I'm back....

Hello again to everyone...

So I kind of took a two and a half month hiatus from blogging. I was finding that I just didn't have enough time in the day to keep up with things. Since March, numerous things have gone down in my life.

I've moved back in with my fiance and we're trying to get back into the swing of things. My dog Louie is getting along peachy with his new home. We've been taking him to puppy classes at Petsmart and he's really doing well in terms of his fears and shady shyness.


I had a falling out with my step-mother because I have chosen to continue me relationship with my fiance. This has been very hard on me and I'm not sure how to go about rectifying the damage that has been done. My cat escaped the safe confines of our home and was impregnated..two days ago she delivered 3 kittens. Now we need to find happy homes for three little fuzz balls. They are super cute! A god friend of mine had a lovely little bundle of joy named Aryana! We've taken to calling her "Squeaks" because she always seems to be making sqeauky noises.


The best thing that happened to be is in terms of work! I was the successful applicant for a full-time contract position out in the county,but now I am finding that I have too much time on my hands. On a good day in this rural little village, our truck is lucky enough to get called out to one standby for a nearby busier town. Most days I find myself twidling my fingers, reading books (I've recently become a crazed fanatic of the Sookie Stackhouse Series [LOVE LOVE LOVE!! And I've already read all 10 novels currently in circulation]), scrapbooking my life away, playing Bejewelled Blitz on Facebook or downloading and then using applications on my new iPhone (LOVE IT!!!). I absolutely LOVE knowing my scedule and being able to plan things in advance without worrying about whether I am going to be called into work. The contract is only supposed to be about 7 months, but 7 months is better than nothing at all, and I can't really complain because I haven't been working for a year yet and I already have this position so...GO ME!


Tonight I am starting an 8-week fitness challenge. I joined a bootcamp!!! It's called Booty Camp Fitness and is offered only to women. With 93 locations all over Canada, I'm seriously hoping that this is going to be (1) uber fun, and (2) give me results!!! A girl I went to highschool joined the classes and has been talking about it a lot on Facebook and I had to look into it. The 8-week course costs $300, has two 1-hour classes and week (I picked the Tuesday/Thursday option) and has many additional bonuses (check the website if you're interested). I'm going to post pictures soon of me now (the dreaded BEFORE shot..dun dun dahhhhhh!!!) and we'll see how I change over the next 8 weeks. Here's hoping the course lives up to its motto: "Fun, friendly, fitness!"

More to follow! I hope all in well with everyone else in the blogging world!

- Co Co

I love my friends!

Right now I am living roughly 1.5/2.5 hours away from my closest bunch of friends, roughly 21 hours from my BEST girl friend and roughly 17 hours from my BEST guy friend. I relish every chance I get to spend time with these people, although it seems more and more often that I am being forced to choose taking shifts at work over spending time with my friends - a fact that is really starting to get to me sometimes.

Unfortunately in my profession new hires are considered the bottom of the food chain. We are the last ones to get called for available shifts, given the crappy shifts with other medics who are grumpy bumps and forced to fight amongst each other for seniority ranking in order to have a chance to one day successfully and skillfully acquire a contract. Most often it is only a couple of hours that separate one person from another on the seniority list, but those few hours really make a difference. Currently I am 5 from the bottom. There are many full-time contracts coming up within the next couple of months due to maternity leaves. Ideally, I should be eligible for one of these contracts...but I can't take time off or turn down shifts. I always have to have my cellphone handy in case I receive a phone call from one of the supervisors asking me to come into work. Now, this can be really annoying because these calls come at all hours of the day and night. I have been called in at 2am, 4am, half an hour after a shift has started....it never ceases to amaze me. This joyous factoid has made getting together with my friends and making plans extremely difficult. How am I supposed to be able to drive 1.5 hours to visit my friends, think about consuming alcoholic beverages, or make plans if at a moment's notice I have to come running back to work. I have had to back out of some really amazing plans at the last minute due to these wonderful call-ins. Whenever this happens I have to think to myself, "at least the money is amazing!"

Well, back to the "friends" topic. I have always considered my friends to be the family that I choose for myself and I don't let just anyone into my family. Being in a newish place without this circle of comfort and joy is very hard. I find myself without the time or opportunities to venture out on the town to try and make friends. Sure, there are work friends here, but no one who I have actually clicked on a deep spiritual level or even slightly considered including in my so-called "family." This past weekend I decided to book some time off work to spend an evening of bliss with my friends. I missed them all terribly and I was willing to take any repercussions by marking myself unavailable (it ended up being an okay thing though. Shifts have been few and far between lately).

My good friend Amy recently bought a home and joined the 1/4 century group on Saturday. We all went to her house for a house-warming and birthday get-together. It was great to see my friends. We did shots, laughed hysterically, ate delicious snacks and spent quality time together. It's times like these that keep me going. I was lucky enough to not get called into work on Sunday, so I took a road trip to Waterloo and spent some more quality time with two of my other great friends. I love my friends!

Here's some shots from the weekend.

