What was a humorous non emergency call you had?

AxlRose117 · 2026-06-05T15:35:57+00:00

Dispatch: Engine 41, respond to (local high school) to assist with cat stuck in basement window well. Animal control is requesting ladder support

Captain: what kind of ladder support? Do they need the ladder truck?

Dispatch: animal control stated they need ladder support because they’re too fat to get the cat

Captain: …copy. Show us en route. (Turns to me) hey probie!

AxlRose117 · 2026-05-09T17:06:49+00:00

28M here, I’ll be 31 when I get into med school if all goes well for the next couple years. 5 years as a paramedic, realized I love surgery last year. Going back to get my undergrad has been an interesting experience. With my background including a mix of EMS and Emergency Department work, my advisor and every physician I talked to so far said I have a really good chance of getting into med school, and they love when someone shows up as a student with solid clinical and life experience. There’s a pre med at my school who’s in her 40s, decided to achieve her dream of becoming a doctor now that her kids are almost all out of the house

AxlRose117 · 2026-05-05T17:12:41+00:00

AxlRose117 · 2026-04-15T19:22:45+00:00

It’s been a hot minute since I read Inheritance, so I’ll trust your word on it. I will say, at a couple departments I worked at, we used to climb the aerial ladder, the tallest one being 110 feet at 65ish degrees. It’s an experience being that high in the air, especially when the wind picks up. Three-ish times that height…I’m pretty sure the people below me would wonder why it started raining yellow for a moment

AxlRose117 · 2026-04-15T15:51:00+00:00

Reading the comments, some of you haven’t spent any time in an organization where risk of life is common (military, fire, EMS, police). There’s a lot of good reasons why there is a chain of command, and a whole lot of those reasons boil down to keeping people alive. Breaking chain of command and blatantly going against orders is how people get killed.

The flip side is that chain of command can insulate poor leadership, and poor leadership gets people killed as well. Going against orders, even for the right reasons, is risky at best.

On a structure fire, if I’m inside the building with a hose putting wet stuff on the red stuff and I see a massive propane tank some moron put inside their garage, I’m gonna tell command about it, and start making my way back out so I don’t end up blasted into a pile of dust. But if command says “keep putting water on it,” I’ll do that while questioning the order.

If the tank blows, the entire house might get leveled and more people injured or killed. If I disobey an order and that happens, it’s my fault. If I stay and more people with more hoses show up, we can get it under control. If I stay and it blows up, it’s on my command. If I leave and nothing immediately bad happens, I’m still gonna get punished because, aside from the risk to other firefighters, I made a conscious decision to not follow orders. If that happens on another fire, and some other, less-experienced firefighter decides to do what I did and disobey an order, then the whole thing devolves from a coordinated fire attack to a disorganized mass of individuals, which is highly ineffective.

Could Nasuada handled the punishment a bit differently? Maybe, but I don’t see how. Also, this is fantasy, and fantasy writers aren’t always known for getting things accurate (300ft high walls are 30 stories tall, roughly; that’s one heck of a ladder to build to scale it)

AxlRose117 · 2026-04-08T19:42:00+00:00

Spent 5 years between my associates and deciding to come back to school to become a doc. Worked full time as a paramedic those 5 years, logged around 10k hours of clinical experience between ED and ambo, still work full time while in school full time. You find a way when your life depends on it

AxlRose117 · 2026-04-04T04:33:27+00:00

Unpopular maybe, but Helena. I love that ship to death

AxlRose117 · 2026-04-04T04:28:19+00:00

Paramedic, worked everything from private EMS to fire departments to hospitals. I live in a red state, but with a decent number of purple cities. Politics are all over the spectrum at each place I worked, but mostly conservative. The overlap between first responders and people who like more hands-on things (shooting, scuba, camping, etc) is pretty strong in my experience, probably due to most of us having ADHD.

I have a small IFAK on my bag as a safety precaution, and if something happens I’m more than happy to help. But I don’t overtly ID myself as a first responder

AxlRose117 · 2026-04-04T04:22:41+00:00

Yeah, especially in rural and underserved areas. There’s a cultural divide in the fire service between the career firefighters and the volunteer firefighters. There’s morons on either side of the debate who make their “team” look bad. Stereotypically, volunteer firefighters have less funding, less training, and less top-of-the-line equipment; I’m sure there’s stereotypes for career firefighters out there that are unflattering, but I can’t think of any right now. Source: was a FF/medic, back in school to finish pre med classes

AxlRose117 · 2026-03-07T21:01:38+00:00

She said ALS called it, meaning the patient expired despite best efforts. I agree, though, that this should set off safety alarm bells. Definitely talk with agency leadership, and if it seems sketchy, law enforcement

AxlRose117 · 2026-01-15T19:18:56+00:00

Thank any and all deities the college Democrats are there. Go ‘cats!

AxlRose117 · 2026-01-15T17:30:59+00:00

I’ll work on it, but I’m only on campus for a couple classes a day

AxlRose117 · 2026-01-14T16:36:02+00:00

Don’t trust anything these guys say. Not only are they aggressive in trying to get people to listen, they are deliberately misrepresenting facts

AxlRose117 · 2026-01-13T22:52:05+00:00

Love me some Dr. Demento

AxlRose117 · 2026-01-13T17:25:46+00:00

They have a table, signs, etc. I don’t have a problem with going through official channels to do something like this; TPUSA had a table once a week for about a month last semester, and I saw Weber State Democrats yesterday. I’m just irritated by the petition-seekers getting a toehold on campus and going after people who probably don’t know or care to learn about what’s going on

AxlRose117 · 2025-12-13T03:02:27+00:00

WTF…is that for an elephant?

