Post Traumatic French Fry Overdose

So in keeping with my tradition of documenting my huge embarrassing failures. After two years of school with relentless studying, testing, and evaluations all passed, if not with flying colors, at least passed without severe emotional trauma. Until now. I had my very last Paramedic test yesterday, the most important test yet. And I failed.

I did pretty well in school. I was in at least the top 75% of my class, haha. Its weird to have my first real college degree in Paramedic science, but still not be an actual Paramedic. After school is over, you have to pass two tests to be certified as a medic. Before this test, I'd already passed the written knowledge test.

This test is a practical test, where you have to demonstrate actual skills in the appropriate order. I had to demonstrate 15 different skills. Some of the skill stations I was pretty comfortable with, and some of them I was more nervous about. All in all, I felt like I was prepared. Nervous, but prepared.

Well after eight hours mostly spent waiting to go into the testing rooms, I can't say I was feeling very confident. My saving grace was knowing that if I'd only failed a few of the stations, that I was allowed a second chance at those stations. Finally when the results finally came, it turned out that I'd failed two stations. One of them I knew immediately what I'd done wrong, and was ready to correct my mistake of administering one drug, and saying it was an entirely different drug (don't let this scare you people in the public, I'm usually pretty good at this stuff, and almost never kill my patients) The other skill I failed was cardiology.

I thought I was good at cardiology, until two days before the test when I was practicing and started struggling. I spent some extra time studying and managed to make myself believe that I had my mojo back. Well I didn't I guess. The first time I tested at that station, I actually felt confident. The second time I went up to test, I completely fell apart.

They hand you these sheets with cardiac rhythm strips and ask you what you would do. Four cards, four different patients. When I went up the second time, I just sat there staring at the sheet, sweating, mumbling to myself about things like P to R intervals, and sinus rhthyms and whatnot, and just panicked. I managed to finish, somehow, but I knew it wasnt my best work.

After another hour or so of waiting for my results, still sweating the lady came down and gave the rest of my class their result. Everyone passed, except one. Me.

The worst thing was I rode over to the test with three of my friends, who were all struggling not to show their elation at finally being done. They're good friends. I could tell that they were bottling up their joy for my benefit. I kept telling them that I was proud of them, and that they should be happy. But they stayed mellow, and I stayed mad at the world.

So, as usual, I am struggling to find the lesson here. I guess what I'm thinking is that if nothing else, it keeps me humble. I worked hard to get through school, but it had come relatively easy to me. This setback is making me more determined. When I went home and tried to drown my sorrows in an extraordinary amount of french fries, I started focusing on the next two weeks. Before my next test, I am going to be the world's foremost leading expert on cardiology static strips. Maybe one day, because of my newfound motivation I can help somebody I wouldn't have been able to before. How's that for some positivity?

Sorry this isn't a funnier post, or better written but my sister always tells me I should write more. And I figure this is a good place to vent, and recenter my chi.

I know it isn't healthy, but I tend to few my accomplishments as big fat middle fingers in the faces of those who tore me down. But I view my failures as just another kick in the crotch by the same people who took away everything I once loved.

My Coffee Pot is a Liar

So my roommate Darren rarely drinks coffee. His dad recently came over to visit us and saw that I had bought a new coffee maker. Darren's dad even made a comment about it because it was the cheapest coffee maker ever and doesn't even have automatic shut-off. So basically it's a coffee maker/house fire starter. I didn't even know that they made coffee makers without automatic shut off anymore. How much could that tiny little addition really add to the cost? I used to work in electronics so I'll tell you how much, probably less than $0.25 including additional programing cost per unit.
So for Christmas what does Darren's dad give him, knowing that Darren doesn't drink coffee and that I recently bought a new coffee maker? A brand new coffee maker. This rant really isn't supposed to be about Darren's dad's motivation for buying his son presents that are so useless to him it borders on taunting. This rant is about our new coffee maker, which is in use if for no other reason than it is cool looking and it actually does have an automatic shut off and if I was to burn Darren's house down with the coffee pot he didn't even want, I would feel a little bad.
The stainless steel coffee pots look so cool, I was really pretty excited about it initially. But now that I've had a few days to use it, I gotta say it's pretty retarded. The stainless steel looks expensive and classy and the pot is heavy because, well, it's made of bloody metal, unlike my old cheap ass pot which was made of nice, light, see-through glass. So when I've been drinking coffee all morning and I keep picking up that heavy pot thinking that there's plenty of coffee left in it, and it turns out to be empty, it feels like I've been deceived. And that makes me angry. So I take it out on Darren.

