FU@K.
!
Fuck today.
Seriously. What was such a good day got fucked up so quickly
Today I gave CPR to a guy for 30 minutes. Within five minutes of me stopping they put a blanket over him.
I really wanted to write but am really angry right now though. Pretty sure that I’m in stage 2 of grieving as I was super shocked/mellow/wow for the last few hours but have become incredibly pissed in the past half an hour. It’s just so fucked up. Dude driving lives, passenger dies, family watches from mini-an in front of the truck. Wife. Kids. Etc. Whole fucking family. There was at least seven of them in this minivan.
I’m going to stop writing now as four letter words are all that I can think about. Perhaps I’ll come back to this later…
K I’ve calmed down a bit. I just watched two episodes of the 2003 WSOP. They played baaaaaaaaad.
So here’s what happened yesterday and how it got me to where I am at right now. I woke up at noon and rode my bike up to the airport. My flight instructor Ron was running late with another student, so I ended up having a really good conversation with Mindi, the office manager there. She rides a bike too. It was quite amusing to me to listen to a girl complain about her boyfriend borrowing her motorcycle too much. LOL. Anyways, this chick is a bunch of fun, so I invited her to the lake today.
Begin flight school. On Thursday we went over pretty much everything and I flew for my first time once we were airborne (I also did some taxiing) and Rick Fuller sat in the back seat the whole time. Fun. Friday, Ron let me do everything, correcting any mistakes that I made. I mean everything. Pre-flight inside. Walking the plane. Checking the fuel, oil, etc. Starting the engine. I made my first radio call! “Boulder Traffic, Cessna two zero one tango hotel is at stars and stripes taxiing to the fuel pits, Boulder.” Yeah! “Clear Prop!” I fired the motor, and we taxied to the fuel pits. Engine runup, another radio call, and taxi to runway 15 via bravo and delta. Another radio call, Ron says “I’m coming on the controls… you ready??” We take-off. He talks me through the whole way, and about seven seconds after lifting off he says, “You have the airplane.” I learned during debrief that I had done the entire takeoff, and he was just on the controls making sure that I was doing it right! Wowowowowow… pretty cool. So, we flew around, I did well, and we progressed in the lessons faster than we should have. Stoked!
Ron lands, I chat more with Mindi about tomorrow, and she’s in… but they’re having an open house tomorrow at the airfield and isn’t available til three. K no prob.
I head down to the Bellagio that evening, have a great night, and eventually end up in Club Prive, the high limit blackjack room. There was a big crowd of us there, and enough people were gambling ridiculously high, so we were treated to all the free steaks, cigars, and cocktails we could ever want. Was pretty cool. I had a great talk with my manager, and then Bobo and I decided that we were going to go for a ride tomorrow rather than the lake due to winds.
Bobo rolls over to my house around 12:45pm today. We ride to Boulder City, have some bomb Mexican food, and then head to the open house at the airport. There I had a good chat with Tony and Ken more about investing in an airplane, and it’s looking like a real viable option with some really good tax situations under an LLC. I’m excited to learn about wtf all that means, but it sounds good so far.
Bobo and I also convince Mindi to join us on this ride. She rides a crotch rocket and the combined weight of the two of them is less than 300 pounds. Bobo and my machines are both almost 500 lbs plus a couple hundred with our fat asses. With the way the wind was blowing, Mindi felt much better riding on the back. Cool.
So, we head down to the 95 to the lake, up the lake, right on northshore drive, and ride for another 20 miles before we stop at Redstone. We hang out there for a while enjoying the sounds of silence, and after about ten minutes we continue our ride.
About ten minutes after that we come upon the scene of an accident. When I arrived there were six cars parked on the shoulder northbound, then there was an overturned truck, and about six cars beyond the truck. The scene was a fiasco. 15ish people standing around in shock, one man hanging out of the truck screaming for help, and another man lying face first on the ground outside of the vehicle underneath the bed of the truck. I asked if anybody was in charge, realized the severity of the clusterfuck, and said, “I have medical training, I am going to help.” As I approached the conscious man I noticed gasoline leaking out of the truck. Not good, mental note. Check the man’s vital’s really quick, he’s fine, but needs help stat. I talk to him briefly and encourage him to remain calm and to stop trying to get out of the vehicle. He was pinned in there really bad. It’s hard to describe the severity of the scene here. I go to the back where I find the other victim, and he is completely non responsive. I check for a pulse on his wrist: nothin. I check the carodid, nothing. I check for breathing, nothing. Fuck. I get some people to help me do a log roll, making sure that we keep his head and neck stable. Clear the airway, check for breathing… nothing… check again for a pulse, nothing… I start CPR. Time became a blur at this point. Once I start this, I know that I am not stopping until somebody with a uniform tells me to stop or he comes back. At some point a man named Rick who was an EMT-I (expired) and worked with Rescue 4 at Lake Mead joined, and he took over chest compressions while I continued Rescue Breathing. We did that for a long time. Eventually two park rangers showed up, and three of us worked on the critical victim while the other attended to the conscious victim. From there, more and more rescue personell showed up, and eventually I was relieved. They hooked him up to an AED, nothing worked, and within five minutes of them relieving me they draped a blanket over his entire body.
That image is never going to leave my mind.
I kind of slowly staggered backwards, eventually did a 180, and made it up the hill to where Bobo and Mindi were directing traffic. Aparrently while I was doing CPR Mindi called 911 and called Mercy Air directly at the airfield to get a medivac out. The two of them cleared and secured the scene. At some point in there I had made sure the battery was disconnected since I didnt’ want to be a chevrolet shishkabob. Mindi looked at me and said, “Are you okay?”
All I could do was shake my head. I was experiencing new emotions and had no idea what to do with them. All I knew was that they weren’t good. She eventually gave me a hug, and I lost it. I haven’t had a good cry like that in a long time. Mindi and I went down to the scene and cleared a landing site for the helicopter, returned to the top of the hill, and watched everything unfold. Just kind of in shock, trying to figure out now what. Aparrently the entire family was in the van right in front of them. As soon as I was relieved from the victim I tried to get that van to move and leave the scene. There were many kids in the van and I didn’t want them to see what I knew was about to happen. I turned around, and saw them drape the blanket over the body. I turned back around, and saw seven faces painted with sorrow that words cannot express. It was not until an hour later that I learned that those faces were the family of the deceased, and they watched it all happen.
My heart broke again, and still is right now. How sad. We had to hang out for a while, filing witness statements, and waiting for the CID to show up. That took a good two hours, and we finally were able to ride back in the gnarly wind.
Mindi and I went to the Half Shell and decompressed, I came back here, and puked on the page which became the start of this blog.
These emotions suck.
I’m excited for the $25k tomorrow.
Peace and good luck,
Devo
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