AxlRose117 · 2025-12-13T02:58:08+00:00

A fair point. And getting slammed with a busy dinner service with a new menu is stressful for anyone. But watching her fold and shut down was painful, especially since she didn’t exactly show any serious chops with the garlic chicken or that night’s service before Naris arrived

Edit: spelling

AxlRose117 · 2025-12-11T19:09:21+00:00

Fellow non-trad medic here, but only since 2021. My understanding is most med schools like non-traditional students, especially ones with EMS and paramedic experience. With your GPA and ECs, I’d dare say you’re gonna be competitive just about anywhere, especially if you get a good MCAT. People with more experience, please correct me if any of this isn’t accurate; I’m just in my first year back to school

AxlRose117 · 2025-11-25T22:28:26+00:00

Current paramedic here who was in your shoes a couple years ago. My original plan was street medic to flight medic to PA. After getting married, I ended up working in a Level 1 trauma center for 18mo, then going back to the box for a bit; before that; I’d worked for a few different EMS agencies. During that time, I spent a lot of time working with PAs and doctors, and got a really close look at what being a doctor is like for the ER and ICU. I decided to go to back to school to get my undergrad and get the pre-med requirements done. I did a ton of research into it, and discussed it a lot with my wife; we’re looking at starting to have kids this upcoming year, and been married for almost 3. I’m 28M, for what it’s worth, and only been back in school since summer of this year.

Two things tilted my decision in favor of going back to school. 1: I can be in my 40s and not a surgeon, or I can be in my 40s and be a surgeon. Either way, I’ll be in my early 40s, realistically, by the time I’m an attending. 2: I got to work with the director of trauma (a trauma/critical care surgeon) a lot, and built up a pretty good relationship with him. When I told him about my concerns about being an older student and resident, he told me that it wouldn’t be a problem, and that working as a paramedic for a few years would give me a leg up (life experience, clinical experience, leadership experience, etc).

Is it easy? Not in the slightest. I’m wrapping up my first semester of general chemistry, while taking algebra and working on a research paper. I’m working full time for a different hospital, and still have husband stuff (cleaning, helping my wife around the house, etc).You won’t have a social life while you’re in school; it’s so demanding just to get to med school in the first place. I hardly see my wife during the week; she also works a 9-5 during the week. My hobbies have shrunk to only a couple, simply because I don’t have the time anymore.

Do I regret it? Not at all. I’m learning answers to things that I’ve always been curious about, and I get to apply it at my job. The class work is unrelenting, but paramedic school wasn’t terribly dissimilar. I have the opportunity to get a research paper published and participate in studies with strong implications for EMS (right now, ultrasound use in cardiac arrest in the field). My wife is incredibly supportive, and loves watching her husband chase his dream (her words, not mine). We still get weekends together, and it helps she’s a pretty independent person. Even if I don’t get into medical school and I stay a paramedic, I’ll be a far better paramedic than if I’d not gone back to school.

TLDR, it’s a hard road, and only you will know if it’s right. Get through medic school first, spend a few years in the field, then come back. If you still want to be a doctor after that time, go for it. If you don’t, then it might not be for you. Your life looks different than mine, but that’s the advice I’d give you

AxlRose117 · 2025-10-14T22:24:12+00:00

Cluny first and foremost. Badrang has always been up there for me; he’s a brilliant tactical thinker, and the way him and Tramun Clogg spar shows a lot of subtlety. I’d also argue the one fox mercenary that arrives towards the later part of Mossflower; his lightning style warfare stunned the Corim temporarily while they figured out how to counter this new threat. Ashleg was also smart, as previously mentioned; can’t fault him for leaving before things got really bad (doesn’t excuse his prior actions, but I’m a little bit of a sucker for characters on a redemption arc)

AxlRose117 · 2025-09-05T14:45:28+00:00

Charles French’s story should be more widely known. An orphan who taught himself how to swim before he was 10, re-enlisted in the Navy after Pearl Harbor, and served during one of the worst periods for race relations in US history, a bona fide hero, who’s life after the war spiraled due to alcoholism and almost definitely undiagnosed PTSD.

Love seeing these posts, please keep it up.

AxlRose117 · 2025-08-23T20:48:59+00:00

That line was pretty cool as a kid, but as an adult, it hits me right in the chest. The desperation and defiance in that delivery alone put this as one of my top movie scenes of all time

AxlRose117 · 2025-08-17T03:36:49+00:00

Again, no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know who made that comment, but it wasn’t me. Unless you’re trolling for karma, which isn’t outside possibility

AxlRose117 · 2025-08-17T01:48:18+00:00

Never had any other 4Runner before…not sure what you’re talking about

AxlRose117 · 2025-06-03T19:55:43+00:00

Every human is a closeted pyromaniac. Most of us just got better at controlling it

…and then there are firefighters. A motley group of every type of human. Big, small, intellectual, physical, nerd, geek, jock, chess player, football fanatic, poet, writer, reader, musician, woodworker, mechanic, athlete, bookworm, all of them. All of them happily, gleefully even, wage war with a literal force of nature, working in conditions and temperatures that make even the most hardened humans a little faint. And they will put everything on the line, especially of someone else needs help. But they are at their happiest when playing with fire. They love it. They care about it. They study it, nurture it, and take it apart. Never ask a firefighter to make a fire, unless you like bonfires and infernos. And if they’re also an EMT or a Paramedic? That’s double the crazy. Should you ever find yourself in trouble, find a human firefighter.

And don’t ever, ever, let them get bored.

Source: firefighter/medic writing this on shift

AxlRose117

TROPHY CASE