Welcome Back!

So, for those just catching up, I had a baseball sized tumor removed from under my breastbone this year. Best of all possible outcomes, considering: no cancer, no radiation, minimally invasive as thoracic surgery goes I guess. I was recovering and off of work for three months and returned to full duty with no real complications.

As a welcome back present I got a four alarm fire.

Not my first day back but a few tours in. My first fire in a while too. It came in just on the border of our district and the next one over, but technically their first due. It was a grocery and liquor store we knew well.
As we rolled down the street we could see Engine 50 coming the opposite way. The hydrant was on our side of the street but on their side of the intersection. I knew they would get to the building first and figured we would be taking care of the water supply for them.

E-50 stopped just short of the building and started stretching hose. I was just rolling up on their position when the front of the store exploded.

https://youtu.be/3FJT2QU-xgM

(something like that but without the people in front)

I literally watched in my side view mirror all this glass and debris flying across the street right behind my engine. My first thought was, "Where is the crew from E-50?". I was afraid they had just pulled hose in front of the explosion. They hadn't. They were setting up to go in the Delta side main door. The debris shot across four lanes of traffic to the gas station on the opposite side of the street.

We made the water supply connection for Engine 50 using our own 5" hose (which would later prove to be a mistake). Then we helped pull a back up line to that door on the Delta side (that's to the right of the address btw). There was quite a bit of flame showing in the Bravo/Charlie corner but visibility was still good and we could still see all the way through the building.

However...

Within just a couple of minutes of the smoke explosion the roof collapsed, the whole interior was burning and there was no hope of fighting this fire from the interior. My crew got reassigned to start forcing entry and checking the exposure businesses on the Delta side. There was some minor damage to the first unit but the others were clear. We ran into some trouble with ventilation though because it was a peaked roof built over a flat roof so the vent groups efforts were pretty much wasted. We wound up just doing some pre-emptive salvage work, covering up computers and electronics, and safeguarding plaques and awards, etc. As we did that, the sticks went up on two sides of the structure and the 'surround and drown' began.

We spent the bulk of our time after that putting out spot fires and several times revisiting whatever was burning in the bravo/delta corner that refused to go out. Whatever it was was buried under the roof collapse so there was no way to get to it yet.

All in all we spent about 13 hours on this fire. We were second in but last to leave. There were a few extenuating circumstances that caused that to happen but one being the fact that E50 was using our 5" as water supply and that was pretty much the last thing to be loaded.

It was a long fire (02:30 - 15:00) but not overwhelmingly strenuous beyond the first ten to fifteen minutes. But, it was still a good test for my return to work post surgery and a pretty exciting fire for a little while.

All of this reminds me of a joke:

A Lama with one L is a holy man.
A Llama with two Ls is an animal.
Do you know what a 3 L lama is?....

One helluva fire.

"I feel like a Kentucky Fried Idiot"

Two examples of why I do this job, both in the same night, both on the same call, both quite different.

At the tail end of making dinner, we responded to a report of a Level 1 Hazmat at a gas station in the district. Most likely a gasoline spill of some kind. We were advised en route to look for a Jeep leaking fuel. Yep. Okay, easy enough.

We pulled up to the station and found the Jeep. A friendly and very apologetic young woman met us and explained that she was filling her tank and the fuel was just shooting through straight onto the ground.

 (Like this but underneath, not out the fill pipe)

So we crawled under the car (now moved from the pump to a parking spot). There was a (maybe) 5" round spot of fuel on the ground and a small spot under the tank that looked like it might have dripped. Not at all the deluge that was described. We inspected the gas cap and what we could see of the fill pipe and all appeared normal. Her gas gauge still read 1/8 tank and the car started fine. It just didn't add up. 

She was afraid of running out of gas if she drove home and was going to call for a tow. We had her pull back up to the pump so we could see what had happened. She went to the same pump she had used before and there was no fuel on the ground. Hmmm.

She got set up and as soon as she squeezed the handle gasoline went flooding out from underneath the car. She stopped immediately of course but I then noticed the gas station attendant standing nearby watching us suspiciously as if to say, "What's wrong with you? Why would you have her do that AGAIN?"  Well, you never unless you try, right? Seems she must have a broken gooseneck between the tank and the cap that wasn't visible. The spill from the first attempt had just evaporated in the meantime. That was a bit surprising considering it was freezing cold that night.

She had called for a tow and was informed it would be over an hour. She was still worried about running out of gas if she tried to make it home. My captain told her that she could try to make it home and hope for the best, wait for the tow here in the freezing cold, or she could drive the few blocks to the fire station and wait there where it was warm. She took option three and let the tow company where to meet her. 

