Rage Support Group

I'm sure many of you are wondering how Rage Against the Machine went... Let me paint you a picture.

We're standing in Festival Hall, the crowd has swarmed in like a hive of angry hornets. The air is thick with sweat and cheers as the band finally appear on stage. The first riff hits.

As if from nowhere, a dark portal shimmers into existence. We can hear the wails of a million tortured souls and people who don't like puppies. As the portal grows, covering the entire crowd, a light appears from the center, a pinpoint at first but growing, feeding on the darkness we see the fires of hell. A clawed hand emerges from the fires, pulling itself further into our domain - the wailing increases until blood drips from our ears. Satan, the Dark Prince pulls himself free of the fiery gateway, a trail of burning flesh marks his wake as he slowly moves towards our post. Gripped with terror we stand, unable to move as the Fallen One moves towards us, fire burning in his eyes and a dark grin spread across his mouth, his pointed teeth just showing. He arrives at us, still stunned, leans over so that he is just inches from my face and whispers, almost mockingly to me.

"Just kidding."


Despite our fears, it was an extremely quiet event for us, the crowd was amazing in how good they behaved. There was the usual moshing, jumping around and people getting hit by a few stray elbows (and one poor fellow copping a bite to his head while moshing - another copping a head to his teeth), but apart from that I was impressed. To give you an idea of the situation, at one point I saw two guys walking in opposite directions collide, one spilling half of a just poured large beer. I tightened my grip on my kit, expecting to have to go in and treat a punch up, only to see the two guys look at the beer, shrug shoulders and shake hands!

One should never complain about being pleasantly surprised.

Rage Against Anyone But Me Please

This post is a preemptive post. Tonight, I head to Festival Hall for the Rage Against the Machine concert with St John.

Following some events from the Big Day Out, we're expecting a small piece of hell to break loose.

Should be fun. We've brought in extra members, equipment and vehicles to cope with the potentially rowdy crowd - here's hoping we can keep some of it under control... I'll be sure to post tomorrow morning to let you all know how it goes.

Operations

I came to my St John division in 2006, having never been a member of St John before. At that time, the division was being run by people who did a good job of it, but it was obvious to all that they were overworked, tired, pushed too hard by the organisation and were on their way out. Who can blame them – we’re volunteers… But that's a story for another day. About six months after I joined, I had well and truly fulfilled the required annual hours service as was well into making a name for myself as a ‘regular attendee’ at several duty types and loved working as a First Aider. Suddenly, there was a massive change in the administration of the division, with the Operations Officer pretty much leaving due to his work/study load and the acting Divisional Superintendant transferring to another region. Things were not looking good for the division.

I put my hand up to help out with the administration side of things until everything got itself sorted out – unfortunately I was thrown into the deep end and had to quickly learn the ropes. 10 months down the line, I somehow became Head of Operations and Training for the division.

Operations is a time consuming, frustrating, often painful and always annoying role to fill. Ask any Operations officer in any division (in pretty much any organisation), they will all say that this role easily consumes more time and effort than that of a Superintendant – you are more likely to be mistreated, abused, woken at odd hours and working the most duties compared to any other role in the division – the only time you don’t get yelled at is when everything runs smoothly. Thanks are few and far between.

But it's important that you don’t let this scare you off. It isn’t a glamorous role filled with perks – but it is definitely the most rewarding on a personal and organisational level. Although your division may not always notice or show it – your stature within the organisation does not go unnoticed amongst regional or state staff, and it is a brilliant way to make contacts within and outside the organisation which can be used in many other aspects of life. The feeling of having everything run smoothly is comparable to nothing else, the constant challenge of achieving that makes for a perfectionists dream. You learn that when nobody says anything, you’ve done everything perfectly – and that’s all the thanks you need.

Operations is still a very rewarding and fun role to fill, despite anything else I may have said so far. You have a ball with the members, because unlike other roles Operations is a role that requires you to know quite well each member so you can appropriately allocate them. But it’s hard not to know someone well and not become friends, so after even a brief stint in Ops you’ll have made friends that may very well last the rest of your life – this alone is a reason why it’s such a rewarding position and one I feel I'm lucky to have held this long.

What's sticking out of my arm?

Well so much for the bonus posts given I was in the trial... Turns out the internet is a hard thing to get a hold of in there when there's a bunch of people with nothing else to do. The good news is there's at least a few good stories from the event.


This is my arm. The thing sticking out? A cannula. The red stuff? My blood. I was participating in a Clinical trial. If you're not reading the link, it's the method by which developed drugs are tested on humans for research and developmental reasons, which play an important role that often gets overlooked by the public unless something goes horribly wrong. Which, fortunately, it usually doesn't. Which is not to say the drug is always a success - or even successful at what it was originally supposed to do, yet certain 'side effects' were noticed that allow for a continuation of trials (thus Viagra was born).

I volunteered to participate in a Stage One clinical trial for a new anti-arrhythmia drug - fortunately the initial screens had been done with no side effects and the study operators were just wanting to know the kinetics of the compound (how long the drug stays in your system for after taking it). Many people (my poor mother included) would hate a loved one being involved in such a potentially dangerous scenario, however it does offer the participant a rather large sum of 'financial reimbursement for their time' which equates basically to quick, easy cash. Those who are aware of the risks might even use such an event to fund a move to Sydney, for example.

The thing that frustrates me more than having to spend 3 days in bed with no chocolate, coffee, tea or other happiness inducing substances is that although the trial runs for a total of fifteen days distributed over two months, it pays me more than my PhD stipend would working full time (and then some) for three months.

Can anyone else say 'Highly educated people working as slave labor'?

Well not anymore for me, at least. I finish in the labs at the end of this week.