Personal Note
I am so sore. I limped my way into class this morning thinking "This is ridiculous. If I would just be the tiniest bit consistent about my workouts and lifestyle I wouldn't have to go through this every few months, I just need to dedicate myself to the idea that I am going to have a lifestyle centered around health... or just give up entirely and go for the coveted title of World's Fattest Man." I am getting too old for this get in shape for summer, and get super fat over the Winter and Holidays.
I am actively looking for a job for when I get done with school and I know that there are going to be physical fitness tests that I need to excel at. I am trying to use that, to really motivate me. So far it's been a slow start to my lifestyle change, but I feel like I've got a more permanent and therefore, healthier attitude about the future.
Today was Kid's Day in school, which means I spent most of the morning just coloring and making conversation with a bunch of toddlers, occasionally taking the time to get a blood pressure or listen to breath sounds. I pretend to hate it, but it's actually pretty uplifting. It did make me miss my kids though.

I Am the King of Apathy Mountain

Rants
Why is it rude if I'm on the phone with someone, and say my roommate walks in and I interrupt my conversation with whoever I'm on the phone with (we'll call her Janice) to say "Hey dude, did you pick up some more cereal? Because we've been out for like two months and I am craving me some Lucky Charms." But it's perfectly ok for someone (we'll still call her Janice) to be talking to me and every few minutes she will interrupt the conversation to talk all cutsey to her cat or dog?
A better question is, why is it more rude for me to interrupt our conversation talk to an actual sentient coherant person who can undestand what the hell I am saying and may, possibly offer some beneficial feedback, compared to Janice who might as well be interrupting me to talk to a pillow or toaster.

I bought my parents one of those digital photo frames for Christmas. I even had the foresight to load a bunch of pictures of the family on it, because I was worried that they would just look at it think it's too hard to work, and put it out in the garage. It's actually really easy to use, and I think it's a pretty amazing little invention. All it does is display pictures, and it does it beautifully.
The other day I went over to visit my parents, and I noticed that the frame was still on the bookshelf, and my dad had gone to all the trouble of running the power cable behind the furniture, but the frame itself was off. I was on my way out and nobody was home, so I just went over and pushed the button to turn it back on.
A couple days later I came back to the house and again, the stupid picture frame was off again. This time my mom was watching TV out in the living room and so I asked her "Do you turn this off?"
"Yes" she looked at me quizzically
"You know it's not a TV, you can just leave it on all the time"
"But...it uses power"
"Well, yes mom, but it uses very little, and it's like a picture, it's just there to show off pictures."
"Well, your father doesn't like it on all the time."
"Ugh"
This is just like when I had to explain to them that half the reason to have a cell phone is to have it on. For the longest time my mom would carry her cell phone (Dad refused to get one) in her purse turned off. Which is a little nutty I know, but the worst part is that she would occasionally call me from it, asking some question on my voicemail, and if I missed the call, there was no calling her back. It seemed as soon as she finished her conversation she would hang up and immediately power down the phone and put it back in her purse. In frustration I would usually end up leaving a voicemail on the house phone, which she would call me back from, completely bewildered as to why I sounded so frustrated on the answering machine.
"Mom, just leave the cell phone on"
"It runs down"
"Since you never call anyone, it should take days to run down"
"But then I have to charge it"
"Yes, that is why you have the plug in at the house"
"But....that uses power"
"Ugh"

Personal Update
School started again. It's been tough to get excited about it, but I am doing ok. I hit the gym for the first time in weeks again yesterday, so I know I'm going to be sore tomorrow. I am writing this on my lunch at school, so I am going to go before I misuse any more commas.

