Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

I have alluded from time to time about the family nature of life at the firehouse and the fact that we are currently living under renovation, but I haven’t yet really posted on those topics much. While fun, interesting, “Big” calls are great for stories, the environment of the station, the crews and general life back at the house are a critical part of the department. I think this is particularly true in a volunteer house because, let’s face it, we aren’t getting paid…it damn well better be fun.

Our department has three stations, and they each have a different personality as a rule. They have different lay-outs, different neighborhoods and different specialty pieces, that leads to each of them being unique, and while everyone seems to develop a special attachment to “their” station (usually the one they are assigned to first) we work hard at conveying that we are one department, and not three stations. That common camaraderie is doing well now and growing I think, and it is being done without having to mute the individual aspects of each station that make us unique.

As Captain, I get to all of the stations, and have an appreciation for each of them, but 12 is where I started, and it is “home” to me for the sake of running calls. I have run calls from all three; 2 is the administrative home for all of us, and I am often there attending meetings and doing paperwork, and was assigned for my ALS precepting to 14 for about a year.

The due is a fairly diverse one, with older homes to the north, with a large and growing immigrant population, far and away Hispanic, but also various African and Mid-eastern contributions that add language and cultural variations to the EMS mix. (Something not really taught well in class, but quickly learned in the streets). Gangs have a foothold and seem to be getting more active there, as evidenced by the increasing trauma volume we are seeing the last few years. The south end is full of new homes being built, and is bringing a higher-density suburban “McMansion” sprawl aspect to us. The Potomac River is to the east, and in the summer that becomes a city population of it’s own. We are seeing more and more calls from there, and our Boat capabilities are being used with growing frequency. To the west is more suburban sprawl, and a large outlet mall that brings in tourists and plenty of traffic. Second Due to the south is the Quantico area, and plenty of lower-income housing and transient population.

We have never hurt for call volume, and used to go head-to-head for highest volume in the county with Co. 11 on the west side of the county. Now, we have more support from 24hr career units to our south and west, so the volume has settled some, but is growing again. In a 24hr weekend crew, you can count on 10 calls, and a weeknight will bring 3-5 a night I’d say. (Last week we got 5 between 7pm and 230am…NOT good for sleep before work the next day). All of our stations are starting to see that level of calls with the growth of the area.

Our station is known as the “Animal House” and has a station patch with a black sheep wearing a “Delta-Tau-Chi” necklace in front of a house with a roof on fire. The patch is painted on a wall over the door from the firebay to the rest of the building, and the benches out front are painted with it, and the phrase “Knowledge is good” (you find the reference) and “None”. The “None” is a reference to the motto of the department to our west which is “Second to none”. Grin, inter-department rivalry is alive and well, but kept at the appropriate level. We, as a station and a department, have a reputation of being aggressive on both sides of the house (EMS and Fire) and frankly we actively work to instill that in our people. (See Matt’s posting for some insights..) On the fire side, our people attack very aggressively and have found that most fires are less dangerous if you put them out than they are if you pussy-foot them. On the EMS side, we stress good, rapid assessment, focused aggressive treatment and rapid transports. There are arguments for playing and fixing inside someone’s house and I’m not against it, but it is not generally our style for most calls.

The station itself is a pretty big one. We have five drive-through bays side-by-side, and an attached split-level building for housing and offices etc. It was built something like 12 years ago, and is currently being renovated. We are redoing the floor plan for the bunk rooms, and locker rooms, redoing the air handlers, adding on to the far side of the firebays for storage etc and putting in common office space with network connections and modern furniture. The kitchen/dining room is being redone to open that area up and all in all I’m really excited about the end results. The price for all of this is that we are currently living in two single-wide trailers in the back parking lot. One is set up as a big-ass bunk room with as many beds in it as we can fit. The other has two rooms with live-ins and the medic bedroom as well as the kitchen and TV room.

It is not at all uncommon to have families in with us on duty nights. Prior to moving into the trailers, we often had wives or members come in and cook meals, and in particular weekend cook-out and big breakfasts are the norm. Children of various ages are often playing in the bays, tossing footballs or pretending to run calls. Cat and I do not have kids ourselves (two dogs fill that bill), but we have 10-20 nieces and nephews at the firehouse. I have to admit, sometimes it is kinda nice to come back from whatever car wreck, heart attack or whatever and be greeted by playing and giggling children back at the house.

