Lost & Found

A little over a year ago, my small town, three station department merged with the County Department (now 28 stations big). When that happened, of course, all of our uniforms changed. Our badges, patches, t shirts, jackets, hats, etc. had to have the County name and logo instead of the old City name. The one uniform piece that the County FD didn't have that the City FD did was a Tilly or Boonie style shade hat. As a balding guy, I viewed my City FD Tilly hat as a piece of safety equipment and even though I'm not technically allowed to wear it, I held on to it. I carry it in my wildland bag and I will use it around my station if I'm out in the sun detailing the rig or doing yard work.
Today, I was out doing the weekly service of our reserve rig and wearing my shade hat. My captain told me we had to go out to a station a couple of districts over and retrieve some equipment left by the previous shift. I must have set my hat and gloves down on the sideboard of the front line rig while getting ready to go and forgotten about them. We headed out to the other station and just before getting there we got a call for an auto accident one district over from where we started but in the opposite direction. I put the Code 3 lights on and we drove all the way back to the accident. After treating one of the patients on scene we were released and set off back to retrieve the equipment. When we got to that station I noticed my gloves were on the sideboard and put them away. It didn't occur to me that my hat was missing. When we got back to our station I needed to finish up with the reserve rig and couldn't find my hat. I then put two and two together and realized what I had done and that the hat must have blown off somewhere while we were driving around. It's amazing to me that the gloves stayed put that whole time. We had gone all over and in and out of other districts so we couldn't just go retrace our steps to go look for it. I was pretty much resigned to the fact that I had lost my hat. I used that hat for camping and other things too and although I could always get another one of that style, it wouldn't have the fire department logo on it and it had sentimental value.

Later that night we responded to a small house fire and after going to the roof and raking shingles and checking for extension I decided it would be worth mentioning to the other crews in case someone turned in my hat to another station. Unfortunately, I don't think the hat had my name in it. Although, there were really only two of us who wore that style hat in my old department and the other guy is now retired. Well, as we were cleaning up I stopped the other engineer and told him what had happened. He started laughing and called his firefighter over. He then told me to tell the firefighter my story, which I did, and he started laughing and shaking his head.

They then told me the story of their day:

They had started off responding to the corner at the freeway offramp for the homeless guy in the wheelchair I have written about previously (see blog entry 'They Just Keep Rolling Along'). He refused ambulance transport and they went on their way. After that they responded to the next city over for an apartment fire. It turned out to be nothing and they were released to go back to quarters. They took the freeway back and as they came down the offramp they saw our wheelchair bound homeless regular giving them a big smile and a thumbs up while pointing at his head with the other hand. He was, of course, pointing at the fire department shade hat he was wearing. My hat! They knew it must have been mine but didn't know the story until I told them what happened while at the fire that night.

Now I'm very conflicted. I really like that hat and would love to have it back, but, knowing what I know about the person wearing it now, I wonder if there is any amount of washing and sterilizing that would make me comfortable about putting it on my head again. Plus, they said he looked so happy about having it I would almost feel bad about reclaiming it. However, this is not exactly the advertisement or endorsement I think is best for our department, now defunct or not. And who knows, maybe it does have my name in it.

The Dead Walk Among Us

"It is alive!"

I found out recently there is a guy in the next district over who is living without a pulse.

Here's how:

An artificial heart has been developed that involves the use of centrifugal pumps instead of relying on a pulsatile form of pumping. This results in a constant blood flow instead of the high and low pressures of a heartbeat.

If you listened to the patient's chest with a stethoscope, you wouldn't hear a heartbeat. If you examined the arteries, there's no pulse. If you hooked him up to an EKG, he'd be flat-lined. It's the strangest thing.

(Edited from the article):

The doctors who created the pump did not start totally from scratch. They took two medical implants known as ventricular assist devices and hooked them together. A ventricular assist device has a screwlike rotor of blades, which pushes the blood forward in a continuous flow. Thousands of people have these implanted in their hearts. By using two, the doctors replaced both the right and left ventricles — the entire heart.

The doctors say the continuous-flow pump should last longer than other artificial hearts and cause fewer problems. That's because each side has just one moving part: the constantly whirling rotor. But Cohn says they will still have to convince the world that you don't need a pulse to live because by every metric we have to analyze patients, they're not living.

"We look at all the animals, insects, fish, reptiles and certainly all mammals, and see a pulsatile circulation," he says. "And so all the early research and all the early efforts were directed at making pulsatile pumps."

However, the only reason blood must be pumped rhythmically instead of continuously is the heart tissue itself.

"The pulsatility of the flow is essential for the heart, because it can only get nourishment in between heartbeats," Cohn says. "If you remove that from the system, none of the other organs seem to care much."

The only thing I'm wondering is what we're going to do if the thing stops working. CPR won't do anything for him, he has no heart. Neither will any of the medications we use as most of them are designed to work on the heart itself. Maybe it's got a hand crank or something.

The times they are a-changing.