Stress and Injuries

The minimum national requirment for EMT Basic licensure is 130 hours. Roger Williams Medical Center, considered to train the elite of east coast EMTs has a 180 hour curriculum. All instructors are career firefighters or rescue specialists for FEMA. They know where of they teach.
Seeing as how the class has such a high reputation I was more than a little nervous for the first two classes. After an avalanche of paperwork and release forms we finally got down to the meat and potatoes of emergency medicine. The instructor, an EMT Cardiac from West Warwick, discussed how to protect onesself against blood and other body fluids which can carry disease. Gloves, paper gowns, masks, goggles, respirators, the whole bit. Its known as Body Substance Isolation, basically making sure none of the fluids come into contact with your skin. Having been a firefighter First Responder for the past three years, none of this was new to me. We went over all of the snooze legal obligations and took a break.
People in this class come from all walks of life. College kids, nurses looking to make extra money on ambulance runs, volunteer firefighters from the middle of nowhere, a former Air Force Rescue Technichan (considered to be the elite of the elite in the resuce world), and regular firefighters like myself. All of us are there to be trained in how to save lives, use simple and complex items to give our patients that much more of a chance of surviving whatever precipated their need for us.
Stress is high in a profession where you have to see everyone at the worst moment of their lives. We learn basic meditation and relaxation exercises in order to alleviate some of the strain. Then they show us pictures of gory wounds that would make John Wayne Gacy gag.
It wasn't until Friday that I learned about my best friend, Lance Corp. Ryan Henderson, USMC. He'd been sent to Iraq, working along the Syrian border last March. I'd received one letter from him, saying he'd been in an accident but he was okay. Friday I got a phone call while doing landscaping with my father's company.
Hender, we never called him Ryan but for some reason my dad said "Ryan's been sent to Germany, his Hummer got blown up. One of his legs is all torn up and the other one is broken."
From there I drove right to Hender's parents house. I was still covered in shit from working all day but I drove right over. From talking to his father, who hadn't slept in the week since it happened, I learned that a 105mm shell had been rigged as a mine that blew out the side of his Hummer, tearing apart his arm and both legs. His buddies suffered even worse, one lost an arm and the other three probably won't make it. Over the course of the next 24 hours he was airlifted to three different medical implacements. The first was manned only by two military paramedics but it had a satelite phone. Hender, managed to con or threaten them into giving him the receiver and called his father a good two hours before the Corps notified his parents of the attack.
Now, he's waiting in Ramstein Air Force base's hospital. The medical center where his father said "they send all of the really bad ones."
I went down the street to my friend Eric Perlman's house. He was upstairs on the phone so I grabbed a beer from his fridge and waited for him to wander down. When he finally came down, we did the usual hand shake and back slapping. Then the phone rang.
Hender had finagled another satphone in Germany and called for Eric. I grabbed an extension. He sounded good, in pain but good. His first words were "The Gerber tool you gave me came in handy the other day." I had given a multi-tool that I had used on rescue calls. When I asked for what he told me he used it to pull shrapnel out of his leg. Being the classy and oh so understanding guy that I am, my response was. "Oh, thanks, I don't want blood and shit all over it." He told us that we owe him dinner when he's well enough to move around again. I told him we'd take him to the Capitol Grille, a ritzy steakhouse in Providence. He corrected us, saying he would take us. Even with bits of stell and junk in his leg he wants to buy....trying to pay for even a beer with Hender is a battle lost long ago.

As soon as the Air Force or the Navy has a flight available, Ryan will be transported to the Walter Reed Medical Center for more surgery and to finally get stitched up by plastic surgeons. I plan on taking the first avaiable flight to Baltimore to see my friend.