Me

I Miss

As I write this, I am enjoying the first really cool day that we have had in Central Florida in quite a few months. The windows are open, there is a nice breeze, and a misty sort of rain is falling from a cloudy sky. The temperature is 69 degrees outside, and it’s official: Florida Fall is here. This is the time of year when I put on Youtube videos like this.

A nice, calming sound to play in the background as I do whatever around the house. My memories drift back to when I was a child, the weather the same as it is today, and I watched my mother hang fall decorations like these.

It makes me a bit nostalgic. Now my mother is gone. My father is gone. My innocence is gone, as is my childhood. So is the country that I grew up in.

I miss all of those things. It seems that all is left is an aging guy who is about to become an old man, and a country that seems to be disintegrating. We aren’t coming back from this, are we?

By Divemedic, ago

News from the ED

During the past week or two, I had a few notable incidents:

Of the more than 100 nurses who work in my hospital’s Emergency Department, only 9 of them are board certified in Emergency Medicine. Only three of us are board certified in a second specialty. For that reason, I now spend most of my days in the critical care zone.

For starters, this being the tail end of summer/start of fall, there are almost zero cases of Flu/COVID/RSV coming into the ED, but there are quite a few cases of pneumonia and sepsis, mostly in our older population. Of our patients, I would say that the biggest reasons for visits are people who are sick because they are old, abusing intoxicants, homeless, having a mental health crisis, or a combination of those.

One of my patients had come in having some mild stroke symptoms. He had my undivided attention for the first 30 minutes he was there. It turned out, no stroke. It was a complicated migraine. So while we were waiting for further testing and for the migraine cocktail to kick in, we suddenly were inundated with some very sick patients. Four cardiac arrests, and 3 other patients who required intubation in less than a two hour timespan. It happens like that sometimes- things are calm, then it is like a bus full of sick people pulls up. As the only nurse in the critical care zone who is certified to insert IV lines by ultrasound that day, I was busy for that two hours. One case in particular, I had to start an ultrasound line, then stick around to give Etomidate and Succinylcholine for the rapid sequence intubation. After that, I was in a cardiac arrest for another 30 minutes.

In the middle of all of this, the patient with the migraine had pushed his nurse call button. When I was finally able to get to him, he was indignant: “I pushed this button 20 minutes ago. This is ridiculous.”

Me: “I’m sorry for the delay, sir. I was busy with some very sick people. I’m sure that you understand, it’s just how things work in the Emergency room sometimes.”

Him: “Where were you? Are you really that incompetent?”

Me: “Sir, I am sure you heard the announcements. I was literally doing CPR on someone for the past half an hour.”

Him: “I don’t care about that, I called for you and you should come. I am never coming to this shitty hospital again. I want to see your boss, you should be fired.”

My charge nurse enters the room, and the man goes on a rant. The charge tells him what happened, and he still keeps complaining.

All of that. Do you know what he wanted? Some water and a warm blanket.

Working in emergency medicine has convinced me that far too many people have Main character syndrome.

Later, I had another 34 year old patient come in complaining of a severe headache and nausea. He reeked of weed. When I asked him about that, he said “Oh, I have a weed card. It’s medicinal.” He then told me that he smokes 6 or 7 joints a day. We tested him fully, finding nothing. Did I mention that he was covered in tattoos, had green hair, a septum ring, and two lip piercings? He was telling me how he is too poor to afford a ride home, and wanted the hospital to make arrangements to get him home. Uh, you can afford all of that ink, those piercings, and weed, but you can’t afford an Uber? Medical marijuana is bullshit 99% of the time, by the way. It isn’t for medical reasons, they just want to get high. If it were medicinal, wouldn’t there be a prescribed dose and schedule, like with every other medication? What other medication says “take however much you want, as often as you want?”

Anyhow, I now have a few days off.