2010: it's gonna get weird people

First; Some Random Thoughts

Of course the 80's were awesome. We didn't have facebook, and email and twittering to distract us from all the awesome things we could do with our clothes, hair and music.

There are three stories I probably don't want to hear unless it directly references me somehow. The story about your dog. The story about your kid. And the story about the dream you had last night.

I think my favorite reference book that sounds like a dinosaur is Thesaurus.

Second; Something Personal

Well the great race to see how much weight I can gain before the new year is officially over. I have to say, I'm a little relieved. Eating all that fast food was getting expensive, and doing some serious damage to my ego. I am actually looking forward to getting back into the gym and eating healthy again. Of course I say that now...
One thing I am definitely not looking forward to is school. Oh man, I was going over my schedule tonight and I almost had an anxiety attack, and I haven't even had my first day back yet. I am really trying to be positive about this term, but it's hard right now.

New Year's Resolutions:
I need to get something set in stone, but I'm just not ready yet. Here's a list of areas that I would like to cover:

• Fitness/Weight
• Doing more hobbies like martial arts, skateboarding and so on
• Reading for pleasure more
• Writing on this thing
• Writing my bucket list on Jott.com (one of the most helpful websites ever)

I will think of more later. So on that note, I will have my Resolutions planned by the beginning of next week. Hopefully once all this junk food is out of my system I will be a littel more clear headed.

Goings On and On and on

On Religion

God is like my grandpa in Cleveland. I know he's out there, and even though I never hear from him, I am pretty sure he still loves me.

If the God of the Bible is real, he sure doesn't seem to understand people very well. I mean, ok so he sacrificed his perfect son for all of man kind -- two thousand years ago. And I'm supposed to feel the same about it, that the people who actually witnessed this happening did? That's like saying, "Your great great grandpa loved you so much, that he gave his son a car long before you were ever born. Of course you don't get to see the car, or drive it or anything, but I wrote a book all about it. So you should totally understand how much great great grandpa loves you."

I understand the Bible is written by story tellers. Some of them were better than others. But I still have a problem with so many of the stories not making a lick of sense. For instance in Genesis, Jacob is in the middle of this trip, sort of a redemption story, and it's pretty good. But there is one part that throws me. One night when Jacob is walking along the river, he meets an angel and then he wrestles with the angel all night long, and in the morning, the angel pokes his hip and turns it, basically giving Jacob a painful hip and a limp for the rest of his life. I've read this story a bunch of times and I always hope that somehow later on in the story this will all be explained, but it never happens. They even bring it up later in the Bible in Hosea, but they basically just clarify that the crazy wrestling angel was Michael.
So I don't know about you, but let's say I meet an angel when I'm out walking around. I don't think my first instinct would be to tackle him and try to wrestle him into submission. And there are many reasons for this, first of all, I'm pretty sure that most, if not all celestial beings could kick my ass. Second, I think angels probably have a lot of cool stories, and I'd want to hear those stories, which are hard to listen to when you're trying to put a cherub in an arm-bar.
Ok, and they wrestled all night? All night? Really? Because I've wrestled for five minutes before and I was exhausted for the rest of the day, and I think I'm in pretty good shape. And here's the kicker; I was wrestling a person, not one of the heavenly host.
And the coup de grace here is that after the angel gets bored of rolling around in the dirt with Jacob he just pokes him in the hip with his finger "turning it," which I guess means he dislocated it. I've never dislocated my hip before, but I've had patients who have, and that looks painful as hell. What was the angel trying to prove here? Is it like when I used to arm wrestle my dad and he would pretend to struggle for a little while and then just as my confidence was beginning to build, he would slam my arm down? The angel sounds like kind of a dick here.
In the grand scheme of story telling, this seems pretty far fetched and worthless info. Because as near as I can tell, none of this had any real impact on Jacob. After this passage he pretty much goes back to what he was doing. I'm sure he had to limp there though.

Don't even get me started on Moses.