We were about to eat of course and as we finished making dinner, we set a place for her too. She initially declined but as the food arrived and no eta on the tow truck she gladly joined in. So we were able to take a bummer of a situation and unpleasant evening and turn it into a hot meal (udon noodle soup and shrimp, perfect for the cold night) and a pleasant wait for this poor kid. She was very happy and thankful and that's the outcome we want. So, good deed done and superior customer service rendered.

BUT....

Before we could leave the gas station and lead her back to the firehouse we had one other situation to deal with.

We were heading back to the engine and noticed a lot of brake lights just before the overpass by the gas station. The firefighter suddenly said, "That's a turkey!" And sure enough, a HUGE, wild turkey was running around in traffic jamming it all up. This is in the middle of a very urban area by the way.

My captain said, "Hang on let me get this thing off the road." He headed off to go chase it away and I went to the rig to grab a flashlight and deal with traffic to make sure he didn't get run over while in pursuit of the turkey.

The turkey, as you can imaging was having none of it. It easily evaded the captain and continued trotting through traffic, not leaving the roadway. The captain gave chase for a bit and then figured that it just wasn't going to happen.

He radioed into dispatch and gave a report of the turkey and the traffic issues and that it was last seen trotting North on Hardin in the left lane. Dispatch responded that they were aware of the turkey and that PD had been attempting to corral it all day long (which was awesome). As Rocky's trainer Mick said, "If you can catch this thing, you can catch greased lightning." Well, apparently no one could.

Routine, that's why I love this job.

Near (But Not So Dear) To My Heart

So I recently had my yearly physical for work. Over the age of forty you get a chest x-ray every two years as well as all the rest of the battery of tests and bloodwork they do. Well I was due for an x-ray as it turns out. Okay, no problem. Quick and simple and done. I actually got my blood work results emailed to me before we had even competed the physical and left the building. And my cholesterol was down thirty points from last year. Woo hoo!

So, I was a bit surprised when I found a voice mail on my phone a couple days later saying the doctor wanted to talk to me about my test results. Usually they just nag me about the cholesterol and all the rest is good. Well it was about quarter to five on a Friday when I called them back. The nurse put the doc on the line and she told me that the chest ray showed a mass in the hilar region of my right lung.

Yeah.

That's what I thought.

She said I needed to follow up with my personal doc and that they recommend a CT scan asap. Hmm...ya think?

 

Of course it is now five oclock on a Friday and I cant do anything about it. I emailed my doc just to get a jumpstart on the process and he actually responded on Sunday with an email that said he already scheduled me a CT on Tuesday. Right on. Way to go.

Went for the CT. Also quick and easy and painless. And then the waiting began.

I had just picked up my kids from school the next day and was driving away when my phone rang. I saw it was Kaiser and pulled into a parking lot, gave the kids the shush signal, and answered the phone. The news was not fun. He told me the scan confirmed a 3" mass in my chest. Not in my lungs fortunately but in the mediastinum.

He said I needed a biopsy (again asap) and that he had made the referral and they would contact me hopefully by weeks end. If they didn't call by Monday I was supposed to call him back. I adjusted that to Friday. No way was I waiting through the weekend.

Fortunately they called on Friday (late on Friday) and had me scheduled for the following Friday. It took an interminable five days to get the results late Wednesday afternoon. The good news was it did not appear to be cancerous, won't know for sure until it is analyzed after removal.

Which brings us to removal:

I need a thymectomy (the tumor grew out of the thymus) which could be minimally invasive but has a whole host of potential complications that can't be seen until they are in the midst of the procedure.

 

For example if the tumor has adhered to anything like my lung or pericardium or phrenic nerve they mav have to remove a small section of whatever it adhered to. In the case of the phrenic nerve that would mean permanently paralyzing the right side of my diaphragm. I was assured this was okay because the left side will still work just fine. Also the tumor is large and has to come out intact which means having a big enough hole to take it out of. This means possibly rib spreaders or taking a piece of rib out or worst of all a sternotomy (splitting my sternum and wiring it back together after). Really hoping it doesn't go that route.

So stay tuned folks. Same tumor time. Same tumor channel.

The Duke Boys Ride Again!....Almost

"E-51 respond to a report of a traffic accident at Oak and Mercator. PD also en route."

We jumped on the rig and headed to the residential neighborhood intersection we'd been given. We expected to see a minor accident between a couple of suburban commuters coming home from work. But what we found in the middle of the street at the end of a long set of skid marks was.........
The General Lee.

