Tac Med - make this into a short story?

[wtr100]

Running wouldn’t be so bad if it was just running. It was the always carrying something while running. Well the carrying while running with boots and long pants on. No it was more the carrying while running with boots and long pants on and a Vietnam surplus flak jacket. Actually it was the carrying while running with boots and long pants on , wearing a Vietnam surplus flak jacket and a steel pot helmet. The old flak jacket and steel pot were veterans of many other users and didn’t just stink, they stank! They were passed out a week before course and victims well students tried all manner of ways to clean the stank. It didn’t work, maybe a little but just a little.



At least they didn’t run us far sometimes as little as 100 yards, usually 200 to 400 yards and occasionally up to 800 yards. However they us ran over and over and over for what seemed forever but in real life was 45 minutes. Tactical Medic selection a joyous long , unpaid weekend. Everyone was at least an Emergency Medical Technician – Basic, but most were at least Emergency Medical Technician – Intermediate with a few Paramedics and even a registered nurse thrown in.



--- days or was it just hours earlier ....



Selection was Friday through Monday. Friday meant 12:01 am, a pair of candidates racing toward the building at 12:04 were sent home. At 12:10 am a 25 question multiple choice test was given, right on the gym floor. At 12:30 am the PT test started a one mile run in boots, long pants, long shirt, flak jacket and steel pot. The run wasn’t that challenging with a 10 minute time limit. Before the next event two candidates were removed for failing the written test.



The next test was pull-ups, again it wasn’t overly challenging. The standard was three good pullups wearing boots, long pants, long shirt, flak jacket and steel pot. Everyone passed.



The final test of the night was pushups while the standard was twenty, in the now customary wearing boots, long pants, long shirt, flak jacket and steel pot, candidates were encouraged to do at least twenty two in the www.22kill.com/22-honor-pushups/. Again everyone passed.



At shortly after 1:15 am they assembled in the gym of the unused high school. The program director addressed them. “I am Dr. John Henry Holliday." A few chuckles from the class. "While I am technically Dr. John Henry Holliday MD, FACEP and Professor of Emergency Medicine most people do call me Doc. Most of you know I'm also a sworn police officer and member of several SWAT teams including the city, county and State Police. I have a cadre that will be helping us throughout the course. The course will include didactic lecture, practical exercise , physical training and written tests. If you're still with us say 1900 on Monday you will be probationary members of the Tactical EMS unit. Once you complete the qualifications in the probationary stage, usually six to nine months though some do it in a few as six weeks, you will move to the apprentice phase and go on actual call outs with SWAT."



"On those tables", he motioned to the end of the gym, "are GI foam sleeping pads and poncho liners, they make a very comfortable bed." Laughs. "Ok they make a somewhat marginal bed. The other table is your food for the day, a First Strike Ration, 2,900 calories of delicious. You get one per day. Bone appatitie. There are locker rooms at either end of the gym. One is a ladies locker room the other is the men's. Use the one that best matches your anatomy. If you're unsure we're all medical professionals here consult with your colleagues. If you still can't come to a consensus let me know, I have to see that! Until told otherwise the only rooms you go into are the gym and the locker room that matches your physiology. At 0600 tomorrow you will be formed up military style in front of the gym, three squads. Lights out in 15 minutes. Welcome and good luck."



Five minutes later I had a poncho liner, foam pad and a MENU 3 Ration featuring a Honey BBQ Beef Pocket Sandwich. I found some real estate in the middle of the floor and made 'camp' such as it was. I thought about breaking into the ration pack when the lights went out. It was 1:35 am , I set my watch to 5:00 and tried to sleep ....

[wtr100]

Day - 1

We formed up into three squads, two with twelve and one of thirteen. At exactly 0600 Dr. John Henry Holliday MD, FACEP and his cadre came out a side door. They marched in step to the front. They had on navy blue EMS/BDU pants, and very cool navy blue fleece jackets with a distinctive chest patch and huge back logo. The logo was a red six point EMS Star Of Life with a snake wrapped around a sword on the center bar.

They stopped in front of the class and performed a passable left face. 'Doc' Holliday broke away and addressed the class. "In a moment we will render honors to the flag. When I give the command 'Hand Salute' military veterans will render the hand salute as authorized by the Defense Authorization Act of 2009. Everyone else will place your right hand on your heart leaving your helmet on." With that the cadre did an about face toward the flag pole. Two young men with a flag made their way to the pole. We'd soon find out they were Boy Scout EMS Explorers.

