30 August 2008

Hummers

Now that Sheena has had her back surgery and everything is fine again, I thought it only appropriate to recount the ordeal. Ok, ok.... and to get her back for all the times she made me make a fool of myself (although she will say I should give myself credit for doing that all on my own).

The first step for "preparing" her for the surgery was to have steroids injected into her spine to reduce the swelling before they did the surgery. It sounded like a simple procedure...... I mean, she has had injections into her shoulder a couple times before and they were done in the office but this time, perhaps it was because it dealt with her spine, they had to do it in a surgical environment.

They doped her up real good and she didn't want this. In fact, even as they were announcing they would "give her something to relax" she was trying to tell them she didn't need anything... which brings me to this moment. This is WHY I am writing this blog. It is too funny NOT to write about!

Sheena, like the rest of us hate those Hummers that are out on the road. First of all, they are too big, they are gas guzzlers, and seem to be totally unnecessary in this world unless they are involved in Military affairs.

Sheena had just come out of the operating room with steroids in her spine and Looney drugs in her veins. She was as happy as can be. Standard time in the recovery room is 45 minutes. They haul her out after 20. She has lived up to her reputation by being a terrible patient. (I heard she woke up and asked if she could go home. They told her she had to go to recovery first and she told them she was going to call the cops). After recovery, she was put in a wheelchair to be transported to her "car in waiting".

That would be me.

The male nurse rolled her down the hallway and into the parking garage.

"RICK! LOOK! It's a HUMMER!" she yelled. "It's a darn HUMMER!" I look out into the garage and she sees I am looking in the wrong place and corrects me.

"NO, you fool! I'm IN the stupid HUMMER!" Sure enough she was in a black wheelchair.... wide enough and square enough to be considered a HUMMER.

We hate Hummers.

She was humiliated.

"Get me out of this thing!" she yelled. The nurse brought her to the passenger side of my car and off he ran as fast as lightening. No need to stay around, I suppose.



A week later, she gets a brainstorm. This doesn't happen often so we surely take it seriously. She has decided to have the surgery to remove the tumor and have it done immediately. No explanation. We are not surprised. She rarely has an explanation for anything anyway. And when she DOES, it really doesn't pertain to anything.



Surgery is scheduled three weeks later. We have time to plan and prepare. At least you would THINK!!! Nothing goes as planned and we should have known this from the beginning. The Doctor calls and asks her to come in earlier than her 1.30 appointment. He has had a cancellation. She arrives at the hospital at 12.30 and is taken in immediately. Problem is.. the people that have come with her have irritated her to the point of making her blood pressure rise and the surgery is on the brink of being postponed. There is no way in hell she is going to have the surgery postponed. (Mind you, she was instructed not to eat or drink anything from midnight on and here is was..... 3pm and she was not a Happy Camper!) It was bad enough she wouldn't take off her earrings and they had to cover them with electrical tape so she wouldn't "catch fire" if they had to cauterize anything.

A nurse walks into the pre-op room. "Your name?" she asks.

"Isn't it on the chart?" Sheena asks.

"Yes, but I am just making sure I have the right person," the nurse explains.

"Sheena."

"OH! I HEARD about you! Everyone has heard about you!" she says.

"I didn't do it," Sheena says.

The nurse excuses herself and next thing you know, there are three other nurses in the room. One is taking vital signs, one is setting up an IV, the other is writing in the chart.

"So what is it you heard about me?" Sheena asks.

They all laugh. "Dr. Welsh has it written on your chart that you need to be watched. Says you would go AMA even during the surgery."

"And we aren't allowed to put you in a Hummer when you leave the hospital," another nurse says. "Heard you freaked out last time you were in one."

Since her blood pressure wasn't going down, most likely due to the friends in the room and the fact she was in an awful lot of pain, they send the friends away and give her a shot of Morphine. Half hour later they give her a second one.

