Tues/Wed

I missed the Tuesday Night Flyers running clinic last night. Tuesday night is our normal Fire Department training night and we had a Firefighters Association Meeting scheduled. Since I was the treasurer, I needed to be there. When I got to station 1 a couple of the guys were just coming back in from a medical call. They had run on a stroke victim, very over weight and in their late 40's. Daryl said he knew when he walked in that the man would be in the smallest room in the house and he was right. Daryl is also a Little Rock Firefighter and runs the downtown area so he deals with a lot of calls. It seems people always die in the smallest room in the house and thats exactly what happened here. The man was so big (est.300lbs) and the room so small, they had to drag him down the hallway to get him to where they could get him on a gurney. My first thoughts were that its a shame this guy couldn't have been a runner. Just a bad deal for people to die so young because they probably didn't take care of themselves.

Our Association held elections last night and I remained as treasurer. Our goal is to help raise funds to promote the health, welfare and safety of the firefighters. We try to spend our money on things that the FD Board of Directors will not buy. I also got tasked with updating the Chief's laptop so I worked on that last night while the other firefighter's did some training on search and rescue.

We have several things happening this weekend and next at the FD. This Saturday we have a crew performing an auto extrication demo at Community Fest in the North Pulaski community. Next weekend we will have a crew standing by at Sayles and Fortson Road for the Big Dam Bridge 100 Bike Ride which I am riding in. I am going to catch hell from the guys when they see me come through in bike shorts!! We also have a water shuttle/tanker class with Lonoke County next Saturday. I'll miss all of these because of running and biking but thats ok, I have put my time in.

This morning (Wed) I got to go and have my Fire Department physical done compliments of FEMA and the Federal Fire Grants. This was a head to toe very through exam including sight, hearing, blood, urine, EKG, x rays and more. Started at 7am and I was done by 8:30. I felt like I had been run through a gauntlet. They took three or 4 vials of blood and when they were pulling the last one off, I almost fainted. Weird huh. Probably since I couldn't eat since midnight plus I have always had a problem giving blood. The sight of it doesn't bother me, but it sure makes me light headed giving it. Doc said I was good, in fact my EKG was abnormal because my heart rate was so low. He said since I was an athelete it was great, otherwise he'd be wanting to put me on a pacemaker.