By Divemedic, ago

Damned Squirrels

We were hearing scampering feed over our heads, then the drains and toilets started gurgling when someone was in the shower. I didn’t make the connection until we saw a dead squirrel hanging out of the soffit, with his head stuck.

The pest control guy I called found 12 places where our builder didn’t seal the attic properly against squirrels. He said that most builders don’t, because the code doesn’t require it. The repairs to seal the attic and replace the damage they did is $3 grand. The guy said we are getting off cheap because we caught the infestation early.

That doesn’t feel cheap, but I guess it could have been much worse. Little bastards.

By Divemedic, ago

Problems

I am aware that some of you have tried to setup accounts here. I will look into it when I get a bit of spare time. I am trying to migrate another blogger to my server, take care of honey-do lists, complete MBA courses, blog, and somehow find time to work, sleep, and take a crap, so it might be awhile.

I used to enjoy playing Falcon years ago. I decided to play DCS in the near future, or at least when my MBA is done. I dropped $2700 on a new computer, but I won’t have time to try out the game for a few months yet. Still, for you computer nerds:

  • AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 4.2GHz (5.0GHz Turbo Boost) CPU
  • 1TB Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD
  • 2TB Gen4 NVMe m.2 SSD
  • 360mm AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
  • NVIDIA Geforce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GDDR7 Graphics Card
  • 64GB DDR5 RAM 6000 RGB Gaming Memory
  • 32 inch 4K monitor
  • WinWing Orion 2 HOTAS and Rudder Pedals

By Divemedic, ago

How I Became Homeless, Then Not

Yesterday, I talked about struggles and how we overcome them. I have had mine, and most of them were caused by my poor selection of female partners. This is the story of my journey from divorce, homelessness, on to success. Maybe it can inspire someone who is struggling.

I’m going to mention a song today. It’s a song from a genre that I typically don’t like- rap. This particular song was popular while I was in the military, and the reason why I mention it is related directly to a period in my life when I was really struggling: the summer of 1999. Most rap “music” is simply someone talking over music while loosely rhyming. Typically, they are talking about their genitals, drugs, gang violence, or some other antisocial drivel. However, every once in awhile, one of them displays a level of societal truth, proving that they are the exception to the rule of rap being an annoying waste of time.

I had just gotten divorced, and things were financially rough for me. I was making $8.25 an hour as a firefighter/EMT. As a firefighter, you work a 24 on/48 off schedule, and this results in three different sized paychecks:

  • The large paycheck has 106 hours of straight pay and 14 hours of overtime.
  • The medium paycheck has 106 hours of straight pay and 6 hours of overtime.
  • The small paycheck has 104 hours of straight pay.

The divorce was punishing. The judge gave her the car, the kids, child support, and I got all of the debts. Those debts would be taken out of my paycheck before I even saw it. By the time all of my deductions were taken out (including child support) I wound up making an average of about $525 per two week paycheck. Since the rent on my apartment was $535 a month, it wasn’t long before I was homeless. I just couldn’t afford rent, utilities, and all of the other expenses that went with living in an apartment.

I was sleeping on the couches of friends until I could save enough for a buy here/pay here car, then I began living in my car. This was probably the worst time of my life. It took more than 3 months to save enough for a down payment on a 10 year old Ford Tempo. I would go several days at a time without eating. At work as a firefighter, I would eat everyone’s leftover food, and for that reason, they started calling me catfish, because I was a bottom feeder (from the bottom of the pot, you see). I lost 25 pounds in three months. Finally, after 3 months, I was able to come up with the $1200 I needed for a down payment and for the first 6 months’ insurance.

