stupid dreams

[Paul]

good god, how rich are you?

i hope it goes wrong and burns your fucking retinas out you bastard.

i fucking mean that.

[Warren]

[Paul]

[James S]

Et cetera, it's latin for "and so on" or something close to that. I know Et means And, so meh.

Med school is 4 years, undergraduate is 4 years. But I'm graduating highschool at 17 so that's one more year I'm ahead, plus I've already CLEPped out of my freshman year of undergraduate. I'm entering college as a 17 year old academic sophomore. Here I come Dookie Howzer.

Laser vision correction is not that expensive anymore, Paul. Plus I'm getting some money for my 18th birthday and that's what I'll use it on. It's down to about $300 an eye and that's nothing!

[Paul]

whatever, i hope you go blind.

haha, that'll be so cool. poetic justice - people look at you and go blind, now you will. yeah!

just dont go all 'daredevil' okay?

[James S]

Daredevil?

[Paul]

good grief.

daredevil comic books - stat!

[James S]

Sorry, I'm not getting the reference.

[Dan East]

No, I'm not a physician. My business partner is though, he specializes in internal medicine. At the moment I'm just an EMT-B. I was a Cardiac Tech, but let my certification run out a couple years ago when I wasn't active on the rescue squad, and no longer worked at the hospital. Now that our kids are getting older, and our oldest is in preschool, we have enough extra time for me to be active in the rescue squad again. So I'll probably work on getting my higher certifications back so I can push all the cardiac drugs, do external pacing, synchronized cardioversion, needle chest decompressions, and all that good stuff again. This weekend I'm taking a course on "Farm Machinery Extrication". In case it's not obvious by the name, it teaches how to extract people (and body parts) from farm machinery and industrial equipment.

BTW, speaking of motorcycle wrecks, we had a four-wheeler wreck yesterday. There was plenty of help so I didn't run that call, but they ended up flying them out by helicopter because they had severe head trauma.

Dan East

[Paul]

[Dan East]

Oh, about the cadavers. I have assisted with organ procurements, where surgeons remove donated organs from freshly deceased individuals. It is extremely educational to see the internal organs and exactly where they lie, etc. Usually they take all the long bones (femur, tibia & fibula), and the heart. Obviously the heart is not beating, so they don't use it for heart transplants. They mainly salvage the valves, which are still useful many hours after death. They eventually extract the marrow from the bones, which I believe is used for cancer patients. In the procurements I've assisted in, the long bones of the legs were replaced with CPVC piping (the same type of rigid, white pipe found in homes) to give them rigidity for processing by the funeral home, etc.

When we bring in a patient that doesn't survive, and we need certification or practice with a certain procedure, we will ask the ER physician, who will in turn request permission from the family for minor, semi-invasive procedures to be performed on the cadaver. Generally we practice things like intubation, cryco-thyroid punctures (placing a large-bore IV catheter through the trachea to allow a patient to breath if they have an airway obstruction, or their trachea has swollen shut from severe allergic reaction or from fire / smoke inhalation), needle chest decompression (placing a large-bore catheter in the intercostal space between two ribs to allow air / blood to drain from between the lungs and the rib cage), and placing an IV catheter in the left or right jugular vein of the neck.

Dan East

[chriva404]

wow that was close to a trow up there dan

[Village_Ideot]

ugh dan, i can't believe they have a course called "farm machinery extrication" i am sure it is not for the queasy...I wouldn't survive for a minute!

[randall]

[Warren]