Refresher courses...ain't nothing refreshing about them...

ACLS.

Advanced Cardiac Life Support.

One of the multiple certifications we must maintain continuously in order to work as paramedics. Which means every two years, I have to attend an 'ACLS Refresher Course". We are lucky here at AMR in that we have our own independent education division, and the classes are provided multiple times a month at no cost to employees. That is probably the only saving grace regarding these classes. Oh, did I mention I am recertifying for the 12th time in my career?

That's 24 years worth of continuous certification. Impressed? Didn't think so.

It's funny, in an ironically scary and borderline negligent sort of manner, that much of the medicine I learned when I first became a paramedic has been proven to actually be harmful to patients. We used to give amps and amps of sodium bicarbonate on cardiac arrest victims, following the amps of epinephrine already given, which was immediately inactivated by the bicarb. But the cool part was flipping those yellow caps off the ends of the pre-loads, like Johnny Gage used to do on 'Emergency!'. Especially cool on a code in a public place. Catch the eye of a young cutie nearby, flip off the caps and give her a wink. Thinking back, I was probably freaking them out a bit. MAST pants? Best thing since sliced bread and battle proven to help saves lives of trauma patients. Great, right? Nope. We probably killed more patients than we saved.

"But the trousers controlled bleeding and squeezed it up into the patients' bodies from their legs where the blood was needed".

No...the increased pressure actually made them bleed out faster. Think squeezing a water balloon with a hole in it.

Ooops. My bad.

The one thing that has remained consistent throughout the years is electricity. If their EKG is squiggling, zap 'em. Didn't work? Zap 'em with more. We don't stop until they're smoking.

Literally.

Drugs we used to give to patients suffering from (wait...can you really be suffering?...I mean..c'mon....you're pretty much dead) ventricular fibrillation were found to do nothing. Lidocaine? Nope. Bretylium? Nope. Isuprel? Nope. Amiodarone is the "new and improved antiarrhythmic" nowadays. I'm expecting that 20 years down the road, Amiodarone will be the cause of a flood of new patients with chronic anal pimples. And ACLS will change to some new wonder drug. Sad part is that 20 years down the road, I will probably still be refreshing my ACLS card.

For the 22nd time.

Gawd...

A Sad, Very Sad and Unhappy Day Today...

Today, four brave police officers from the Oakland Police Department were memorialized in a ceremony at the Oracle Arena in the very city in which they were murdered. Thousands of people from around the country...no....the world, came to pay their last respects to these fine men who gave their lives in service to their city. If you've never been to a memorial service for a police officer, I heartily do NOT recommend it. It is one of the saddest events you can imagine. To see men and women, who have taken it upon themselves to do a job that many people automatically associate with "The Man", and therefore hate these people by default, reduced to tears at the loss of one or more of their own, is devastatingly heartbreaking. I have attended funerals for police officers, firefighters, and a co-worker who was killed on his way to work in an automobile accident. It never gets any easier. On the contrary...

I was driving into the operations center today to do some computer work, and I noticed police cars and fire trucks stationed on overpasses that spanned the freeway, all lit up with emergency lights flashing, and their occupants standing at attention, gazing down on the roadway. I looked in my rear-view mirror and noticed a funeral procession proceeding along in the two left-most lanes. I would say hundreds of vehicles made up the procession, all with headlights on, stretching back along the roadway as far as I could see. As the procession passed slower moving traffic, it was heartening to see many motorists wave, salute, or give a thumbs-up to the cars as they passed. It made me feel a little better, but not much. I would have preferred not to have these funerals at all.

I did not know any of the officers who were gunned down that day. That fact does not make this whole event any easier. We are lucky enough to share a special kinship with the police officers and firefighters we work with on a daily basis. That relationship extends to the doctors, nurses and hospital staff we work with as well. What happens to them, affects us. We depend on the police to keep us safe out there as we do our job, and they depend on us to help them if the need ever arises. And you can bet your ass that any time I have been needed to help, they got the best I could offer. They should expect nothing less. That is one of the reasons this tragedy hits us all so hard. What makes it even harder to accept is when some groups of people blame the police for this happening, that it was retaliation for an event totally not connected with the cop killings. These same people stood across the street from the dying police officers and laughed.

Laughed at the officers as they died.

Unconscionable.

These are the same people who call 911 for the most minuscule of problems and then treat us like shit, spew profanities at us, and call us racists. All for doing our job. Nice.

But, as professionals, we treat them and transport them. Not because "we have to". We do it because it's our job. We're not looking for thanks, because it's bloody likely we won't receive them. We do it for our own personal satisfaction, because we know in our hearts we can be proud of what we do, and that matters a hell of a lot more than insincere thanks from an ungrateful patient. Unfortunately, the police get treated even worse.

All for wearing a badge.

Sgt. Mark Dunakin,
Officer John Hege,
Sgt. Ervin Romans,
Sgt. Daniel Sakai

Rest peacefully, and thank you for all you did. We really did appreciate it.