Yep. A perfect recreation of the famed General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard. Apparently this guy had spent the last 3 years restoring it and a half hour ago finished rebuilding the transmission. So, he and his buddy decide to take it for a test run. Somewhere in this test run he and his buddy (in a separate car) wound up colliding. And 5 minutes into owning a bad-ass replica piece of television nostalgia it looked a little closer to this:

 

Well folks, that's how it is sometimes in Hazzard County, when even the best of intentions and the purest deeds don't always turn out the way you planned 'em to. Life is funny that way. Isn't it?

Both Ends Of The Spectrum or All Dogs Go To Heaven?

This day started off a little differently for my quiet little district. We responded to an auto accident pretty close to the station and not expecting much. When we pulled up to the scene we saw that the accident involved a moving van and a small passenger car with significant front end damage and the elderly driver still in the driver's seat. I went to the driver while the rest of my crew checked on the guy with the moving van.

My patient was 90 years old, seatbelted and with his air bags deployed. He claimed no injuries but did say his right arm was a little numb. This was a bit odd because the impact was to the front right side of the car and there was no passenger intrusion and really nothing for him to hit his arm on at all. So I was thinking it might be medical. He had no other deficits, passed the stroke test, didn't need spinal immobilization...but still couldn't move his right arm.

He had a small dog with him in the passenger seat who must have been thrown into or under the dash. He lay dazed on the seat with a bloody nose and some irregular breathing.

 

The truck crew decided to take the dog out of the car and over to the side of the road. They put his leash on him and a firefighter stayed with him on the sidewalk. Our ambulance was delayed and taking a long time so we tried to get the patient out of the car as well but he was having difficulty with the car being so low, his numb arm, and a little hip pain so we decided to leave him there until the ambulance arrived, ten minutes later.

It was at this time that the dog's concussion wore off. Suddenly the firefighter yelled, "Hey!" "Hey somebody get something. He's biting me and he's gonna get out of this leash." The dog was awake and alert and unhappy now. This big firefighter was holding the dog's leash from the very tip and trying to steer clear of this little angry weiner dog. It was actually pretty funny.

 

They wound up wrapping the dog in a tarp and putting him in the back of a cop car. We got the patient sent off to the hospital and a family member picked up the dog. I'd be interested to know what happened to both of them but we didn't see the ambulance crew again that day.

The next bit of weirdness came when we had to respond to another district for an injury in the Walmart parking lot. That always promises to be interesting. The last time I went there it was for a tennis racket fight (http://myworkinglifeinthefd.blogspot.com/2013/05/tennis-anyone-or-people-of-walmart.html). En route we got the update that it was for a woman struck by a shopping cart. "Gentlemen! Call your lawyers!"

 

When we arrived we found the woman in the parking lot next to about 6 carts pushed together. She was with security and a store employee filling out a report. I asked what happened and she said the carts rolled over her foot and bumped her knee. Okaaaayyyy.
"Did you get knocked down or hit your head or anything?"
"No."
So I examined her knee which showed no signs of injury whatsoever and asked if she wanted an ambulance. She answered no without hesitation. As we gathered our gear to go and fill out her AMA paperwork she started getting worked up with the report writing employee ( who did exactly the right thing and just smiled and agreed with everything she said). The "patient" was going off on how dangerous these carts were and that isn't the right "protocol for this" (?), and that she could have been "terminally injured". We got her to sign the release and got the hell out of there without another word. Until we got in the rig of course and all began quoting, "She could have been terminally injured."

We got to end our day with a welfare check on a woman who hadn't been seen in three weeks or more. When we arrived the cops were already there and led us to the back yard. All the doors and windows were locked but there was a set of double doors with clear glass insets leading from the back yard to the kitchen. It smelled bad already and my firefighter pointed out flies around the eave vent. This was a baaaad sign.

When we got to the door in the backyard we could see a dog lying dead on the kitchen floor and feces all over the place. We went to grab forcible entry tools of the rig and to get masks on. If you ever see firefighters return to the engine just to put on a mask, I guarantee it's not going to be pleasant. We forced the back door open and everyone took a deep breath and headed into the house. There were a few yips from another small dog in the house somewhere but then silence. We made our way to a back bedroom trying only to breathe through our mouths and even then only as little as possible. We found her in the bedroom with obvious signs of death I won't go into. Suffice it to say we didn't have to confirm it with our monitor. We turned and left.

Someone would have to go look for that other dog I guess but we weren't about to go crawling around in there to do it right then. We turned the scene over to the cops and got back on the rig. And, of course, being the gallows humor firemen that we are, we commented that it had been a bad day for dogs in our district. To which I added, "Yep. Now, that woman was 'terminally injured."