Out front on the ramp the guys have built a pair of really nice benches that they also painted with the patch and the sayings I mentioned earlier. Now that the weather is warming those benches will start getting more use. Often times, if the call volume lets us, we can sit there at dusk, watch the few cars going by, enjoying a sunset and chatting. Summer brings rapid, strong thunderstorms in the evening, and I don’t know how many of those I have watched blow in from the ramp. When the rain starts, the bay doors stay up and we move in to the front bumper of the pumper. As sure as watching the clouds coming in, we can hear the calls being dispatched from the west end of the county and moving closer with the storm. Alarms, water hazards and auto accidents seem to be the big ones in the storms.

The back of the house has the big gas grill, and weekends often mean burgers, steaks, chicken or hot dogs on the grill. Here it is really nice to have someone who is not on a unit to watch the grill….we have our priorities. Dinner is a classic important part of firehouse life and we have several good cooks, each with their own ‘thing’. Jon does a mean cheesesteak sub. Zark likes to try lots of different things, but is a bit of a breakfast specialist in my opinion…I miss his Saturday specials. DTXMatt loves the grill, and taught me a love for Montreal Steak seasoning on steaks. He once showed me to butter the steak lightly, cover it in seasoning, wrap it in foil and grill it. Okay, so it is an MI on a plate, but damn it is good. Often times, dinner planning starts right after breakfast so we can start getting a head count and buying the food. Weekend dinner head counts means the crew, some family members, the station live ins and usually one or two folks who ‘drop by’. You can’t beat a good firehouse dinner, lots of food and because of the bulk nature it is pretty cheap per head. We just divide the cost of the groceries by the number of eaters and there ya go. The food is always fresh too, purchased at the store only hours before.

After dinner on a cool spring or summer night means sitting around the big metal table in the bay and telling stories. It is those stories that inspired this site eventually. Poker and movies in the TV room are big draws too. The poker at 12 has kinda died down in the trailers…space is a bit tight, but Matt has picked up the tradition at 14 where he was reassigned this year, so there is a game to be had. In the winter we have been known to play hockey in the back parking lot in our turnout gear for warmth. There is a big hill that rises behind the house, it is GREAT for sledding….until you hit the parking lot at the bottom but if you do it right, you can slide right into the bay. Our station houses “The Maze” training facility for the county and weekends sometimes bring in the fire fighter 1 classes to train. That means the day’s entertainment is watching the new guys running laps around the station in full gear on air to see how the bottles drain.

Life at the house is painted in bold colors, and even trying to touch on all of the things that you learn to love is almost impossible here. There are pranks, girlfriend dramas, card games, training events, boat calls, food, tales, family and friends that fill the spaces between Heart attacks, car wrecks, sicknesses, asthma attacks, assaults, traumas and the occasional actual fire. There are stories and blogs behind them all, and they all go to answering the question I get most often from folks at work, or friends who find out that I was just up all night running calls for free and going to work the next morning. That question, “Why do it?” always makes me smile. It is because we love it, the calls, the excitement, and the family we gain. Of course, how do you explain all of that to someone new too? “A twisted sense of a good time” is my standing answer. We each have our own answers, but as those of you running elsewhere know, you almost never get that question from people who live it.

An Easter Thought

It is Easter Sunday, and I have not yet done a post for this week. I will endeavor to put up a story in the next couple days, and I apologize for being occupied elsewhere this week. We got pounded all night Friday night at duty, mostly with the violent flu bug that has been striking people around here. So, I spent Saturday trying to recover, and not doing the things I had planned…like posting a blog. A friend who used to run with our department, and recently moved to an adjacent one to run with her new husband reminded me of my missing post tonight as I stopped by the station to say hello to my crews having Easter dinner. So, I will try to get two up this week if at all possible.

In the interim, as it is Easter a prayer is appropriate, and I will share one that I have (re)found recently. I have often said a quick, silent prayer before duty, even if it is just a “Dear God…don’t let me F it up tonight”. There are a few “EMS prayers” out there and they are good, but this one was written long before EMS, but it speaks to me and I think to our collective calling in EMS. It was written by St. Francis in the 13th Century, and I have thought of it often on the calls I have seen of late. It helps on nights when you are taking your 3rd or 4th “BS” flu run at 330am, and you have not seen any sleep.

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Happy Easter to you all, be safe, have fun.

Chris

Check Pulse...

