Me

Why get a test?

I just heard from my daughter. Her children (my grandkids) are staying at their (other) grandparents’ house. My granddaughter, the oldest of the two, was complaining of a headache and had a fever. So the grandparents took her to the Doc in a Box, who tested her for COVID.

You guessed it- she has COVID. Now at seven years old, she is unlikely to have much more than a mild illness from it. Any of you who have raised kids know that the little ones get mystery illnesses all of the time, and most of them come with a fever. You treat it with children’s Tylenol, fluids, and rest. What HAS changed is now my daughter can’t go to work, the kids can’t go to school, and my grandson is now going to get tested as well.

I just don’t understand what you gain by getting a COVID test. Whether it is COVID or some other illness, what you do to treat it is the same: Tylenol, fluids, rest, and maybe something for any other symptoms you have. How does knowing that it is COVID change anything? The only thing it changes is transforming you and the other members of your household into pariah for the next two weeks.

If your curiosity simply MUST be satisfied, take the at home test. At least with the at home test, no one else but you has to know if you have COVID.

In case you are keeping score, the members of my family who have had COVID:

  • Daughter in law to be (vaccinated)
  • Father in law (half vaccinated at the time)
  • Mother in law (half vaccinated at the time)
  • Daughter (not vaccinated)
  • Mother (vaccinated)
  • Brother (vaccinated)
  • Granddaughter (not vaccinated)

In addition, I have eight other friends who have had it. Most of them caught it before the vaccines were available. Two of them had COVID after being vaccinated. Not one of them had a serious infection.

The most serious of them were my mother in law and father in law, both of whom were sick at home for a couple of weeks. Everyone else had symptoms best described as a cold.

Again, we need to be spending our resources finding out why a small percentage of the public is having serious problems with this infection. Why them? What is different about them?

By Divemedic, ago

Now my brother

Two days ago, I announced that my mother has COVID, but only had mild symptoms. Last week, my Brother received a so-called booster of the vaccine. Today, he was diagnosed with COVID. It seems that even fully vaccinated people with booster shots can get it.

One of my employees today told me that her mother is in the ICU on a ventilator, with an exceptionally bad case of COVID. The mother is unvaccinated, and there are many people that will view this as: “AHA! If she had been vaccinated, she would be fine!”

They would be ignoring that this woman got sick a month ago, and her doctor diagnosed her with tonsilitis. Three weeks later, she woke up gasping for breath, and passed out. She was taken to the ER, where her advanced case of COVID, which her doctor had misdiagnosed, was finally treated.

So is this a case of no vaccine, or a case of an untreated, serious case of an infection caused by a medical error? How does a doctor not test someone for COVID if they come in to the office sick? Or was the test faulty?

Another 12 hour shift today. Sorry I don’t have anything else for you. Tired. I spent all day in the COVID isolation wing, where I walked 10,000 steps. I am worn out.

By Divemedic, ago

Thank you to me

There are so many times that I see news that disheartens me. I see our nation dying before my eyes. It saddens me that there are so many signs of what is coming. I truly love this nation and the ideals that it was supposed to stand for. To watch it fall to the communists is tragic. It is easy to allow this to get to you, but I also know that things will get worse. Much worse. This post is a message to future me, and I hope it resonates with others.

I, future me, want to thank past me. Thank you for continuing to prepare for what has yet to come, for keeping at it day after day, even when it was difficult. No matter how dark and disheartening things were, the dark days to come will be so much better because you were prepared.

This nation will continue to fall apart, and things that you cannot even imagine will come to pass. Have the courage and the foresight to keep preparing, and know that you are not alone.

By Divemedic, ago

Lobster, pt 2

Florida surf and turf.

Pictures from my trip:

Here is a guy that was on one of the boats. Yes, he dove. Yes, he wore the suit, just not the hat or glasses.
Here are some of our fellow divers and their catch.
By Divemedic, ago

Lobster

The last Wednesday and Thursday of July each year brings the most Florida of events to the state: mini Season. Each year, thousands of people from all over the state head to the Atlantic ocean to hunt. Lobster. I usually look forward to this, and sure enough, my son and I went.