Bad mistake. She is beyond looney now and gets the giggles. A bird outside the window pooped on the landing and she just couldn't stop laughing.

"I could NEVER do that in public!" she says.

Off to the OR.....

Dr. Welsh comes to talk to her before the surgery. "I heard you didn't take your blood pressure medication this morning," he says.

"The instructions said no food or drink after midnight. So I didn't," she answers.

"I thought my nurse told you the medication was okay to take with a sip of water," he explains.

"Maybe but that is not what the instructions said."

"I heard you had two peices of Jolt gum this morning," he says. (Jolt gum is caffienated gum... two peices has the equivalent amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee).

"Yep," she says. "But I didn't eat or drink them. I just chewed them." (This coming from a girl who "follows the rules"!)

Surgery took about an hour. She didn't go AMA in the middle of it. She didn't catch fire. In fact, everything went well.

I was sitting with her when she woke up. "Good evening, Sleeping Beauty," the nurse says.

"Can I go home now?" Sheena asks. (She never gives up).

"Maybe after recovery time. And you have to walk and pee for us first," the nurse answers.

Sheena looks at her wrists quickly and gives a sigh of relief. They once had to restrain her in the hospital because she tried twice to leave a few hours after major surgery. Even with the restraints she got out of them Houdini style. No one ever knew how she did it.

Captain Harold and three others from the Firehouse came to see her.

"Oh, you are still here!" Harold says. "Wasn't sure if you would be or not but we took a chance."

The nurses started to flock into the room. And I noticed they started taking their time doing what they had to do in the room. Looked to me like they didn't want to leave. Well, heck! Firefighters in uniform! What more could they want? Other nurses walked past the room and came back again standing outside the door watching, waiting to start a conversation with the guys. This went on for about a half hour and then Sheena realized what was happening.

"Can I go home now?" she asked.

"After some time," the nurse said while talking with the guys at the same time. Sheena looks at me and then looks at the nurse and the guys and back to me. "I'm never gonna get out of here" she mouths to me. I was getting that feeling too.

"Can you get me a private room?" Sheena asks.

"Why?" the nurse asks.

"So I can get out of here faster?" The nurse knew what she was insinuating and turned red in the face. She left the room.

The next nurse to come into the room was checking the IV fluids. Sheena tried her luck with this nurse.

"I have to go for a walk and pee," she says. (Sounded like what someone's dog would say!)

Unaware, the nurse pulls the IV pole around the side of the bed, helps Sheena out, and deposits her in the bathroom.

"No listening!" she yells from inside the bathroom.

She comes out and is ready for a walk. The nurse is holding on to her elbow to steady her but Sheena takes off at a fast pace and the nurse is basically running after her saying, "Slow down! I can't push the pole that fast and you're pulling on the tubing!"

Back in the room she is bothering to go home again. Funny how the nurses found things to do before letting her go home. Finally, after another 45 minutes of Sheena using the call button for everything from ice and water to blankets and pillows, they decided they'd had enough of her and let her go. She was unhooked from the IV and went to get dressed. The guys went back to the Station and I went down to the garage to bring the car around to the front entrance of the hospital. A nurse would be bringing her in a wheelchair to the car. Even before I saw it, I KNEW the nurses had gotten their revenge.

"Oh my god, Rick!!!! They put me in another HUMMER! Get me OUT of this thing!!!"


~Ricky~

24 August 2008

No frills here..... just lace

Poor Rookies. I was once one.... glad I'm not anymore. When I was a Rookie, we didn't have the steadfast people in our Firehouse that we have today. They played jokes and pranks, yes.... but not as voraciously. Now we always strive to outdo ourselves.

One joke we played on a new Rookie was one of the best we ever did. We still laugh about it today and most new Rookies get initiated this way. We had a very innocent and very naiive Rookie named Ron. We played jokes on him constantly. One of the best jokes was adding extra garments to his bunker pants just before retiring for the evening.

