I had to make a change.... Something happened to the template that I had previous to this one, and all of the stuff on the right sidebar went to the bottom of the blog. I don't know if some errant script got in and hosed me or what, but I couldn't fix it with the other template. So I put up a new one. I hope it's okay.
What a whacky past few days. First off, I'm finally back on my medication regimen. Yesterday I felt miserable; even though I had to work last night it was a matter of sucking it up and getting it done. So I did, even though when I got off shift yesterday morning at 7:00AM I got home and slept for nearly 7 hours before I went back. And I was extremely sore from the waist down; all of my joints just plain hurt (nothing like 11 hours between shifts - it sounds like a lot of time, but it really isn't). With 1000mg of Tylenol and 800 of Motrin under my belt, I went back last night. Thank goodness nothing happened during the shift - I actually got to sleep there, too! Nice.... So I got home at about 6:15 this morning and napped again until about 10:00. I've been up ever since, and I feel reasonably okay. Just dealing with a little bit of residual Paxil shortage in my system. It should normalize over the next 24 hours or so.
I probably should explain my medication regimen so that it makes sense. First off, I have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder - ADD - and in actuality I've been dealing with it most of my life in one form or another. I'm sure I had it when I was a kid, and it would make sense considering people I grew up with would tease me pretty unmercifully because of the way I acted, sometimes. In retrospect, back then ADD wasn't something that anyone knew existed, so I can't blame anyone for the way my peers treated me back then. If it had been known, I'm sure I would have been on medication as a kid, and I probably wouldn't have had to deal with many of the problems I developed later in life.
Today, I take 20 mg of Adderall XR every day. Adderall is generically known as Dextromethamphetamine - a very long name for a very hard medication. It's no surprise that Adderall is a Schedule IV controlled substance.... For me, it seems to work quite effectively, but unfortunately it exacerbates the Anxiety/Depression diagnosis that I also have, and when I don't work to control that I'm a wreck. Paxil CR at 25 mg per day helps. With both of those I can function reasonably well about 80 percent of the time. The other 20 percent is when people I am around have to be understanding of my inability to keep my mouth shut.... Otherwise I deal with hypertension and high cholesterol. The medications I take for those (Simvastatin or Zocor, and Prinzide, which is Lisinopril and HCTZ together, plus a baby aspirin per day and Omega-3/6/9) do a pretty good job at keeping me together, chemically. I also have to watch my diet and make sure I exercise, the latter being harder because of my work schedule.
Monday was a busy shift - 13 calls in 24 hours, more than half of them happening after 5:00PM. The notable ones included a cardiac arrest which turned out to be a DOA, a 26 year-old female with an overdose of Ambien chased down with 4 beers and half a liter of Vodka - this one turned out to be a fighter as she didn't want anything to do with us, and we figured out that she was with it more than she let on as she reacted negatively to an ammonia inhalant shoved up a nostril. We also had a 60 year-old female who had a seizure. When we arrived she was post-ictal, and she was extremely combative. It took the 3 of us on the truck as well as the 3 firefighters from the engine company to get her secured. I was within probably 30 seconds of giving her a dose of Haldol to calm her down when she finally started to recover enough to talk to us. She had no recollection of any of the events that happened, and she has a history of only one seizure prior to this one. It turns out that she had a history of a mass of tangled blood vessels her brain surface that had to be reconstructed and removed. I have to wonder if she had another, or possibly some latent damage that caused her to seize again. In any case, she bought a CT scan at the very least as well as some stitches to the head laceration from the fall.
Last night in Goffstown was in stark contrast to the city shift I worked Monday. Nothing happened, thankfully. As I said, I actually got to sleep during the shift. Early on ,however, the fire department had training for the call personnel, either of which was mandatory for them. Those that showed up either had to sit through the blood-borne pathogens class or go do SCBA drills. Jon, my partner, and I drove to where they were doing the SCBA training and volunteered ourselves as victims for the crews to locate. It was pretty interesting to watch the approaches; two crews, each armed with a Thermal Imaging Camera (TIC for short), having to go through a very dark maze of rooms having to locate different items, including a human victim. Overall, they did a really good job; their approach was systematic and they had a lifeline attached to themselves to get out of the space they were in. It was pretty fun to not be on that side of it; I've been on that side of training in the past, and I discovered early on that it's not for me. While I have tremendous respect for firefighters, I can't do it. When I was one, I found I couldn't tolerate the mask as I felt incredibly claustrophobic. It was not a good experience for me.