Last weekend Cat and I saw each other for the first time all week Saturday in a PALS refresher class.  Welcome to my life.  I had been on travel most of the week for work, and Cat was working a 24 the day I got back.  The dogs didn’t bite me coming in the door, so that was a good sign.  We had duty on Sunday, and I was sure that going to PALS the day before was bad ju-ju.  The day started with a couple of kid-calls, but nothing too too bad.  Anyway, a part of the class goes over dealing with pediatric deaths, and how to tell the family etc.  There is a session that breaks out to talk about things that you may have done or seen that could have been taken wrong by a family member, and how to do it better.  That reminded me of a call I ran as an EMT years ago, but I’d rather share it here.

Now we all have our coping mechanisms, and the most common one that I have found among EMS providers is a morbid sense of humor.  Now, while very good at defusing a situation, we all know that you have to pick your timing carefully.  Family members really don’t like to hear a loved one referred to as “DRT” (Dead Right There).  That said, the right levity at the right time can help give a crew perspective and calm them down enough to get the job at hand done, and done right.

I was a fairly new lead EMT-Basic running with a very enthusiastic gentleman named Eddie who drove for me.  We got punched for a stoppage of breathing at that hole we call the fossil farm.  The engine from our station, and a medic were sent with us to round-out the complement.  Now, as I’ve said before, this place doesn’t seem to know much, but they know dead when they see it.  I’m sure we are going to have a code waiting for us when we get there, and Eddie gets us there pretty quick.  I am a newer EMT and I am pretty butt-puckered as we go.  My mind is swimming with what to do, and in what order when we get there.  I try to calm myself going in by mentally reminding myself that if this IS a code, he is already dead, and I can’t make that any worse.  We load up the gear on the cot and work our way past the collection of folks in the hall to the elevator and up to the room where the call is.  

It seems that while the staff knows dead when they see it, it must take a while to figure out to call it in...The patient has clearly been down for a little while, maybe an hour as I recall, but the staff is doing half-assed CPR and saying things like, “We saw him go down”, “we were right here when…”  as they run out of the room.  Basically putting us in a position where we were going to have to work this no matter what.  This is a typical reaction here, and one that happens to this day.  As soon as I’m at the patient’s side I recognize that he is WAY past saving and I start to calm down considerably.  There is no life to save today.  The engine guys were in right behind us and there is more help than patient at first.  We bring the guy to the floor and start our routine.  While I know that are not going to make a save today, we are still looking to do things right.  Compressions are started, and the patient is bagged with Oxygen.  The patches from the AED are attached and we are in business.  We hit the “analyze” button and stand back, with baited breath, to see what it tells us.  Now, unless we are going to shock him with a lightning bolt, there is nothing that this little machine is going to do for him.  “No shock advised….Check Pulse” the lady in the box tells us.  Now, Eddie is standing by the door, and there are some fire guys in the hall.  Someone else is actually checking the pulse, and as usual the entire staff of this place has left the room.  The only people in the room came with us, or are dead on the floor.  Sensing the opportunity, I look back and make eye contact with Eddie and place two fingers on my own Carotid artery.  (Clearly we didn’t need to check this guy’s pulse, he’s asystolic and achieving room temperature, so she must have meant mine.)  I put on a concerned look for just a beat, and then beam Eddie my biggest smile and give him a thumb’s up and a nod.  “Got one” I say softly.  

The intended goal here was a little bit of a smile and the perspective that we weren’t going to save him, and no need to keep our butts in a pucker.  Instead, Eddie lost it.  I mean, he busts out into a full-on eye-watering guffaw.  I guess breaking the stress hit him big time.  Well, out of sight in the hall is the rest of the engine crew.  They didn’t see what happened and all they know is that Eddie is laughing at the dead guy.  A life member of the department, and all around good-guy named Russ grabs Eddie and damn near throws him out of the room.  He gives Eddie a ration of Shit for the laughing, and pulls him into the hall.  I had turned back to the patient and was assisting the Medic with the code while that goes on.  I realize the misunderstanding, and damn near start up laughing myself.  It took a bit of will power to get that back under control and focus on the matter at hand.

The call proceeds normally from there, and as I recall, the medic got orders to cancel it from the ER Doc as soon as we hit the unit.  We take the patient to the hospital, drop him off and get the unit cleaned up again.  When we get back to the house, Russ wants to know what the hell happened on that scene.  At first I play dumb and deny everything.  Ultimately we had to explain what happened and let poor Eddie off the hook.  

All in all, everything ended like it was going to no matter what, and I would love to tell you that I have since learned to never enjoy a private joke on the scene.  But too many people who know me read this and we’d have nothing but a steady stream of comments calling me a liar.