Wednesday, January 04, 2012

2012's First Post - Baseball, Bandages, and Blogging

I actually started this post Tuesday - yesterday evening. So now I'm getting back to it, and I think I have a fair amount to write about

I'm hopeful you all had wonderful holidays. I and my family did, and considering I worked around them ( like many of us who work in EMS) it could have been much worse. In any case, it was wonderful to be with my family.

I have been reading Glenn Stout's "Fenway 1912: The Building of a Ballpark" over the past couple of weeks. It was a Christmas gift from Martha, and it is a really fascinating read. It is an account of what happened in the first year of Fenway Park's existence as well as how the Boston Red Sox handled moving from their home field that was on Huntington Avenue in Boston's Longwood Area (the former ballpark property is now part of the campus for Northeastern University). The characters are, for lack of a better word, characters. It's interesting to note that personalities don't differ much from generation to generation, and the game of baseball was played differently in those days. Based on the descriptions, the game was much more of a defensive battle than the offensive one that is much more prevalent today.

Don't get me wrong; I love baseball. I don't care what two teams are playing; it could be anything from two major league teams to two teams of little-leaguers - it doesn't matter. It is a great game, and it always has been. And I'm always reminded of baseball's beginnings when I read historical accounts like this one. Even though there have been changes to rules in the relatively recent past (the Designated Hitter in the American League is one that sticks out for me, and I really wish they'd do away with it), the game of baseball really hasn't changed a great deal. Sure, the uniforms are no longer made of wool; now they can breathe, and ball players don't feel like they are wearing horse blankets when they play. Catchers are protected in a much better fashion than they were 100 years ago. Probably the most telling thing is that the baseball player of today is a high-quality, high-speed athlete, and I don't think that was so much the case back then. It's not to say that there was no athletic ability present; you have to have athletic ability to play any sport at any level. But it is different now, even more so than, say, 40 years ago.

The last of my grades are in: a B- in Statistics. I was actually expecting to do worse because I thought I totally blanked the final. However, I didn't, and I can say without reservation that I'm glad I won't have to do that again. It was easily as difficult and challenging as Organic Chemistry was, and I suspect that the next semester won't be as bad. And I figure that if I could survive this semester, I can survive PA school. As it is, I'm trying to set up shadowing time with a PA or even a Nurse Practitioner - either would be acceptable - and I placed a call with the education department of one of Manchester's hospitals as there are supposed to be opportunities available.Hopefully there will be a call back soon with the ability to have a conversation with someone. We'll see.

It is incredibly cold outside today - 18 degress Farenheit as I write this. Perfect weather for hypothermia and frostbite. It is only a matter of time before we deal with some of those cases; last year we dealt with a number of them. None were horribly serious, but it's always serious when someone is in danger of freezing to death. The only thing with that in mind is when someone is that cold everything slows way down. And the conventional wisdom is that "a person isn't dead until they are warm and dead."

If I run into that situation this winter, we'll see if it proves to be any different.

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