Nicknames...

Over the past 10 years in this job, I have acquired many a nickname. A few to list, are Shorty, Short stuff, mini me, Skippy, Nitroglycerin, Lou, etc. Only a few have lasted the duration. One in particular, comes with quite the story to back it up, which will be this week's post. This nickname, is Wednesday....a few of you are already laughing (assuming a few actually read this) because you have already hear this classic tale of medical call follies.

    One late summer evening, while working at Sundance, I was sitting in my office. The safety office. Had only been an EMT for about 4 to 5 months. A call came out, for a hiker who had fallen while climbing Stewart Falls. I grabbed my car keys and headed up the road to where we jump on the trail to get to the falls the quickest. Once arriving, I grabbed my oxygen bag, and my medical bag and headed up the trail, or so I thought. After hiking in shoulder length stinging nettle for about 20 mins, I realized I must have taken the wrong trail, or no trail at all. Having never been to this are before this, I sort of panicked. I heard the water streaming down, and figured the path was by it. I got to a chain link fence, and climbed up and over it WITH the bags. By this time, I was exhausted, covered in mud, and my arms swoleen from stinging nettle. I decided, to drop my bags and find the trail. In the meantime, the entire Search and Rescue team, had made it to the patient, packaged the patient and were getting ready to descend down. I climbed and crawled through more foliage, and finally stumbled upon the trail. I looked up the trail, and saw the stretcher with the Search and Rescue, coming down, so I walked in front of them all the way down. I got to the bottom, where I met up with them, the ambulance, and my boss, Kenny. After shooting the breeze for a bit, where I kept my head down from embarassment, I admitted I had dropped the bags to find the trail. We then set out to find the bags. Back through the mud and stinging nettle. It was getting dark. Luckily, we found them and I though my ordeal was now over. I wanted to crawl into a hole. We made it down, and by my office my boss said, "Let's go in and get you some dinner," I said, "ok" and started walking towards the kitchen. He said "wait a minute, put this on," handing me his fire brush jacket. I declined, saying I was fine, and wasn't cold, my arms were just red, swollen, and bumpy from being stung. He insisted, I declined. He insisted, I declined, then, his face went bright red. So I asked, "what!?" to which, his response was..."you have a giant HOLE in the back of your pants," to which, my top half turned to catch a view. Now normally, oh ha ha, a bit embarrassing, but whatever. But this day, I had chosen to wear, school bus yellow day-of-the-week underwear, with the word WEDNESDAY across the back. My friend Chris, had bought them for me as a joke on a trip to New York, and I just showed them to all rescuers on the scene, the patient, my boss, and all the creatures on the mountain. Ever heard of wearing clean underwear in case you get in an accident? Well, never wear bright yellow Wednesday under things either, even if you are the rescuer in the scenario...