Flag raised, Doc addressed the class again. "At ease, stay in line but everyone grab a piece of ground. A few things. This is a new concept. Traditionally medics stage away from the scene and remain there until the scene is secure. In this concept teams of three to five specially trained medics will enter the scene to stabilize and evacuate patients while the event is occurring. Best case scenario will be a team of five. Two bearers who carry the patient, a front security man armed with a carbine, a rear security man armed with a carbine and an access man armed with a handgun. More on this in didactic lecture later.

A little about the training. There are no planed meal breaks, there are actually no planned breaks at all until the end of training day. This means eat when you can, hydrate when you can and relieve yourself when you can. Training is broken up into modules. The modules are outcome based, that is you stay until you meet standards. We will use a Crawl, Walk , Run approach. Today is Crawl, and some of you will be crawling by tonight, Saturday and Sunday are Walk and Monday is Run."

Doc motioned to some roughly human shaped mannequins. " These are your transport patients. You WILL AT ALL TIMES treat them as if they were alive. There will be 'remedial training' should you ever not treat them as living patients. As people have names so do your transport patients. Annie is a female child of about 9 years, weighing about 70 lbs, Bubba is a 30 year old male, 6' 4" in height weighing over 280 lbs. Most of these patients weigh on the order of 180 pounds. You, well your squad, will take at least two patients everywhere you go.

There are contests in this course and it pays to be a winner. We have fabulous prizes for winners. We have 'remediation' for losers.

To kick things off we're going to start with a very basic method of transporting patients and some team work. We have scouts, excuse me EXPLORERS, with the Boy Scouts 151st Emergency Medical Explorer Post. They are going to demonstrate making a mountain litter with nothing more than a length of rope and one simple knot. Each group will get two written sets of instruction as well. You get a little time to organize and practice. Then it's a race, each team makes two litters you carry your patients across the parking lot down to the football field, around the track and back here. Oh and we're setting out only six patients, two of them are the 75 lb Annies, the rest are Bubba's you do the math. The winners get a box of Crispy Cream doughnuts, the losers well they ... "

The Explorers did a demonstration in front of the whole group. First two of them demonstrated how quickly it could be done. It was obviously something they did a lot. They moved with grace, coordination and blinding speed. They literally had the rope ladder , net looking thing together in less than a minute. Next they demonstrated to the whole group step by step finally breaking off into small groups to give individual instruction. I was feeling rather full of my self being a Star Scout in the illustrious Troop 52. I knew the trick to tying the clove hitch. Yay me!

We were way ahead of the other teams getting our litters assembled. Feeling full of ourselves we grabbed the massive Bubba dummies. It almost bit us in the ass. We charged across the parking lot. The next team to finish their litters was made of speed demons or something. They ate up the gap in no time and would have passed us had one of their litters not come apart.

We hooted and hollered like fools. Paramedic Instructor King , soon to be known as Kong , help up a hand. 'It pays to be a winner', he handed us a box of doughnuts. "However don't be cute, since you like Bubbas so much you can carry them some more." In fact the rest of the day we hauled exclusively bubbas.

The day was a blur. Much of it was spent moving 'patients'. I never knew there were so many ways to move patients. Stokes litters, skeds , old style army stretchers. There was a little medicine thrown in and even a little tactical work but it was obvious today was 'moving day'. True to Doc Holliday's words there were no breaks we had a few minutes here and there. We ate where we could. My Honey BBQ Beef Pocket Sandwich was actually quite tasty. Zapple sauce, a sort of apple sauce meets power gel was pretty good. In odd moments there was a fair amount of horse trading meal components.

At 10:00 pm the lined us up for one last stretcher race. This time it was with a Sked and there were three patients per team. The instructors said each team would get a momma bear , baby bear and a poppa bear. Each team except my squad, we'd get three bubba bears. The prize was incredible - towels to shower with. We put up a valiant fight but those 275 lb bubbas were damn heavy.

Everyone slunk back into the gym. I took a shower and dripped dry and headed back to my sleeping mat. I had saved a packet of chocolate pudding from my ration and sucked it down just before lights out. Mistake! The First Strike Ration was designed by the military for use during the initial phase of a operation. To keep soldiers alert several items were heavily caffeinated, for example the chocolate pudding. Unknown to me that pudding had over two strong cups of coffee worth of caffeine in it. The guy next to me pointed that out right after I'd sucked the last of the pudding down. Thanks pal, big help.

