Working in the medical unit on a fire is a pretty boring
job. Or at least everybody hopes it is a boring job because if it’s not, then
somebody is hurting and probably, somebody is going to be in trouble. But
usually it is a boring job, where we sit around, either in camp, or, more often
for the majority of us, in a vehicle out along the black edge of the fire
somewhere, listening to the radio and perking our ears to everything that
sounds like “medic”, “medical”, “emergency” or “injured”. Those words come
infrequently, unless you have 16 medics on a fire and an anal-retentive medical
unit leader who demands three daily radio check ins, which results in no fewer
than 44 over the air callouts of medics in various locations with various
numeric designations. On this fire, my
paramedic partner Melissa and I happen to be Medic 8. Which my division safety
officer, also bored, deemed reminiscent of “Medicaid” and refers to us as such
now at every opportunity. The medical unit leader asked me which number I
wanted and I said 7, but since it was taken, and he said that 17, 27, 37 and 77
were all out of the question, he finally relegated us to Medic 8 and told me to
stop being difficult, which is truthfully my main occupation in the medical
unit.
There is an unspoken rule in fire camp that the medical unit
is also supposed to double as the comedy unit. I think it has something to do
with laughter being the best medicine, and the morbidly humorous people that
EMS attracts, and the fact that if the communication unit tried to be funny,
probably people would end up getting hurt. Case in point was a medical
“scenario” that some of the Powers That Be decided to run the other day without
telling anyone it was a mockup. Naturally, all hell broke loose in the commo
unit and out on the line, and a couple of people were reprimanded severely for
driving too fast (in the wrong direction, perhaps) to a life threatening
emergency scene that they didn’t know was just pretend. All in all, a terrible
idea.
The other night one of the medic guys walked into the tent
carrying a bag of ice. It was nearly bed time, and for the most part, ice
acquisition occurs during the morning cooler restocking ritual on the way out
of camp. One of the other guys commented curiously on the bag of ice he held in
his lap and his witty comeback was: “I
was missing my wife.” It was well timed comedic greatness at it’s finest.
This morning, I got back from briefing, and my partner was
finishing up an evaluation on a patient with a severe case of homesickness,
which we usually treat with an inordinate amount of synthetic sympathy and
gushing attention, which seems to bring patients around rapidly. Melissa asked
me how the knife fight rematch at the meeting turned out, and I replied that
the Other Guy won but I had been able to stop the bleeding after a few minutes.
Her patient looked pretty uncomfortable and decided to go check on the physical
welfare of his crew.
I am fairly certain no one in camp thinks us medical people
are as funny as we do. But there is an odd amount of assorted overhead that
lingers around our tent for an inordinant number of chapstick tubes and Kleenex
packages. I am drumming it up to our hilarity, myself. And the single clean
outhouse with a “DO NOT ENTER - MEDICAL
USE ONLY” sign that people in our inner circle like to use. So far we haven’t
had any run ins with HR, which is pretty shocking considering our behavior.
Today, during another long and boring day on the line, my
partner decided we were doing a “card workout”. At first I heard cardio and my
instinctive response was no, no and oh yeah, heck no. But she pulled out a deck
of playing cards and made a cute face. I had already refuted her fitness
advances repeatedly on this assignment, but I had made the critical error of
mentioning how great it would be to lose some weight before I die of morbid
obesity; so miss bubbly 110 pound cuteness has made it her personal mission to
remind me about the pitfalls of EVERYTHING I eat and challenge me to absurd
death-defying workout routines. Like a “card workout”, wherein each suit of
card represents a different exercise, and the number on a given card determines
repetitions. For example, hearts are ten second planks, so the 10 of hearts is
100 seconds of planking. My first question was “why?” which she didn’t dignify
with an answer, my second question was “the whole deck?” which she benevolently
offered to cut in half for me, and by that time I was out of questions that
wouldn’t just make me look belligerently lazy and totally pathetic.
I made it through what I would consider half of the deck –
although by objective standards I guess it was the lighter half. It was
apparent pretty quickly that 100 seconds of planks was only going to work for
me if I switched sides, and she also had to settle for girl pushups due to some
pretty lame excuses about a torn rotator cuff and nerve displacement.. I am not
totally convinced she wasn’t hoping I would have a heart attack or something so
she could use her rusty ALS skills on me. I turned the cards for her as she
finished the deck, continuing to make lame excuses and point out obvious
factors to justify my laziness, like our difference in age and how I really
wasn’t going for the six pack look these days. Smartly, she tuned me out and
made me feel guilty enough to join her whenever a diamond popped up and
dictated a rock press up, since my rock was somewhat smaller than hers anyway,
and my arms CLEARLY need the help. I am not sure why I listen to her at all,
since she’s the kind of person who gets up before 5 AM to go running, and I
think that is an idea straight from the pit, but sometimes she shares the celery
from her lunches with me, so I put up with it. Apparently celery is on the
approved list of foods for Liv. Snickers bars are not, so I had to sneak around
to the back of the truck to eat it without judgement.
It kind of sucks to know how sore I will be tomorrow for my
half-deck workout, but it passed a few minutes of a very long day and
alleviated a little bit of the Snickers guilt. I would love to pretend that
exercise was My Favorite and that it Brought Me Life and all that jazz, but I
will have to contend that the Snickers bar was far more satisfying than the 5
burpees I flopped through. I read a
Women’s Health magazine today and it is always disappointing when I set the
issue down and remember that I am not lithe and in yoga pants. And I set all
these goals in my head for when I get home, knowing full well that daily
pilates will be replaced with cleaning Aspen’s bedroom and substituting in
Special Ed at the school. It’s never as easy as it should be. But maybe it’s
gonna be a whole lot easier this year. I think so. Especially if we remember to
laugh. And avoid Burpees.
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