Bombs and Galveston

So, today I had my medic ride-along for my ER rotation. It is days like today that I tend to think that I DO in fact have a pretty interesting life. The steps of my day:

1. I head to the medic station (get lost of course), and meet up with the medics that I'll be with today. They are all awesome.

2. Instead of doing runs in the morning, we head down to a quarry where the bomb squad needs to do some training. They set up a huge bomb/explosive thing and attach it to a truck full of barrels. We are told to get 1000 feet back, because the "danger zone of impact" (or something equally foreboding) is calculated at 850 feet.

3. The bomb squad supervisor asks me if I want to blow up the truck. Of course I give an enthusiastic, "uh, yeah!" That's right, folks, I got to yell "fire in the hole!" and push that little red button that leads to the detonation of the bomb, and therefore, the truck. It was such a weird phenomenon--seeing the truck blow up, then hearing the kaboom and feeling the rush of air. Sweet. Yes, they are emailing me a picture.

4. Eat lunch with firefighters and medics.

5. Apparently I was working with the "busiest fire station in the nation," but since I'm such a white cloud, we had no runs until 5 pm (seriously, they said they were making history it was so light), when we visited a diabetic woman. Oh yeah, I forgot to add in there that we ate lots more, watched 2 movies, and took naps in the medic lounge.

6. Eat dinner with firefighters and medics.

7. Go on another call to visit an inmate (my favorite patient population) who has lupus. Interesting!

8. Oh yeah, I also forgot to mention that while we were signing the release forms for the bomb explosion and putting on our hard hats and souvenir safety glasses, I ran into one of the bomb squad members who happened to be the bag pipe player from our Anatomy Memorial Service 3 years ago. Random. Even more randomly, he happened to have the song "Galveston" on his phone, so we all jammed to it in our hard hats and glasses. Awesome.

9. As I was leaving today, the head-honcho Bomb Squad Supervisor gave me a souvenir Bomb Squad tshirt! I am ridiculously pumped about this. I'm sure I'll wear it and get a picture soon.

Wow, what a day. But it's a good thing that I don't work at the fire station, otherwise I'd be super fat. And speaking of that, I'd better go to the gym. :)