It was a fitful night between the snoring and coughing and farting and general noise in the gym on top of being caffeine buzzed. Around 4:30 I heard noise and there seemed to be people moving towards a foyer area. I got up and limped over. One of the cadre had a table set up and was passing out ration packs. I got a Menu 7 that included delicacies like hot and spicy tuna and a blueberry turnover. The blueberry turnover was excellent, like an extra thick and filling pop tart.

Day - 2

After morning colors there was yet another race. We were allowed normal patients this time, we had them secured in Stokes Litters and across the finish line way ahead of the next squad. Our prize? A vacuum pot full of Knife Hand Coffee, steaming hot and blacker than Paramedic Instructor Kong's soul. Along with a hand full of half and half creamers and sugar packets. Some think the instructors have no sense of humor. This is false. Case in point, to go with our extravagant prize of coffee they provided our 12 man squad with 5 cups. Hysterical.

The days training alternated between guns and medicine. The cadre used full size airsoft analogs and real firearms fitted with simunition kits. They stated with the four rules of safe weapons handling

All weapons are always loaded.
Never point the weapon at anything you are not willing to destroy.
Keep your finger off the trigger until you have made the decision to shoot.
Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.

The cadre did a group presentation with air soft SIG P226 pistol replicas. To demonstrate the seriousness of these an instructor shot a grape, roughly an eyeball, with a 6 mm plastic pellet. The grape burst open impressively. We were issued pistol belts with holsters and magazine pouches along with a 'pistol' and three magazines. We'd keep these with us at all times until gear turn in on Monday.

Now in addition to running with a patient , flak vest and steel pot we'd get to haul pistols. Fun. What we didn't realize as we 'qualified' with other weapons like carbines and shotguns the squad would get some of those to carry as well.

The basement of the school had once been a large cafeteria, was not converted into a pair of simmuntion ranges. This was by far the coolest training we did, Simmuntions were real firearms fitted with conversion kits so they could fire special simulation ammunition. They had pump shotguns, M4 carbines and even MP5 sub-machine guns. The chalk like projectiles shattered into dust on the thick plywood back stops.

Went station to learning some medicine, weapon handling and tactical movement. Heads Up! Guns up! How does a team of five get through a door for example. How does a team do security as others stabilize a patient for transport? We had some interesting group lectures where all three squads would come together. Paramedics lectured on medical topics while SWAT officers lectured on police and tactical stuff.

They threw a new torture on us, the Crow's Nest. It sat behind the bleachers in the football field and was reached via four flights of narrow stairs. Steep and narrow stairs and did I mention there are four flights of them. They suck. Our last run up the Crow's Nest was our squad of 12 with three patients in Res-Q litters along with two rubber MP5 submachine guns, two rubber shotguns and two airsoft M4 replicas. The only good thing about it was no monster Bubba patients. At the top a couple high angle rescue qualified firemen showed us how to rig ropes and lower the patients that way.

Towards the end of the day we hit a annoying string of second place finishes in races. I almost cried when we lost out on a bag of chicken and steak burritos from Taco Bell. But the last race was to die for. Folding army cots. After two nights on the floor those army cots looked sweet. We flew and beat the other teams by just a hair. So close they cadre decided with should do an extra stretch lap with the losers to show unity.

As I stretched out on the relative luxury of the cot I managed to trade a wheat snack break and pack of potatoe, cheese, bacon spread for a chocolate protein drink after carefully inspecting to see that the drink wasn't caffeinated.

Tomorrow was a brief church service at 0600 and a relatively late start at 0700. Sunday was medical days, for some reason instructors referred to as Little Shop of Horrors. How bad could it be right? I was about to drift off to sleep when a bellowing commotion rose up.

"What are those weapons doing on the deck Medic!?!" Ten minutes and much bellowing later we were dressed and outside doing wind sprints with bubbas in stretchers. Seems some people were taking pistol belts off and putting them on the floor and thus we needed attitude adjustments. It seemed to go on forever but was really just 30 minutes. I really wished I handn't finished that protein shake, of course it could be argued a belly full of potatoe, cheese, bacon spread on wheat snack bread would have sucked too.

Back inside I thought about joining the herd for another shower but decided to skip it, I'd rest up for ' Little Shop of Horrors'.