Friday, May 9, 2008

Lennys help you forgot your troubles...lol a few more airplane pictures coming up

Don't worry, the gruesome pictures will end soon...man that drill was fun!





Places to see and people to visit or something

Ok it's 1:51am and I finished my Senior Expo Reflection Paper (It's like four pages ack!), plus updated my resume and took a health policy quiz.
Tomorrow we have class 9am to noon and we need to submit our papers. Then I might hit yoga and walk on the treadil before going to St. Jude for an hour or two to do database entry in the rehab department. Then I can work on my diversity paper and group poster for Tai Chi and do more health policy quizzes and who knows what else. I am going to GreekFest tomorrow night with my friend Sarah's family and then I work 9 to midnight, so I guess it might be a busy day, but that's probably a good thing! The busier I stay the better off I am! Someone commented lately that I don't appear to have a focus, and I was surprised to hear that. I volunteer a lot and do a lot of diverse things because I enjoy it all so much, not because I don't have a focus. I also don't feel like I do too much - I'm tired all the time no matter what I do, so I might as well stay busy! If anything I feel guilty I don't do more! I love occupational therapy school in general and I will be sad to see it end, especially not being able to see my classmates --although  fieldwork will be a whole new "era" so to speak and while I'm excited, I'm also nervous!

I'm rambling. Now it's 2am, I'm sooo going to bed.
PS: I had 409 PAGE LOADS yesterday! My new record by far, I had never gotten past 315 or so! My jaw dropped. And I'm at over 40,000 page loads now since my blog started, roughly a year now. Yay for completely random and arbitrary blog landmarks!
PS2: The MOT 1's have been plenty busy with Facebook pictures of their deja-vu labs. Need to start posting those!!
PS3: I try and get people to write things for my blog and apparently that is an intimidating request? Why?!!

Oopsies...better get started

Today all of us OT classmates spent 4 hours volunteering at the Senior Expo and need to write a reflective piece. And we're working on professional development evaluations, resumes, our research poster, quizzes for health policy, and a few other things. Plus I'm working on a diversity collaborative paper + trying to get started on a long overdue special blog project! But for tonight, it's already close to 1am and I need to write some stuff up for school tomorrow, so this is the shortest blog entry ever, impressive huh.


Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Part 3: The conclusion of the Triennial Memphis drill. Anyone else with pictures please send!

See Part 1 and Part 2 here (this will be linked eventually for now just scroll down)

An ambulance going to Baptist East (one of four participating hospitals taking patients), was used to transport me and one other critical patient, as well as one yellow-tagged sitting-up patient. The yellow patient with arm issues sat upright, the other critical patient was like on the floor part of it which I think is normal, and then I was on some kind of ledge that was higher up, against a wall. The guy in the ambulance was also very nice, but flat-out admitted he really didn't know what he was supposed to do with us in terms of simulations. Our vitals were already on our cards so he didn't see a reason to re-take vitals. He did take the blood pressure of the woman on the floor part who he could most easily reach. Now, I'm still on a strapped-in stretcher while in the ambulance on this ledge thing, but I'm still sliding, this time to the right, off the ledge. My arms are dangling, and my entire body, with straps against my wounded stomach and legs, was being held from falling primarily by straps...ie I wasn't flat on the stretcher, I was hanging halfway off it. I'm assuming that had I started screaming he would have re-positioned me quicker, but as it was, I pretty much had to say something before he noticed. Plus, my hair was stuck in the velcro part of the stretcher, which was quite painful.


We were basically out of character the entire way there since our guy didn't know what he was supposed to do, including where exactly at Baptist East to drop us off, and such. He was commenting on how he had never had so many people in an ambulance and could see how overwhelming and hard it would be in a real accident. He also said something about how they were normally just a transport ambulance that didn't do emergencies. I'm kind of unclear on what exactly was going on. Anyway, he did verbally, when he saw my card, state out loud how he would have treated hypovolemic shock/fracture, by like putting pressure on something, IVs, stuff like that. He was probably right, I wouldn't know though. He also was like wow, you should have been the one on the floor here, you are by far the most critical. Well, thanks. LOL.