I made sure that I was not scheduled to work during mini season this year, because we didn’t go last year due to the lock downs. I packed up my SCUBA gear and headed down south with my new, $27 dollar fishing license. We managed four dives to a maximum of 95 feet and had some good father son bug hunting time. We were in West Palm Beach, within sight of Mar A Lago, about a mile and a half offshore.

The water was cool for this time of year, but there was plenty of visibility and plenty of wildlife. We had a great time, and there will be more posting later today.

By Divemedic, ago

Back again

The good thing about working where I do is that our normal shift is three- twelve hour days per week. I managed to get the schedule worked, so that I had to work the first three days of the week and the last three days of this week. I refused to work overtime these two weeks. That left me with a continuous eight days scheduled off. I used those eight days to travel to Maine for some fishing.

I have a cabin up there. I keep a boat and some supplies up there. So I went fishing. My wife and in-laws left two weeks before I flew up to join them. We caught bass, pickerel, white perch, yellow perch, and chub. We threw everything back. The fishing up there is incredible. If you aren’t catching a fish every couple of minutes, you need to check your line to see if it’s baited.

The weather was a nice escape from Florida’s oppressive July heat. It was 20+ degrees cooler the entire time we were there. There is a lack of technology in the entire state, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s tough to get any internet there by cell, and even hardline based is slow and unreliable across the entire state, with the exception of the southeast part of the state.

Maine’s future doesn’t look good. I have been fishing there each summer for a decade, and I can see that the cities on the coast are being filled with refugees from the liberal cities of the northeast, especially Boston and New York City. They just made all plastic bags illegal, the cities of Maine are papered and painted in the new rainbow flags, and the laws are slipping to the left. The inland counties hate it. The people I talked to up there don’t want it, but the coastal cities are driving a hard run to the left.

  • The upcoming fight will be cities vs rural areas

The inland areas are still using plastic bags, still not dying their hair blue, and are resisting, but that won’t last long.

Now it’s time to go back to work.

By Divemedic, ago

Big City Elitism

This is so typical of the people who live in big cities. This guy from New York visited Chicago and Detroit, what people from NYC consider to be ‘small towns’ located in ‘flyover’ country.

I’ve heard some people say that New York has everything and other cities are just small towns — some of my family members have even gone as far as to say the Midwest contains only cornfields.

We all know what they think of the south- it is filled with racist, uneducated, idiot rednecks whose main form of entertainment is going to the Klan meeting after a day of hillbilly hand fishin’.

He was also surprised that there were, you know, things to do.

Chicago and Detroit have chic restaurants, trendy stores, unique bars, and popular clubs. 

This article is a perfect example of exactly the kind of elitist attitude that makes everyone in the country dislike people from New York City. We used to regularly get people from there who would walk into the fire station to sightsee. They were amazed that we had a large fire station that was filled with modern equipment, much of it better than what FDNY has. They were always surprised to find out that more than half of the guys on duty had college degrees in fire science, emergency medicine, or a related field. They were also surprised that about ten percent of the department were women.

Then the stories would start. We would have to hear about how the guy worked for “the New York Fire Department” where he was inevitably a chief, and then we would hear about how that department ran so many more big fires that we did, yada, yada.

So one day, I had had enough. I looked this guy who was telling me about some four alarm fire or some such, and I said, “Yeah, we get fires here too. We don’t get big ones like that, because we put them out while they are still small, because that is our fucking job.”

He walked out at that point, and left us to enjoy the rest of our provincial day in peace.

By Divemedic, ago

Where I piss and moan

If you don’t want to hear me bitch about my job and my lack of time off, you can skip this post.

On our second date nearly eight years ago, my wife and I discussed what we wanted out of a relationship. We both agreed that we wanted to travel and were looking for someone who would be a travel partner and playmate. I think we both found that. I was semi-retired at the time and living off my pension and a small income from my business.

After a couple of months of dating, we decided to consolidate households and moved in together. Once that happened, she told me that she didn’t want to go off to work every morning knowing that I was going to be having fun all day, and made a proposal.

The proposal was that I would get a job, and the income from that job could be used for us to travel. Since she was a teacher, I got a job teaching so that our days off would match and we could spend that time with each other.