We always lay out our bunker gear and boots beforehand for the next call we go on. The bunker pants are around our boots and the suspenders are attached to the bunker pants. When we get a call, all we have to do it "jump" into our gear and we are ready to go. It saves time for us. We grab the rest of our gear off hooks just before jumping onto the rig.

Problem is, when you are bolted awake in the wee hours of the morning, you aren't thinking too clearly the first few minutes. You go through the routine of "getting dressed" and gathering your gear as if it were second nature. But you wake up while on route to whatever call it is you are going on. Often it is nothing serious.

We were on the rig flying to the scene of a small fire and trying to fully wake up. As a new Rookie, this guy had a harder time coming to grips with waking up. The fire was a garbage container fire. This Rookie was instructed to help put the fire out. Water is doused on the fire and the Rookie is stirring the contents to make sure it is fully out. The neighbors have gathered around to watch as things unfold. One of our senior Firefighters is videotaping.

"Whatcha wearing, Ron?" one of the Firefighters asks. "You get your clothes inside out?"

Ron has no idea what he is talking about and continues to stir the debris.

"Didn't know you were into that, Ron," someone else says.

Half awake, Ron says, "Uh huh."

By now the crowd is talking, laughing and pointing at the Firefighters. With the fire in the garbage container out, Ron returns his equipment to the truck.

"Nice panties," one of the boys in the crowd yells. Of course, waking up and curiosity make Ron look around to see what "panties" the boy is talking about. He looks and looks and comes to the realization that the crowd is staring at HIM. Someone points. He looks down. Wrapped around his calf is a pair of red lace panties.

His face turns red and all he can manage to say is, "I'm NEW around here."

It's hard to get a pair of panties off your leg when you have a size 12 boot on.

~Ricky~

16 August 2008

Standard Issued Uniform Shirts

Our last shift had been a busy one compared to most other nights. In the past 12 hours we had been called out on 8 calls. Our total amount of time in the Firehouse has been about 3 hours. Just before the last call, we had been called out to a structural fire that had made its way to a 3 alarm fire. Upon returning to the Station, most of us had taken showers. Sheena had procrasintated saying she just knew that if she got in the shower, the alarms would sound again. It had been quiet while all the others took showers so why should she think it would happen when SHE was in the shower? Captain Harold tells her to go shower and off to the showers she goes and DANG! if those alarms didn't sound again!

"Rick! I forgot my shirt in my locker! Throw me one!" I heard her yelling. I ran to her locker, grabbed the navy blue t-shirt and threw it over the stall to her.

Although she was the last on the rig, she still made it in time, all decked out in her bunkers. All she had to do was get her helmet and gloves on, which she did as we rolled out of the bay.
We were on our way to an accident. Car vs. motorcycle. It was a warm evening. Sheena and I are attending to the rider of the motorcycle. His leg is obviously broke and we begin to stabilize and splint it. Sheena removes her bunker coat and to my horror, she isn't wearing the standard issued uniform T-shirt we all wear.
Since this was an accident, San Francisco PD is on scene to take reports and investigate. I can hear some snickering amongst themselves.
We get our patient loaded up on a gurney to be transported to the hospital and one of the Officers says, "Hey Chief! Since when did your department get new uniforms?"

Everything seemed to be a blur of sentences after that.....

"Whatcha talking about, Miller?"
"New uniforms. Your department have a budget cut?"
"ALL departments have had budget cuts!"
"Your's must have had BIG cut-backs."
"Who cares about uniforms right now at a time like this?"
"SHEEEEEEEEEEENA!!!!" (This would be Captain Harold and he is smacking his own forehead)
"Hey, nice uniform!" (Yelled by several other police officers)
"What IS it with you people talking about uniforms???"
"Look, mommy! Winnie the Pooh!"

That's when it registers. She looks down at her shirt.

"Oh my god, Rick! What did you do???"

I'm sure I'll get paid back for this one day. Actually, I'm positive.