The sirens were going, the lights were on, the ambulance was speeding, and there I was stuck to the stretcher in a neck brace, hoping that we wouldn't get into an accident as the ultimate irony. We finally got there and the floor patient was taken, the walking girl got out I think (i'm fuzzy), and then finally, I got taken out. I was wheeled in and immediately had a bunch of Baptist people peering down at me, asking me questions. I told them I was cold and that my legs and stomach hurt and that I wanted my sister. The registration lady got my basic information, although I claimed I had forgotten my address, and had to think hard to know my phone number. They were very kind. They slid me onto a flat bed and verbally stated what they would have done, based on the card vitals and stuff, including oxygen, IVs, blah blah. I asked for a blanket and was given one. After a while, they came in to take me off the backboard, although they left the neck brace on. My hair was stuck so tight to that velcro that it was VERY painful getting it off. I know most people sick enough to be in an ambulance are hurting enough that getting their hair stuck in Velcro is not their biggest issue, but c'mon - is it that hard to do something to ensure the added pain?

Once they had assessed me, put an ID tag on me, then left a green piece of paper on me, I was left alone, lying flat on my back, in the little trauma curtained area I had. I kept listening to the lady next to me hack and hack, hoping she wasn't truly sick. She eventually pulled the curtain and I saw her face was covered with fake smoke/blood from smoke inhalation. She coughed and coughed and they were all like, um, are you kidding or is that for real? She said she was faking it until she did it so much she actually had to do some coughing for real, lol. She is a retired RN and as we compared experiences, she was appalled at all the errors.

I was getting bored/tired/uncomfortable with the neck brace and lying on my back, so I looked at my watch. Which wasn't there. Long story short, it turns out it broke off me in the field due to how my arm was rubbing against the stretcher/rocks. Nice. They did find it though so I'll be getting it back soon it sounds like. But my watch is like my security blanket so I was like NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO lol.

I would occasionally raise my neck up to see what was going on, watching stretcher after stretcher get wheeled in. I wasn't sure why I was just lying there for so long. At some point I think I heard one of them say something about how I should be in ICU. A few minutes later a man came in and took off my neck collar so I could go, the drill was over for me.

I (not on purpose) left grass and fake blood all over the place, it actually looked pretty realistic when I glanced back and saw the bed. The man handed me a certificate for the cafeteria and walked me to the elevator. He explained that after I went up stairs I'd see where to go, could get, food and then I could ::blahblahblah:: to meet up with everyone. I nodded but had no idea what he said and figured I'd be able to find it. I started wandering down, looking around, when a nurse intercepted me and was like, Can I help you? I was like um, I'm one of the plane crash victims and I was told I could go to the cafeteria but I'm not really hungry, I'd rather just go to the meet-up place to get back on the bus. So she was like Oh, I'll help you get to the bus. I was like awesome. She was not specifically a part of the drill but knew it was going on and thought maybe it was a test, seeing if the hospital would be so overwhelmed there'd be victims just wandering the hall. Interesting possibility. I did have massive fake injury so it was obvious I wasn't a normal patient. She walked me to the bus, which was wonderful of her, and she was great and it was smart of her to make sure I got in the right place. The problem is, that wasn't technically the right place had I still been playing victim - so nobody would have known where I was. I guess because I said it was over she figured it was fine to go straight to the bus.

I found out the drill eventually got canceled because of weather getting bad, but it was pretty late by then so it wouldn't have to be re-done. There won't be another one for three years. Boo. I've decided I want to be a professional disaster simulator and always be a belligerent head injury because I'm amazingly good at that. :) I was jealous of my new friend Leslie who got to be all nutty.