Another day passes. Soon, it will be December.
What a whacky past few days. First off, I'm finally back on my medication regimen. Yesterday I felt miserable; even though I had to work last night it was a matter of sucking it up and getting it done. So I did, even though when I got off shift yesterday morning at 7:00AM I got home and slept for nearly 7 hours before I went back. And I was extremely sore from the waist down; all of my joints just plain hurt (nothing like 11 hours between shifts - it sounds like a lot of time, but it really isn't). With 1000mg of Tylenol and 800 of Motrin under my belt, I went back last night. Thank goodness nothing happened during the shift - I actually got to sleep there, too! Nice.... So I got home at about 6:15 this morning and napped again until about 10:00. I've been up ever since, and I feel reasonably okay. Just dealing with a little bit of residual Paxil shortage in my system. It should normalize over the next 24 hours or so.
I probably should explain my medication regimen so that it makes sense. First off, I have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder - ADD - and in actuality I've been dealing with it most of my life in one form or another. I'm sure I had it when I was a kid, and it would make sense considering people I grew up with would tease me pretty unmercifully because of the way I acted, sometimes. In retrospect, back then ADD wasn't something that anyone knew existed, so I can't blame anyone for the way my peers treated me back then. If it had been known, I'm sure I would have been on medication as a kid, and I probably wouldn't have had to deal with many of the problems I developed later in life.
Today, I take 20 mg of Adderall XR every day. Adderall is generically known as Dextromethamphetamine - a very long name for a very hard medication. It's no surprise that Adderall is a Schedule IV controlled substance.... For me, it seems to work quite effectively, but unfortunately it exacerbates the Anxiety/Depression diagnosis that I also have, and when I don't work to control that I'm a wreck. Paxil CR at 25 mg per day helps. With both of those I can function reasonably well about 80 percent of the time. The other 20 percent is when people I am around have to be understanding of my inability to keep my mouth shut.... Otherwise I deal with hypertension and high cholesterol. The medications I take for those (Simvastatin or Zocor, and Prinzide, which is Lisinopril and HCTZ together, plus a baby aspirin per day and Omega-3/6/9) do a pretty good job at keeping me together, chemically. I also have to watch my diet and make sure I exercise, the latter being harder because of my work schedule.
Monday was a busy shift - 13 calls in 24 hours, more than half of them happening after 5:00PM. The notable ones included a cardiac arrest which turned out to be a DOA, a 26 year-old female with an overdose of Ambien chased down with 4 beers and half a liter of Vodka - this one turned out to be a fighter as she didn't want anything to do with us, and we figured out that she was with it more than she let on as she reacted negatively to an ammonia inhalant shoved up a nostril. We also had a 60 year-old female who had a seizure. When we arrived she was post-ictal, and she was extremely combative. It took the 3 of us on the truck as well as the 3 firefighters from the engine company to get her secured. I was within probably 30 seconds of giving her a dose of Haldol to calm her down when she finally started to recover enough to talk to us. She had no recollection of any of the events that happened, and she has a history of only one seizure prior to this one. It turns out that she had a history of a mass of tangled blood vessels her brain surface that had to be reconstructed and removed. I have to wonder if she had another, or possibly some latent damage that caused her to seize again. In any case, she bought a CT scan at the very least as well as some stitches to the head laceration from the fall.
Last night in Goffstown was in stark contrast to the city shift I worked Monday. Nothing happened, thankfully. As I said, I actually got to sleep during the shift. Early on ,however, the fire department had training for the call personnel, either of which was mandatory for them. Those that showed up either had to sit through the blood-borne pathogens class or go do SCBA drills. Jon, my partner, and I drove to where they were doing the SCBA training and volunteered ourselves as victims for the crews to locate. It was pretty interesting to watch the approaches; two crews, each armed with a Thermal Imaging Camera (TIC for short), having to go through a very dark maze of rooms having to locate different items, including a human victim. Overall, they did a really good job; their approach was systematic and they had a lifeline attached to themselves to get out of the space they were in. It was pretty fun to not be on that side of it; I've been on that side of training in the past, and I discovered early on that it's not for me. While I have tremendous respect for firefighters, I can't do it. When I was one, I found I couldn't tolerate the mask as I felt incredibly claustrophobic. It was not a good experience for me.
Another day passes. Soon, it will be December.
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