The joy of alterations

I'm not sure whether this is something to be proud of but, I have never had to have any article of clothing altered. That was...until now. When I first got hired for my paramedic service, I was sized for my uniform. The pants were supposed to be specifically tailored to suit only me. The man who did the sizing was not only creepy, but clearly a little kooky as well. Comments like "spread 'em," without a hint of laughter or comedy, and "nope, you're a 41 - the tape doesn't lie," left me feeling like this man was clearly out of his mind. More about the whole "you're a 41" thing. This man measures my waist and decides that I am a 41 incher. Now, I don't know about the rest of the world, but to me, 41 inches is an astronomically huge waist size for a woman of 5'7.5", especially seeing how in jeans I am between a 32 and 33. At first I was shocked. I thought, "NO WAY!" Then I verbalized my concern to this man - "I am not a 41." He said, "the tape don't lie."

Sure enough, when my pants came in almost 3 months later (which by the way I also feel was a really long time to wait for pants) they were ginormous. My fellow medics were telling me this is the norm for this man and I should just deal with it or get my pants altered. My supervisor told me to go to a cleaner and have them done and then to forward the bill to the county to cover - doesn't sound too shabby to me! I finally got around to taking them to a cleaner today to get them altered. I switched from my comfy jeans into these large baggy pants so the seamstress could begin her magic. She started poking and prodding me in various regions, assessing the amount of "taking in" she had to do. She sadly told me that the bagginess in the leg region was pretty much unalterable due to the crazy pockets, reflective tape and ugly creasing down the front of my pants, which look like this.


(link can be found here)

She accidentally poked me with pins several times but didn't seem to notice. As I was disrobing to switch back into my jeans I loss my balance and stepped quite heavily on the hem of my paramedic pants and landed on several of these pins again. In total I counted 5 pin prick marks on my body following this joyous ordeal. I can only hope that this is the last time I will ever have to worry about having an item of clothing altered. It was not a pleasant experience.

I LOVEEEEEEEEE my job!

As a kid I can always remember hearing adults whine and complain about their jobs. And with all the negativity that's going on with my life right now I just wanted to talk about something positive; something that I am truly passionate about...being a paramedic!!

Having just graduated and just recently been hired, it's still fresh in my mind what is was like to be a student and out with a crew. I can still remember the first shift I had as a student.

The pager went off - BEEP BEEP BEEP BOOOOOOOOP...I can't even begin to describe the level of excitement that I felt as I booted it to the truck. I didn't know what we were going to, what I was going to see, what I was going to be allowed to do, where we would end up and I was working with an ALS crew. We were dispatched code 4 (more emergent) for a 60ish male who had fallen off a roof. Now, being an overactive imaginer, my mind starts going all over the place - I wonder if he's got broken bones, is he dead, has he damaged his spine, etc. We pulled into the driveway of this guy's home and there he was laying on the ground. I was completely surprised with how fast I jumped into the call. C-spine, ABCs, level of awareness. We put him on a backboard, collared him, checked his vitals, got the history and transported him to the hospital. He ended up being fine but the whole rush thing had me completely hooked.

Now, I would never consider myself an adrenaline junkie, but the more and more cases I got to see, the more it's started to click in: the rush of never knowing what you get to do on a day's work, the way I still jump whenever the pager goes off, the ease with which a call-in makes me jump for joy...I LOVE getting an adrenaline high! Being a paramedic isn't only about the adrenaline though - it's about "helping people" and teaching. Sure there is a LOT (and I mean A LOT!!!) of disgusting things (I'm not going to elaborate - patient confidentiality - blah blah blah) that I get to see on the job, practically everyday, but it's the whole combination of things that makes me love my job. Sharing what we learned with new students and the public...I've got to say I love that too! Right nowthere are several crews that have taken on a 4th semester student.

Yesterday at work we had a student as part of our crew. Now this girl is the same age as me, we both went to university first before deciding to do the paramedic thing, and both graduated with kinesiology degrees. This was not my first chance getting to see her in action. I have to be honest, the first shift we had together she seemed pretty mediocre - mind you it was her first real shift where she was allowed to be 100% involved in every skill. On our first call of the day she completely blew me away with her ability to develop a rapport with a patient suffering a mental crisis. Even thinking about it now I shake my head and smile. I love seeing students blossom before my eyes; to actually see them taking something I have taught them and putting it into action. I can safely say that just from the small amount of time I have had to teach her and see her work, that she will be an amazing medic one day - hopefully for the same service as me! I would LOVE to work with her in a one-on-one setting!

Some of my most favourite shifts have been so because of the genuine gratitude some patients have in the worst hours of their lives. As a paramedic, I get to witness these worst hours, or minutes and I have to try my best to change it. Hip fractures, myocardial infarctions (heart attacks), head injuries, choking episodes, diabetic emergencies, and death are everyday experiences for me. Ideally, my goal is to make the patient as comfortable as possible, and I don't expect to be thanked or praised for doing so. That doesn't mean that when the little old woman who was humilated in front of her congregation when she fell at church, broke her hip and became incontinent, thanks me with tears in her eyes that I'm not completely thrilled! It just makes me love my job even more! All in a days work I guess! I can only hope that this feeling of complete and utter elation that I have for my profession stays with me. Here's to not giving in to desensitization - which is a problem for many in the emergency service industry!