So overall, it was a well-executed/coordinated experience overall, all coordinators, makeup artists, support staff, everyone, was very kind and gentle. The problem was, at least in my personal experience, many of the emergency people weren't quite sure what was going on. I had at least three different times they could have killed me had I truly been suffering. And I didn't expect riding on a backboard to be so incredibly painful on my head, or for it to be so easy to slide off! I now have more faith that the Memphis Health care Community is caring, and I met a lot of neat nursing students, but I hope that in three years they've addressed all the feedback they got from this survey, so that people like me don't die in a real crash!!

I enjoyed the experience even though I didn't end up getting home until after 9pm, and even taking a shower didn't get all the dark blood off my arm, so I look kind of dirty, but oh well. It also gave me a better idea of how emergencies work in general, and a greater appreciation of how hard it is to coordinate/communicate on a wide scale in a catastrophe. Even though as an OT I'll never be directly doing things like giving IVs and prioritizing for ambulances, it was still good to see how it works, since every event that happens affects future care. Ok. The End.









Part 2: FAA-mandated Triennial drill....Memphis simulated airplane crash

See Part 1 here.

We drove to the grassy field next to the airport in large buses. Several buses lined up together to look like the fuselage (?) and they had a torn-up wing there too. There were explosives set up all over the place. We all walked out far into the field to be away from the explosives and scattered ourselves around appropriately. They couldn't make the call into all the emergency places until we were all staged and ready for them.

After a while, as we sat there in the grass waiting, they started setting off some initial explosions, to get the smoke going. The wind luckily blew the smoke away from us, so everything was still really clear. A few minutes later, we started hearing the sounds of sirens...many, many sirens, nearing. None of us victims were sure when the acting was supposed to truly begin. The firefighters showed up and started fake-battling the plane explosion stuff. We just watched. The coordinators had a guy in a white suit who was on fire, waving his arms. A firefighter saw him, ran at him, and tackled him. IT WAS AWESOME! Everyone was shouting things like "Stop Drop and Roll!" ahahahaha.

Finally firefighters started coming to us victims for initial assessment. A nursing student named Leslie and I had been hanging out together and she was near me, so she started staggering around looking drunk as her head injury required, and I lay down, unable to sit or walk, with extreme lethargy and complains of coldness due to being in hypovolemic shock. Leslie and I decided we should be sisters and would make that part of our acting.

An initial firefighter finally got to me, and while I thought I'd have to do acting (I complained I wanted a blanket), he almost immediately just flipped over the card I was wearing with my diagnosis and vital signs. He put a yellow ribbon next to me (Error #1) and assured me he'd find my sister, then moved on. He told my staggering friend Leslie, who had very prominent Battle's sign (pooling of blood under the eyes and sign of serious injury), to walk towards the safety area. She would agree, then veer elsewhere. The firefighter would help someone else and if nearby, direct her again. She kept staggering around, confused and belligerent.

After quite a while, more firefighters came with stretchers, prioritizing victims (there were 150 of us or so in the field although many were walking wounded) based on the initial firefighters tagging of those of us who couldn't walk. My yellow ribbon (which should have been red because I was critical) kept them from getting to me as quickly. When they did finally come to me, the firefighters were very nice and sweet, getting me a blanket, assuring me they'd keep an eye out for my sister, etc. One of the men was calling me "baby" as in "It's ok, baby. We'll find your sister." but it was in a kind gentle voice and perfectly appropriate in that context. They slid me onto a stretcher and a neck brace.

Unfortunately, their kindness did not make up for the fact I probably would have died right around then, since they didn't put me into the stretcher very securely. I'm sure they were overwhelmed/nervous/etc, but still. I kept sliding down the stretcher until my nose had a strap on it, my feet and arms were hanging out, my head was way low...they'd stop to fix it (they were carrying me on the board, no wheels yet), but to fix it they'd slide me back up, so I'd moan in pain since I was supposed to anytime they touched my legs/stomach. They had to fix it again and again, and at one point one of the evaluators or coordinators even said sharply, "You need to get her back on that stretcher". My legs and arms were dragging against the sides of the stretcher and against the rocky parts of the grass field. It felt like I was being dragged by one person, but it was impossible to tell in my position. My head was banging violently against the stretcher because the ride was so bumpy and I was in pain from that. I almost asked them to stop because it hurt, but decided I'd survive. They took me as a yellow person (not as critical) and put me down. I was next to a yellow tag girl sitting up and I kept lethargically smacking at her, asking her for a blanket. It was fun. I was starting to realize how tags worked based on what I could hear, and realized I should have been red-tagged, as even my card said that was the case. The emergency people were trying to figure out who would go in which ambulance and to which place based on priority. They were talking about red tags/yellow tags and one of them even flat-out asked me if I was a yellow. I said, I'm pretty sure I was supposed to be a red. They looked at my tag and made me a critical at that point. It was clear most of them weren't trying that hard to act.

