Yes, it’s been months since I posted. I could make excuses about being busy with work, family, friends, and stuff like that. It’s all true, but the main reason is laziness. I’ve just not had the energy to sit down and post. There’s nothing wrong with my physically or emotionally, I’ve just been distracted. I’m trying to combat that by starting to blog again. I can’t promise that there will be a lot of EMS content, because I’m not sure I have a lot to add after almost ten years of being out of active EMS. I read a lot of charts and see a lot of what is wrong with EMS these days. Most of that I ..read more

For some reason, this seems more relevant than ever.   The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are cr ..read more

I’m writing this on September 10, so I don’t know what tomorrow will bring as we observe the Twentieth year since America was attacked by foreign terrorists intent on destroying our financial system as well as the seat of government and the headquarters of our military. The succeeded in bring down both high towers of the World Trade Center as well as several other buildings. They succeeded in attacking, but not destroying the Pentagon. Americans rose to the challenge and prevented the attack on the seat of government by crashing the plane they were on into the ground in Shanksville, Pennsylvan ..read more

It’s September, so that means it’s Prostate Cancer Awareness Month (PCAM). Lung cancer is non sexist, as it kills both sexes indiscriminately. Behind that for men, is Prostate Cancer. Behind lung cancer for women is breast cancer. For men, due to increased awareness, increased testing, and earlier treatment, the five year survival rate 99%. According to the Prostate Cancer Foundation  (PCF) 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with Prostate Cancer during their life times. The good news is that with early treatment most forms of PC can be successfully treated. Make sure you discuss Prostate Cancer ..read more

Albert Einstein is reputed to have said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” People quibble over whether or not he actually said that, and if it’s true. I don’t know if it’s the definition of insanity, but it sure is the definition of stupidity. I bring this up because we are now at the third, or is it fourth, round of useless attempts to control Covid-19. Now, we’re supposed to be afraid of the “Delta” variant which we are told is super easy to catch and super fatal. The first is based on assumptions since testing for variants of ..read more

On the weekend of August 14-15 the situation in Afghanistan and particularly Kabul was dire. The Taliban had taken over most of the country and more importantly captured the Presidential Palace and the American Embassy. The Afghan National Army had cut and run, leaving the Taliban to take over the former American stronghold of Bagram Air Force Base. People were frantically trying to get to Hamid Karzai International Airport, which is wholly unsuited for the evacuation of large numbers of people and is almost indefensible. The President and other officials told us that everything was in control ..read more

Alternate title is “The Insurrection That Wasn’t.” Even though the FBI arrested over 570 people who were at the January 6 Insurrection, they haven’t charged even one person with participating in an insurrection. Keep in mind that there were no guns carried by these so called insurrectionists. Keep in mind that with one exception everyone who died did so from medical conditions. The one exception was Ashli Babbitt. She was shot by a law enforcement officer from we don’t quite know which federal agency. Babbitt was unarmed when she climbed through a window that someone else broke. Essentially sh ..read more

NOTE: In the first version of this post I neglected to mention the true disgrace of this debacle. That is the lives sacrificed or changed forever by US Military personnel and others trying to put lipstick on the pig known as Afghanistan. Afghan official says troops surrender Bagram air base to Taliban; base is home to prison housing 5,000 inmates This will make it much harder, if not impossible, to evacuate military and civilian personnel from the country. Several thousand American and coalition civilian and military personnel are now in extreme danger of being killed or captured by the Taliba ..read more

A brief update to my previous post. This is Michael Osterholm PhD, MPH speaking on CNN. He’s one of the President Biden’s top advisors on Covid 19. He says the exact thing I said in my previous post. Only N95 masks can protect the wearer from the virus. Notice that he says that people in the midwest, where he is, can smell the smoke from the fires on the west coast. Smoke particles are larger than a virus, so if the smoke can get through, the virus can get through. Ignore the people who got their degrees from the Internet School of Medicine and believe a real scientist. Remember that Anthony ..read more

I laugh, derisively, at friends and relatives who try to lecture me on medical topics. I’m obviously not a doctor and never pretend to be. On the other hand, I spent a lot of time working with and learning from doctors. Those doctors included some men and women who were professors of medicine at a couple of pretty good medical schools. It was a fringe benefit that I took for granted and thought was the norm in EMS. Boy, was I wrong. What I learned was far above what most paramedics learn in school or afterwards when they are out in the real world. I point this out not to brag about how smart o ..read more