If I can successfully study and do practice tests during the noisy and interruptions at work, I can defintiely ace my tests in the classroom.

We have a paper and two pre-quizzes due in two days, plus two exams in class that day.
Then another test in class on Friday!
Wow!

That said, I’m having a blast. I love what I’m learning and it’s actually a pleasure to study.
Never thought I’d say that.

It is difficult, however, to study and have an active social life. I’m finding that with this intensive course, I really have to schedule my time well. I’ve got some social things that I love to do (and keep me sane) and some people that are important to me that I want to make sure to spend time with… but school comes first no matter what. So, everything gets scheduled. I am enjoying being busy though. I always find that I’m most productive and creative when I’m busy. No time for slothing, no time for procrastination.

That said… back to studying!

Even seeing a dummy on a hospital bed floats images in my head of my father’s body lying supine and half sitting up in that noisy hospital in Brooklyn three years ago.

He had no shirt on – cut off I assume for use of an AED. Useless on him. He was probably dead long before my grandmother and aunt found him lying in his twin bed in his bedroom at my grandmother’s home that morning.

We have a well stocked lab area here at school. I wish I could tell my pop about all the new things I am learning. Things that might have saved his life had we all known more ahead of time. Our lab is shared with nursing students, assistant nursing students and other EMT hopefulls. There are expensive computerized manikins that have fake blood pulsing through their synthetic veins for us to learn how to take blood pressure readings. They have grotesque expressions on their frozen faces, as if why they are there was caused by some incredibly painful trajedy. I suppose I should get used to those expressions.

There is a room just for us EMTs complete with color coded kits in green (for the oxygen tanks), blue (holds the daily carry EMT kit) and black and grey ones with torsos and fake babies for us to poke.

Today I learned how to use a gurney, strap a person to a backboard, secure a head and neck with a cervical collar and that Paramedics practice drawing blood not on fancy manikins like the nursing students, but on each other’s arms.

I’m looking forward to all of it.

This was a looooong chapter.
It starts off getting you familiar with directional and positional terms. Then it goes on to cover the systems of the body:
Musculoskeletal, Cardiovascular, Nervous, Digestive, Skin, Endocrine

I’m good with a lot of the information because of my massage therapy training, but I’m starting to wish I’d done this when I was still a younger sponge brain. It’s been so long since I had to really study and memorize, those parts of my brain have atrophied to a degree. Studying hard causes my brain to start to cloud over and get thick. I have to take lots of little breaks. I suppose that like any exercise, the more I do it the better I’ll get. I hope so.

The main difficulty I had yesterday was with the heart.
It’s got four sections:
Right Atrium
Right Ventricle
Left Atrium
Left Ventricle
Blood gets pulled in, blood gets pumped out. There is an exchange of Oxygen and CO2. The Left Ventricle is the strongest part of the heart. And Artery = Away. As in: arteries carry blood away from the heart. And there are a bunch of those suckers. We all know a few of them. Where do you check the pulse? In an adult it’s the Carotid artery; that pulsing one on the neck that sticks out dangerously when you are angry. In a baby you check the Brachial artery on the arm. You all know the Femoral artery. Why? Most likely because it’s in the “groinal region” and made everyone giggle when they were in junior high health class.

There are capillaries, and specialzed muscle tissues just for the heart and veins and little veins called venules and electrical impulses and and and and…

I’m not going to try to describe how the blood flows right now because it’s 7:30 in the morning and I’m still working on my coffee. I’ve drawn pictures of how blood moves from the body, through the heart and back out; I’ve written it all out; I’ve read that section three times… and it still confuses me.
Suffice it to say, I need some help with the heart.