On Medicine

People like to think Doctor's know everything. Doctors do know a lot, but all that schooling is pretty much just to make them better at guessing. Did you know that modern medicine still doesn't know why we need to sleep? They know a lot about what happens when we do sleep, but there isn't a good explanation why those things don't just naturally happen as we go through our day. Right now the way that we explain how muscles work is till considered a "theory," we're not even sure about that! It wasn't that long ago that people actually figured out what germs were. All I'm saying is that the learning curve is pretty steep when it comes to our bodies and doctors are still figuring out things all the time. But try not to be so shocked when you go to the hospital and the doctor gives you a long list of things that might be wrong with you, instead of just telling you what you have. He's just guessing.

On Pets

Pets to me are like homeless people. I'm not mean to them or anything, but I just don't want them in my house touching my stuff.

On Book Titles

The other day I noticed a book Crazy for the Storm. I read the insert and it is indeed a story about a guy was involved in a storm. The book title really bothered me though. Couldn't they have called it Storm Crazy, or Trapped on Storm Mountain, or Crazy because of the Storm? I haven't read this book yet, so maybe it gets clarified somewhere in there, but I doubt it.
I read this other book not that long ago called White Teeth. It was a good book, but nevertheless it had nothing to do with white teeth. In fact I don't think teeth were ever even mentioned in it. It was a story about two families in wartime London. No teeth talk, at all.
So I came up with this theory that maybe all the good book titles have been taken, and since you can't really write a book and call it War and Peace, or Gone with the Wind and hope nobody notices that you've ripped off a classic, authors have been reduced to what horse trainers do with race horses. Since horse's names are registered, and you can't register the same name twice, all the normal names like Jared, and Snowball got used up in like five minutes, so now horse people come up with crazy names like Captain Sunshine of the Forgotten Ape People. Which would be both an awesome book and an awesome horse name.

A Look-How-Funny-I-am Story for My Sister

I had to study until 2:30 in the morning tonight because we had case reviews that wasted our whole evening. Case reviews are these meetings we have with our sister department where we talk about certain calls we've had over the past month or so. These might be cases where we did something very well, and often they are cases where we've done something very wrong. Tonight's meeting was more or less benign.
But near the end of our meeting our Medical Director, a crazy physician that only wears kilts and army boots (not making this up) started talking about the new rules that say Paramedics are going to be allowed to give vaccines. This is all built around the big push to get everyone vaccinated against the H1N1 Flu virus (more commonly known as "Swine Flu") He gave us some good info and background into the politics behind the vaccine, the company that produces it and the PR around getting everyone dosed up. I won't go into it here, but it's all shady, and I won't be taking the vaccine.
The point here, is that near the end, our Medical Director a very serious man (despite the kilt and army boots) asked if there were any questions. There were some comments from the peanut gallery about who is and isn't going to take the vaccine and finally I raised my hand. When the doctor called on me I said, "As a Physician, what do you believe the chances are that this vaccination will eventually lead us into the zombie apocalypse?" Everyone laughed, and to that I said "You can't tell me you all weren't thinking the exact same thing!"
The end.

The Insanity Begins

So I fizzled out on Body for Life...again. I was doing good, and then school ended, and I realized that I wanted to cram as much fun and debauchery into the four weeks I had for vacation before starting Paramedic school.
That mission was accomplished. I managed to go on a few cool dates (more on that later), went camping, hung out at the river, drank A LOT of beer, played some videogames and saved some babies and kittens. All this summer fun crammed into four weeks.
So now that school has started, I've decided I needed a change up on my workouts. One night me and Brett were sitting up in the Fire Station talking about working out and in the background there was an infomercial playing about some fitness videos that we kept getting distracted by. It's called Insanity, and it's like the next P90x or whatever. Brett was like "I would do that,"
"really?"
"well, yeah. But I am not paying $105 for the DVDs"
"If I get them, will you do this program with me?"
"...uh, yeah I guess"
So yeah, I made some internetting happen and I got us some perfectly legitimate copies of the workout series. On Sunday we had to do the Physical Fitness test. So we all gathered down in the fire engine bays and set up my little laptop with speakers and we went to work. It wasn't long before we were all laying sweat-soaked, groaning and panting on the cold concrete floor. It was brutal.
Anyways, it's late and I am doing this because I promised my sister I would start keeping up with this again, and I think it's important. I love you sis (and the rest of my family and friends who read this)