Saving Lives....

My professions for the moment involved saving lives. For those of you who have no idea what I have been doing since February, I am working in the ER at Proctor and OSF, our local hospitals. This often involved taking care of people who are barely ill and just don't understand the definition of EMERGENCY, and many times it involved using the skills we have learned to save the lives of our patients. Heart attacks, Strokes, Car Accidents, Shootings, Stabbings, beatings, poisonings, Respiratory problems.....we see it all. Literally...

We often say "ER....you watch it, We LIVE it." The job gets downright nasty at times, but someone has to do it or many lives would be cut short. And somehow God has granted me the ability to stare at people's insides, blood, mangled body parts etc. and not get queasy. (for those of you who just passed out after simply reading the words, just breathe and continue as I will refrain from describing anything in detail :o)

Part of our job is to be prepared for any large emergency. Most of the time we see people patient by patient. There are occasionally accidents that bring us 4 or 5 patients at a time. The stress of mass casualty incidents is much greater than taking patients by patients. So to deal with the increased stress levels, we are trained time and time again in different situations so that it is instinct when we treat patients and we really don't have to 'stress to think'. One type of situation we have been trained on recently is the exposure of hazardous material. This would come into play if there was a large chemical spill, terrorist attacked using biological warfare...or anything of this type. Although it is a serious situation, we had a lot of fun training so I thought I would share some pictures from our 2 days with you.

So, we had to wear these goofy suits. And I kid you not when I say they are HIGH TECH. Basically Tarps...But when they could save your life, you are grateful. These are also one size fits all = they are all 5X, use duct tape to fit them to your body. HUGE is an understatement. This is us halfway dressed, with our 'angels'. because of the Situations we would be preparing for, you cannot dress yourself. The suits get incredibly hot inside and you actually lose a few pounds in a few hours just from sweating. So the deal is, you have an 'angel' who dresses you to save your energy, and you drink water to hydrate and rest.

Since chemicals can he harmful to touch OR breathe, we wear special 'contraptions' to filter the air reaching the inside of our suits. The goal in to have the suit properly places so that you puff up upon circulation of air inside your suit. So when you put little people in 5X suits and fill them with air, you get bubble people. Walking in the suits is quite entertaining.

Me in my suit ready to save lives....

We then had to practice washing patients. Decontaminating is the most important part of the 'saving' process or you will infect anyone attempted to attend to the patients wounds (if there are any). So we practice in our special showers that we set up outside. I really hope....and pray, that if we ever have a biohazard situation of any magnitude, the people will be able to assist a bit better than these mannequins.

And then you have different types of people who are not mobile. These also will need DECONed...so we practiced. And yes...real people will weigh much more, but it was just practice. Had it not been 50 degrees outside we would have put our bathing suits on and been the 'subjects'....but this was not happening.

All I can say is....Bring it Terrorists....and God Help us because it will be absolute chaos if anything happens...

But we will do what we do....Save Lives.