It's official. The moment every career firefighter dreads... the birth of a nick-name. Considering all the names I could've probably gotten, I'll take this one as a badge of honor...I think. As you've probably read in my previous posts, my first shift was an exciting one. After a few hours of my first shift, we had a structure fire. The guys were joking around with me saying I was the "black cloud" for bringing them a call...their first structure fire in over years. Just to jump on that real quick; the reason it's the first fire in so long is because the fire inspection/prevention program is top-notch. Anyhow, ever since my first shift we've had some sort of call every single shift. Medicals, elevator rescues, automatic fire alarms, and so on...it's always been something. Well, after our "interesting" medical the other night, I was officially dubbed "Stormy!" At first, I wasn't happy about this since that nick-names tends to always bring bad luck. But the way my life has been, I guess things can't really get worse. Well, I guess it could but oh well. As I said before, sometimes nick-names can be straight up cruel. As much as I hate to admit to it, it seems this one is fitting. Now, about our medical the other night. We received a call about a man who was uncounscious in the stairwell and not sure if he's breathing. Well, we got there and he was definately out cold, and had very shallow breaths. We tried to get a verbal response from him...no luck. Then we tried a sternum rub, which seemed to work since he had some facial movements. When the medics finally got there, the one medic wanted to get his vitals, and the guy decided to come out of his uncounsciousness at that time. I suspect he was under the influence, and after a few moments, he was beginning to be combative. He started saying "I'm a marine, and I'm trained to fight and kill!" To make a long story short, it took about 6 of us to restrain him and I was holding an arm. My left arm was near his head, and I couldn't stop thinking about whether he was going to bite me or not. He made a motion towards my arm like he wanted to bite, but I was ready. As were the cops. Handcuffed, and hog-tied to the stretcher, he wasn't going anywhere. About 15 minutes later he finally calmed down and we out him into the ambulance finally. Well, I don't think the tires on the ambulance made one full rotation before it stopped again, with the driver running to the rear along with the cops. Not sure what all happened there, but it didn't look like he was being cooperative. Then the other night, I saw the negative forces starting to combine for a bad night. I saw the one police officer coming in for shift (usually when he and I work at the same time, things happen!). And it was a Thursday. And there was a Penguins game on. All the negitive karma was building up (since that's what happened my first shift!) and it was well known. Next thing we know...another medical. It was a respiratory distress, and it was starting to get worse. But luckily the medics were real quick getting there, and it was out of our hands. Anyhow, to finally end this post, I sure hope the "clouds" start to clear up, otherwise "Stormy" will stick like glue.