Considering how many times I had been violently bumped/slipped on the stretcher, and that I had been tagged wrong/lay there a long time, I probably would have already been dead from all the internal bleeding. Anyway, they were finally ready for me to be in an ambulance...

See Part 3 for the ambulance ride and hospital visit!

More triennial drill pics....

This dude sent me some of his awesome photos, THANKS! More later.






Emergency plane crash drill Part 1....

Dripping blood. Gore. Lacerations. Bruises. Burns. Skin flaps. Massive wounds. Torn clothing. Pale cyanotic skin. CRASH!!!!!!!!!!!

Today was the FAA-mandated triennial drill where a major airline crash was simulated. I volunteered. It was a very interesting and fun day, but also a sobering one! I'm going to share in excruciating detail because, c'mon, that's how I roll.

The day started out at 1:30pm with a bunch of Baptist nursing students and a few UT people meeting up near campus to get on a bus to the staging area for the crash. We sat on the bus as people trickled in until 2:10. They expected 100 but got far less than that. Other buses were also running and the coordinators were expecting around 300+ people. On the bus, they explained the drill itself didn't start until 6pm and it might be very late before we got home. Well, none of the brochures showed this was the case, so this was bad since it meant I would be missing my shift. Another woman raised her hand and said she was still breast-feeding and needed to be home by around 7pm. The bus driver told her she should be dead then. Which sounds horrible, but it meant that if she played a dead person, she'd get done earlier. They assured her they'd work something out for her.

When we got there, we were taken inside to the makeup/auditorium area, where things were somewhat chaotic. Nobody seemed to know what was going on exactly, and finally a bunch of us stood in a line that seemed to be for make-up. They had a minor injury line and major injury line. I figured that if I was going to this much trouble and time, I was going to play it up, so I wanted a major injury with lots of blood and gore. Person after person trickled out with dark black burns, purple bruises, dripping wounds, blood-soaked, torn up, you name it. I didn't want drippiness or anything around my eyes but I was willing to go for anything else (the scenarios were on cards to wear around your neck). I ended up a person with a fractured pelvis and in hypovolemic shock. I had to be made up to look pale/cyanotic around my mouth, and then I eventually ended up getting a deeeeeep full dark purple bruise from shoulder to elbow on my right side. I mostly had to do a lot of acting - it said to act lethargic and complain of being cold/chattering teeth, as well as moaning in pain anytime they touched my stomach or legs. My fake vitals were on the other side. I was a "red" meaning I was severely injured. I believe yellow was mildly injured. They also had some "walking wounded" who were more or less okay, plus a few already dead people. The coordinators were originally concerned that there might not be enough makeup, but since only about 150 people showed up instead of 300, there was plenty. There were about 8 people doing makeup. Anyway.

We all got our makeup on, then sat around for a while. The coordinators played some old videos of re-enacted crash scenes from previous years. Everyone was hanging out casually, covered in blood and gore. It was pretty awesome. Then we were brought Lenny's boxed lunches and I thought it was the funniest thing in the world to watch people nibble on sandwiches and cookies all coated in blood. I took several pictures with my phone and I think Lenny's should do a commercial like "Lenny's is so good, even people with life threatening injuries can enjoy it." Hmmm. I should go into advertising.

After eating it was time to go to the crash site. We drove to a large field next to the airport........

Good night, Part 2 comes tomorrow!!