That’s when the song came into play. It was “Bust a Move.” Here are the lyrics that really struck home with me:

Girls are fakin’, goodness sakin’
They want a man who brings home the bacon
Got no money and you got no car
Then you got no woman and there you are
Some girls are sophistic, materialistic
Looking for a man makes them opportunistic
They’re lyin’ on the beach perpetratin’ a tan
So that a brother with money can be their man

So there I was: homeless, broke, and living in my car. I was alone, and couldn’t even have my kids over for visitation, because I had no place to bring them. I was alone: no friends, no money, no place to live. Every day was a search for ways to make a better living. I got a second job, working as a janitor in a theme park. I had to keep that second job a secret from my ex-wife, so she wouldn’t take me back to court to have that extra income be used to calculate a higher child support amount. Things were a bit better, because the extra income from the janitorial work nearly doubled my take home pay. Things were hard, but I knew that I could make it.

I lived in my car for about six months, parking it in various places so I wouldn’t have the cops called on me. I showered at work: once when I got there, then again when I left. On the third day, I was able to shower at the city’s owned gym, because city employees got a free membership.

That lasted until I found a woman willing to rent me a room. She was s supervisor at the theme park where I worked who found out how much I was struggling and decided to help me out by letting me rent her spare bedroom for $200 a month. I lived there for about three months, until she moved to Montana. Now here I was, just over a year after my divorce, and had to find another roommate.

That brings us to the summer of 2000.

The place I was living wasn’t great- it was in the middle of one of the most dangerous, most crime filled neighborhoods in Orlando, but it was cheap, and it was all that I could afford. If I remember correctly, my share of the rent and expenses was around $400 a month, my car was another $300 a month, and by the time I was done with the “must have” expenses like gas, insurance, and the like, I had $200 a month left over for food and other things. While still rough, things were much better than they had been just a few months before. Sometimes, I would only have $30 to last from one payday to the next, and $15 of that went to gas to get me to work.

Meanwhile, I didn’t stop working to get myself out of the situation I was in. I was working two jobs and began going to school at the same time. I spent the next year getting my Paramedic license, and along with it, an AS in Emergency Medicine. That was a miracle for my monetary situation.

It was now the summer of 2001.

My pay in the fire department was so much better at that point. As a Paramedic, I was finally making $10.65 an hour. On the days that I was acting engineer, I got an extra 75 cents an hour. It was during this time that I moved out of my ghetto apartment, and moved into an apartment in a better neighborhood. I had two roommates in this new place, a woman and a man. It was a good arrangement for them, because my now three jobs meant that I only slept there one night out of every three. It was good for me because it was half a mile from my fire station, and I could have my kids over for visitation. I was still living there on 9/11. Yeah, that 9/11.

It was that experience that gave me a unique perspective on needs versus wants, as well as how to make your money stretch. I know what it means to struggle, I know what it means to know that your next meal is likely days away.

That’s why I become so offended when the current generation complains that the generations that came before had it easy, while complaining that they can’t buy a house. Bull crap, they just don’t have any idea what the difference is between a need and a want.

The world doesn’t owe you a thing. You can have the lifestyle you want, but you can’t expect others to give it to you, you have to earn it. Doing so requires hard work and consistently making good decisions. One of those decisions, perhaps the most important of them, is the person you choose to partner with. That is the decision that I have struggled with more than any other, and I am glad that I finally got that one right.

By Divemedic, ago

Wage Theft

The hospital where I work has a money issue. That is, our department was more than a thousand hours over budget on staffing. As a result, the ED director was fired last year, and the new director has been swinging the budget axe. She laid off 25 nurses as her first official act a year ago, and we have been running understaff since. They took us from 3:1 patient to nurse ratios to 4:1. They also eliminated most of the nurse assistant positions. As a result, we usually don’t get lunches on our shift, nor do we get off work on time. This results in a 12 hour shift usually stretching out to 13 or 14.

Still, our department saw more than 150,000 patients last year, so we are raking in the money. My recent visit to the emergency room was billed at over $40,000, so do the math. Even if they only collect a quarter of what they are charging, they made billions from the ED alone.

On top of all of this, they don’t let us do required trainings during our shift, we are required to do them on our days off. This training is required by our employer, and is over and above the continuing education that we do on our own to maintain licensure. They tell you that annual NIH stroke scale certification is required, and you are subject to discipline if it isn’t completed, for example. So you do it on your days off.

