomes....So I told the guy that I do not know anything but asystole, V-Tach, and V-Fib and the V-tach and V-Fib I am not always sure on when I see the rhythm on a monitor, but when I see it on a clear piece of paper and it is big enough I can tell for the most part about those 3 with some questions about subtle changes

'

Either way I started my ACLS guidelines that I could halfway remembered by our "class:

Either way I sucked and sucked bad, and I was stopped in the middle, and was told the whole reason for this mega code for the EMT's was to see how far into that mega code we could go before we did not know what we were doing!

It was by far the hardest part of orientation yet! Any tips on helping remember some if fast dropped ACLS tips I am all ears, again thank you for the well wishes for my dad, that meant alot to me! You all have a good day and again I welcome and appreciate the prayers, my dad had a good day today.....

Jenn