It was a great idea. We enjoy each other’s company, and there is no one that I would rather spend my time with. I know that it is a cliché, but my wife honestly is my best friend. We once did a 54 day road trip together where we drove from Florida to Seattle, took a cruise to Alaska, then drove back. Two months of driving and travelling most of the USA, and not one argument or fight. In six and a half years, we saw 14 foreign countries and 48 states. We took long weekends to places like Savannah and Niagra Falls. We took 3 or 4 cruises a year, went on longer vacations and road trips, plus a trip to Europe and one year, we spent Christmas in Hawaii.

From the time we moved in together up until this year, we have only slept apart five times: Two nights when I went to a teaching conference in South Florida that was required by my employer, and three nights when my wife had to go help her brother in NY move after his live in girlfriend left him.

Until COVID it was a great idea, that is. The new stuff happening with COVID and all of the other nonsense centered around the election made me want to leave teaching, so I did.

The job I took was supposed to be 3 days a week, and since I was to be the supervisor, I was the one who was going to write the schedule. That sounded sweet. I could work a lot when the wife was working, then work less during school breaks and we could travel.

Two weeks after I was hired, a mass exodus happened. Mostly because employees were angry that an outsider (me) was hired to be in charge. They each felt that THEY should be the one in charge. Within two months, a 14 person department saw three resignations and four transfers. Now there are only seven people left. They tried to hire more people, but one of the ones they wanted to hire wasn’t qualified, yet they wanted to pay him more than I was making. I threw a royal fit and went to HR. They withdrew the offer to employ him, but that royally pissed off my boss. So now I am no longer the one writing the schedule. They took that from me and now have a nurse from another unit writing the schedule.

Now I am working five and six days a week, 12 hours a day. My average is now more than 60 hours a week. It seems like I am always either at work or getting ready to go to work. Since the last week of April.

Back in the first week of June, I managed to get them to schedule me for four 12 hour days for two weeks in a row, with six days off in the middle. I used that to go to Las Vegas. When it was time to come back, my wife said that she didn’t want to cut her time there short because I had to go back to work, so her mother took my place and they spent another week in Vegas. While I was working.

My wife was home for a week, and then left again. This time, she went with her parents, her brother, and some of their friends to Maine, where we have a fishing cabin and a boat. (We used to go there every year to go fishing. Until last year. We didn’t go.) She has been there for a week. I had today off, but I spent it working around the house and getting my laundry done. I was OK until my brother in law’s best friend sent me pictures of my wife winning everyone’s money at the poker table in the cabin.

In two weeks, I have 6 days off in a row coming, because I went to the scheduling nurse and told her that I wanted as many days off in a row as she could give me, essentially begging for the days off that I was promised when I was hired. All in all, I got a week in Vegas and a week in Maine this summer , and spent the rest of it at work. My wife got all but a week travelling and having fun.

So to sum it up, my wife and I had a relationship built on travel and fun for seven years. I got a job so we would have extra money to facilitate that and all was well. Then I changed jobs, so now her life is still about travel and fun, and mine is about work.

This doesn’t mean that I am unhappy with the marriage, just the opposite. I still love and want to be with my wife and I miss being able to spend time with her and do the things we used to do. I don’t blame her for going places- if she were here, all she would be doing is sitting around the house while I was at work. I know she isn’t cheating on me- she is with her family. I just don’t like being here working every day while I could be out having fun with my favorite person.

I know that something has to change. I cannot keep up the number of hours that they want me to work. I can’t spend all of my time at work while my wife gets to have all of the fun. Life is too short for that shit.

This summer is shot and over, so going back to teaching right now will not put that spilt milk back in the bottle. I am not doing this for another summer, though.

By Divemedic, ago

FEMA isn’t magic

This post began as a comment over at Miguel’s place and quickly grew large enough to be a post on its own.

Many people see FEMA as some sort of large Federal organization that responds to emergencies. They aren’t. What FEMA is, is a guy with a Rolodex (Remember those? If you don’t, ask your parents, snowflake.) and a checkbook. There isn’t some magical team of Federal Employees sitting around, waiting for “the big one” so they can swoop in and save everyone. That isn’t how it works.

