I just want to celebrate!

I'm not celebrating because it's Tuesday or that the wind is blowing (AGAIN) or that Lane and I started thinking about a garden. I'm celebrating because I have now completed 2 of my 3 EMT exams. WOO! This past Saturday I woke up before the sun and prepared myself for a long day of hands-on testing. Thinking I'd be slightly professional I decided to wear a red polo shirt. Another kid in my class wore red and said "it's a power color, so we'll rock this!" HA! This red shirt was a very very bad decision and you will find out why shortly. Our test was in Poky-tello and that's almost an hour a way so we left at 6:30. I wasn't driving but next thing I knew, we were there...it was 7:10...The schedule for the day was to rotate through six stations that would test our skills then at the end we would find out if we had passed. It's based on points but also there are critical fails. I'll never get to see how many points I earned. It's one of those super secret medical things. I believe there was 30 of us and so the rotations needed to stay on track. Only 7 of the 11 people in my class were there to test and the rest were from ISU. When testing you are not allowed to have your instructors be your prompters so we had it made because there were more ISU instructors there. When the test began I was number three on the list...and the race was on. Here are the stations that we were tested on
1. Air way management. Suction and inserting an oropharyngeal  airway device and using a bag valve mask
2. Putting together an oxygen tank that delivering oxygen via a nonrebreather mask
3. Supine spinal immobilization (that's lying on your back)
4. CPR/AED
5. Trauma- (my patient had a venus bleed on her cheek, a pneumothorax and a fractured femur)
5. Medical- (my patient was having a heart attack with a history of angina)
6. Joint immobilization

By the time I left my table and walked into the testing room, I had already started sweating. Epic failure with the red shirt. Pit stains all day long. Sigh...good thing it wasn't a fashion show. Before I even started my first station I could feel my pulse beating through my neck. Can you say nervous? Thankfully my fist two stations were the ones that I was most worried about. It was nice to get those out of the way. As the day progressed I became very tired and I still had my medical left. With that station you have to remember all the questions and how to administer drugs and what drug is appropriate. After that I waited to go into the room and get my results.

 "Congratulations, you've passed!"

WOOP! WOOP! I didn't fail any of the stations...not one...I still wish that I could have looked at my scores but that will remain a mystery.

Now I've signed up for my last test. It's a computer based competency test and it will complete my national license. I don't know when I'll take that, hopefully sooner than later I'm just waiting to be released by the state. This has been a long process but I've really enjoyed learning about emergency medicine. I look forward to using my skills.

Have a fantastic day!