Birthday Weekend '07

Wow, what a way to celebrate your birthday! What is it that I did, you ask? Why, I wrote my EMT Provincial exam over the weekend!! Have I ever mentioned that the exam style for ACP (Alberta College of Paramedics) is one of the most stressful times ever! lol

Friday night. I drove up to Red Deer College to write my 200 multiple choice exam. Which I have to wait 4-6 weeks before I get to find out what my results are. I need 75% or 150 questions right to pass. I KNOW I didn't get 100% for sure. Now I'm just going to pray and hope that I got no less than 50 questions wrong!! lol

Sunday morning. I drove up to Red Deer at 5:30am to get there on time to do my practical exams! And waiting in a room for about 2-3 hours before you get to do your first scenario is HIGHLY stressful! But I aced my first scenario... the Medical scenario! It was a 250lb dude that is a Type I Diabetic that had less to eat then he usually does but also worked out twice as much that day. So, naturally, he was suffering from hypoglycemia. So... get the firefighters to lift this... huge dude into the ambulance, lol... and then give him some D50W which is a hyperglycemic. And watch him recover. While ofcourse, going through a primary and a secondary survey to make sure no other injury or illness might be occuring concurrently as the hypoglycemia. Simple!!

Then I got to sit in another room NOT KNOWING what my results from my first scenario was for about another hour or two before I got to do my second scenario. The Trauma scenario! Which, I did perfectly fine in but made ONE mistake. This patient was in a single car rollover at over 100km per hour and was thrown from the car to land 8 meters away from the vehicle. Open fracture to the top left portion of the head with ICP - Intracranial Pressure. I did everything required except one thing. My patient WOULD have survived... but it was not the BEST treatment possible, so FAIL!! arghh!! lol. I did not increase the assisted ventilation rate to 1 in 3 seconds from the 1 in 5 seconds I had him being bagged at. So, because I had him being ventilated at 12 breaths per minute instead of 20 breaths per minute, I failed. And there is only ONE case of ICP where you're supposed to hyperventilate the patient, and that was it, lol. DOH!!

So, I was given one chance to re-test and take another trauma scenario. If I pass the re-test, then good. If I don't pass the re-test, then I'd have to apply for another chance in February to take the exam all over again. So, ofcourse I'll take the re-test. And had to wait another 2 hours before that occurred. But I passed that one, even though I was so stressed out during that scenario that I needed to take two time outs to gather my thoughts. But this patient fell from his roof while cleaning the eave troughs and limped back into the house to sit in a chair. I blanked on how to move him out of the house and chair while maintaining spinal immobilization and ALMOST, ALMOST ruled out spinal immobilization!! Luckily, I used a time out and figured out a way to move him out as safely as possible. But man did I freak out about whether or not I passed or failed that one because of my blanking out during my scenario. I HONESTLY thought that I had screwed up and made a mistake... but I was ECSTATIC when they told me that I passed half-an-hour later of depressive thoughts of failure, lol!!

Anyways... yeah, so THANK GOD that I passed my practical exams! And I hope that passed my written, cause then I won't have to redo anything. AND then I can start job-hunting and see what type of opportunities are out there!!

Oh, and thanks to all those who came out to dinner after my exam for my birthday! Thanks for all those who got me presents! And Jacklyn for making such a nice birthday card! =)