He DID!

Short but sweet - the results of my medical have come in and I got a call today letting me know that I was 100% confirmed in - my acceptance letter and request for accommodation on base are in the mail!

Like you ever had any doubts ;P

I did...

In other news, I'm enrolled in a Phase I clinical trial where I'll be bed ridden for quite a bit. It's ok - I will have internet access so expect a few 'bonus' posts. They might be long.

I also look after fools and drunks

I was with St John (as I'm known to be) at a local event where the crowd was happily served copious amounts of alcohol. While I usually dislike these events for the obvious work it provides me with, the crowd were actually a pretty good group of people all out for a nice fun time.

Of course, for two of them, the day after may have been slightly less so. Actually, for more than two - but let's just say these two in particular ;)

The first was a girl who had consumed her fair share of beer and then a little more. After that she drank herself silly. Thinking this might be a good time to head outside and purge her sins, she told her boyfriend her intent and strode forth into the night. After some time the boyfriend (who had stayed inside the warm room filled with friends) got a little worried, and before long we were called to an unconscious female in the garden.

On a side note folks, why always the garden? It's full of prickles, thorns and bugs - please, please try to pass out somewhere a little more convenient for me to get you from!

While she wasn't at the point of needing her stomach pumped, she certainly needed to sleep this off. Her boyfriend and a few friends were with us, which made my life a lot cleaner - I got them to hold the em-bag while she continued her projectile ways. The unfortunate thing for me was the fact that her location was completely inaccessible by vehicles (such as the one a friend was driving around to take her home), she was a large girl and was in no state for walking.

Out comes my best friend, the scoop stretcher. If there is one piece of equipment I recommend all first aiders get - it's this. We load her into it, secure her and (with the help of myself, a partner, the boyfriend and three other friends) take her over to the car. There was a bit of a wait, so we released her from the scoop and we sat around talking for a bit. Although drunk, she was a lovely girl and liked my sense of humor - this was also a good thing because I love an audience. A captive audience best of all.

After a few stories, jokes and musings she said something to me that I doubt I'll ever forget - "You're good at this." For some reason that simple statement made by a drunken girl sitting on cold concrete with a half full em-bag in her lap remains one of my warmest, fuzziest memories of first aid. I felt like, in my own small way, I had achieved something that night. After a bit the friend appeared and we got her into the car for her adventure to continue while we headed back to our designated spot.

A year later at the same venue and event (it runs every year) I met our second drunk. We were called to her under similar circumstances as our last friend, out in the garden 'unconscious' (of all the calls for 'unconscious' I've had, only around 5% of them actually are unconscious...).

Seriously - stop going to the garden, people.

Unfortunately this was the one time of the night when all the people requiring first aid needed us at the same time, so I was caught between treating her and also inspecting a young man who'd recently been in a fight. Luckily they were scant meters from each other, so my life was made somewhat easier. The girl was GCS 3,5,6 - but the 5 was borderline 4 depending on which time you roused her. Drunk girl this post, fighter in a later dedicated post (oh yes, it was a good one).

We got her into a stretcher (I had learned from last year), covered her in a nice thermal (foil) blanket/wool blanket combo and were wheeling her over to the car park so she could get a taxi to her friends place. She probably could have walked, but she was a very petite girl, continuous going 'floppy' and thus was extremely difficult not to drop - I was erring on the side of caution. I was also using this as a way of getting away from the 'fight scene', but again more on that later.

The girl was great when she was talking, a very giggly drunk and rather entertaining actually. While I couldn't stand it all night, a 5 minute stroll was quite enjoyable. The big laugh came when we approached the taxi area with the girl in a stretcher and, unsurprisingly the taxi just took off. We sat her up with her friends to wait for the next taxi with her thermal blanket still around her ("You look like you're about to be thrown in the oven!") and left them to the night. I was proud of the partner I was with, as it was her very first duty and she had handled herself well (which I of course told her), and she said she was impressed with all of our friendliness and humor and was keen to do more duties.

I heard through a friend of a friend that the girl made it back safely to wake the next morning still wearing the thermal blanket - but didn't remember how she got it. It's always nice to hear how our patients have recovered - better still when it can give you a chuckle.

Not there yet...

I've mentioned it in a previous post, but it feels time to go through it again due to the simple fact that I've re-read some of these posts and have realised how caught up in it all I've been.

Despite my hopes and ambitions - I'm not a Paramedic (yet).

A friend pointed out that a lot of my posts seem to be narrated as if I had reached that goal already, as if - when talking about Paramedics - I'm relating more as a peer than a student (who hasn't even started at that). To me, this is dangerous territory and something I think I should address sooner rather than later - for my own sake if nothing else. I know I'm nowhere near the level of Paramedic, and the things I've seen and done as a First Aider/First Responder are probably trivial events to the average 'ambo'.

My true challenges lie ahead of me, and I cannot afford to let myself think I am prepared for them yet, because it's the Paramedic (or Doctor, Nurse or even Barista for that matter) who is over-confident that makes mistakes, misses details and generally gives the rest of their profession a bad image. I don't want to fall into that category. Ever.

But to address the issue of relating on a personal level as a peer - in a sense this is something I probably won't stop, not due to the fact I feel as qualified as them (which, believe me, I don't) but for the fact that they are just normal every day humans. Yes - even just like you. They're just trying to do what they can - and to that I relate. I (think I) know how it feels to be doing something that is important to someone's life and health, I know how it feels when it's working, when it's not. When it fails. When it doesn't, and the clouds open up, the sun shines through - and I like the sun, it makes me hopeful. Most of all I know how it feels to want to be better, for their sake - then for yours.

I know I'm not there yet... But I will be.