No, this FEMA guy’s phonebook is filled with the contact information of local and state resources that can be called in an emergency. Those resources respond, tracking expenses and man hours used, and the FEMA guy then breaks out the checkbook to reimburse the states involved. The Governor doesn’t call out FEMA for shit. If you want to get technical, FEMA can’t do a thing unless the President tells them to. (Didn’t Trump catch hell for that recently?) FEMA’s largest contribution is writing the check to pay for it all.

After 9/11, the US government came up with the concept of Urban Search and Rescue Teams. They follow a set of guidelines in equipment and training, so that all of them nationwide operate on a similar set of procedures. This makes them interoperable across state lines: a person qualified for one could easily fit into any of the others. A USAR is equipped with everything from power generators to food trailers and rescue equipment. They have medical supplies, fuel, and all other equipment needed to fulfill their mission. Each USAR maintains over 5,000 pieces of equipment and has 140 or so assigned personnel. They can operate independently for 2 weeks, longer with resupply of fuel, food, and other consumables.

While there are some variations in the mission for each team (a team in Florida doesn’t need to be equipped for blizzards, for example) the teams are remarkably similar in training and equipment.

Florida doesn’t need FEMA resources for a building collapse. The state has eight Urban Search and Rescue Teams, all of whom are trained and equipped for that. Each one is centered on a large city, and draws its personnel from surrounding first responders. These first responders volunteer for the team, are sent to special training, and then become qualified for the team. Specialists are trained in HAZMAT, trench rescue, building collapse, confined space, water rescue, dive rescue, high angle, and vehicle and machinery rescue. Every member is certified as an EMT or Paramedic. It takes 2 to 3 years of training to fully qualify for a USAR team, on top of the extra training that they do on a constant basis. Most USAR members are the best of what their employing agencies have to offer. They are the most motivated and able of emergency responders.

Miami Dade is home to Florida’s TF1 (task force 1)
Miami has TF 2.
Tampa has TF 3.
Orlando is the center for TF 4.
Jacksonville has TF 5.
Fort Meyers has TF 6.
Tallahassee has TF 7, and
TF 8 is from Ocala and Gainesville.

Those eight task forces are comprised of about 2,000 of the state’s emergency services personnel. Before I retired, I deployed more than a couple of times with one of those teams. The most notable was to Mississippi for Hurricane Katrina.

Elements from six different USAR teams are in Surfside right now, along with a team from Mexico and another from Israel. They have more people and equipment than they can use right now- last I heard there were over 500 USAR team members there.

The issue is that a building collapse isn’t the type of disaster that is solved by throwing people at it. Even though miracles can happen and the occasional survivor is found days later, a building collapse is likely fatal for nearly everyone. Most of the survivors are found nearly immediately, survivors days later are miracles no matter how many rescuers are present.

The people in that building, with a few exceptions, were dead as soon as that building began to fall. No amount of handwringing is or could have changed that.

To be honest, I loved deployments. Not because deployments meant people were suffering. No, mostly it was because they were a test of all that you had learned. That, and a FEMA deployment usually pays pretty well. I was deployed to Katrina for 12 days and was paid more than $5,000. You want people who bring years of expertise and thousands of hours of training to come save you? You want people willing to live on 3 hours’ sleep a night without bathing while shitting in a bucket and eating old MRE’s for two weeks? It’s gonna cost ya. That kind of expertise and dedication isn’t cheap.

By Divemedic, ago

Plumber bill

The plumber came out while I was at work on Sunday. Big Ruckus D called it– my snake wasn’t big enough (stop laughing). My wife met with him when he came over, he was here less than 30 minutes.

It turns out that the professionals use a larger snake, and cleaned out the pipes quickly with his larger tool.

As I type this, I realize that there are many, many jokes that can be made out of the plumber using his larger snake to clean out my wife’s pipes while I was at work. At any rate, the bill was $165 and I can again use my toilet. The best part? My in laws and wife spent the rest of the day cleaning the house, so when I got home everything was already cleaned up.

I don’t think that this was related to the mystery that is the pipes not working when the wind blows out of the north. I think that this was a different problem.

By Divemedic, ago