25 February, 2009. 8:10 PM.

So, I’ve started taking “Introduction to Clinical Assessment” with Vincent Storie. It’s a Communiversity class (a not for credit class taught by a student here) and Vince is a medic and a primary on BEMCo. I was ridiculously excited to take this class and then over break, found out that it was changed from Tuesdays to Wednesdays, so I have to show up 45 minutes late and do the whole Slosberg-Lown hike at 6:45 at night. It’s worth it, though.

So I book it out of Chamber Choir and go up to Lown, expecting to awkwardly walk into a classroom full of people, only to awkwardly walk into a classroom with three students and Vince. He’s going over checking circulation, and I’m pleased at how much I understand. Training as a lifeguard has its benefits. Then we went into scenarios. There are two EMTs in the class and one other non-EMT—I stood back on the first one, letting the others ask questions, mostly because I had no idea what to do. Vince had Steve (one of the EMTs) run the next one, and I realized that I do not know how to take a pulse at the wrist (because in lifeguard classes everyone was unconscious. A shortcoming in the program? Perhaps).

Vince had me run the next call, saying it was a possible stroke. I did my awkward introduction (Hi, I’m Mariah, I’m your EMT, what’s your name, what’s wrong?) and asked the first set of questions (when did this start, what were you doing, have you felt this before?). The other two who were working with me started to take over, but I remembered to ask Vince to smile—he had said a possible stroke, and I remembered from The Top Ten Questions You’re Better Off Not Asking not to ask someone to show you their teeth, but to ask them to smile. Afterwards, Vince was going over the call and what we should have done, etc, and he specifically said that asking him to smile was a good move. It was my little gold star for the day.

Afterwards, he told me that if I don’t understand anything, to ask. I said that I knew a decent amount from lifeguarding and also from Matt telling me things, and he laughed and said that EMTs love to talk about EMS. We somehow got on the topic of how I can no longer hear a microwave going off without thinking it’s a pager, and he agreed that it happened to him too.

Class ended up going until 7:30, which meant that I was there for a half hour more than I expected to, and also that I completely missed the evening Ash Wednesday Mass. Oh well, I went to the morning one, and ICA was totally worth missing Mass for.