In the past year, more than a quarter of our nurses have left. They are desperately trying to hire replacements, but the word has gotten out, and the only nurses applying for jobs are brand new ones out of school with no experience, because they are hungry for a job that isn’t med-surg.

Admin then tells you that they will pay for a maximum of 2 hours per week of training. The only problem is that they assign far more than that. This two week pay period alone, I have done 8 hours of mandatory training on my days off: a 3 hour class on NIH stroke scale, a 3 hour class on IV insulin, and a 2 hour class on ESI triage policy.

They are only going to pay for 4 hours of it, if they keep up their policy. In the past year, they have denied paying me for about 100 hours of mandatory training. I’m tired of it. I have screen shots of emails telling me the training is mandatory, screenshots of my online time card, and emails of the policy saying they will only pay for 2 hours per week.

I am turning them in to the state department of labor. I’m going to get my money. If they take any action against me, that is illegal and I will sue their ass. I am tired of being made to work for free because they have a “budget.” Well, I have a budget, too, and I expect to be paid for my work so I can make my budget.

By Divemedic, ago

Dog

In an unusual turn, I recently had a patient that was the victim of a dog attack. The breed was, for a change, not a Pit Bull. The dog in question was actually a Cane Corso. It bit the victim’s face and hands pretty well, but the attack appears only to have been 4 or 5 bites. Still, the dog tore a piece out of the victim’s lip, and there were several puncture wounds to the face and hands. In all, it required 19 stitches to close all of the wounds.

By Divemedic, ago

Missing

I will admit that I have been a bit MIA around here lately. That’s because of the pool project. We contracted the building of the pool, deck, and birdcage to a company. The landscaping and irrigation were our responsibility. We went through a 57 day delay because we had problems getting a building permit.

Once we finally got our permit, the pool company was here the next day, and the pool was complete 57 days later. We couldn’t be happier with the progress. There is a 30 day wait between getting the pool done and the final inspection. What we didn’t know was that irrigation, grading, and landscaping is part of that inspection. That means we are in a bit of a crunch to get it all done.

I rented a trencher and dug trenches for drainage and irrigation. That was the part that put me in the hospital because I tried to do it all in a single day to save some cash on the renal charges. I learned my lesson there. When we get hot, we take a break and sit in the pool for an hour or so.

Then I installed underground drainage lines to direct rain runoff from the gutters away from the house. I really like those, because they run about 30 feet away from the house to an automatic valve that opens when it’s raining.

Then I ran 4 zones of irrigation lines, planting 40 sprinkler heads so that everything within 35 feet of the house and pool gets irrigated, especially the plants we are putting around the pool.

Then the barrier lines for the robotic lawnmower went in around the edges of the back of the property. I don’t like mowing the backyard because it’s so large, so it was that or a riding mower. The cost was the same, only I don’t have to mow now.

Once those were in, I put edgers around the house to create a 2 foot barrier between the lawn and the house, so that the weedeater won’t damage the paint. Then the plants got put in, with some of them being large enough to keep nosy people from seeing us in the pool.

I also had to replace the tree in the front of the house, a 12 foot tall Crepe Myrtle.

After all of that was done, we put down 2200 pounds of mulch in all of the planter beds. We finally finished all of that today. Now we are waiting on sod.

I am paying a crew to come in and lay the sod, because that is hot, backbreaking labor, and it wasn’t that much more money than buying the sod and doing it ourselves.

While all of this was going on, I attended 3 days of classes, worked three days a week, and interviewed for two different jobs, as my contract with my current employer is ending soon, making me an at will employee.

All in all, it was a harder project than I thought, but it did save us quite a bit of money. It would have cost us about $10,000. All of that wound up costing about $4,000, with the biggest two expenses being 2,200 pounds of mulch and having 4 pallets of sod laid.

By Divemedic, ago