desk and rips the Velcro cuff from her arm, which is now bright red. She accuses me of trying to kill her, to squeeze her to death like a python.
It is her turn. She squeezes the cuff in retribution, but I refuse to cry out in pain. “I can’t hear anything,” she says. “You have no pulse.” I tell her she has the ear part of the stethoscope backward, and that she has the bell part turned around backward as well. She adjusts everything. Now she hears my racing pulse. “Your blood pressure is high,” she says ominously. She tells me the number and I am surprised it isn’t higher.
I can hear my own heart slapping against my chest wall. “Please God,” I pray, “don’t let any of my arteries explode until after the national boards.”
The human head weighs between seventeen and twenty-two pounds. We are told this by Harry Downs, another paramedic, who shares the teaching load with Frank. Harry is very tall, talks in a commanding voice, and wears the uniform of a Norwalk Hospital paramedic. He has been doing this EMT job for a very long time, and amuses the class with stories from “the war zone.” He has come to deliver the lecture that he immodestly says is “the single most important thing we will ever learn in the class.” It is about the head and neck. He calls the brain’s nervous system the Big Kahuna. He tells us that without it, the body wouldn’t know to breathe, digest, regulate temperature, have a heart rate, or do anything else to sustain life. He gives us a dozen scenarios of hideous things we EMTs can do to screw up the head and neck. They all result in the same thing: irreversible paralysis, people who will end up unable to move from head to toe. One tiny movement of an injured person’s neck the wrong way and you have made a quadriplegic.
The handwriting in my notebook has become neat again as an homage to the seriousness of this subject. “Spinal cords don’t stretch,” I write in my best penmanship, almost calligraphic. We learn about whiplash (hyperflexion) and what happens when you dive into a swimming pool and hit your head on the bottom, jamming your neck (hyperextension). We learn about hangman’s injuries, the break in C1 and C2, the vertebrae that control the breathing nerves and the diaphragm’s rise. We learn the danger of dangling from playground jungle gyms, from sledding, from football, from wrestling, from skiing. The big seventeen- to twenty-two-pound head that sits atop your neck is just waiting to be smashed like one of Gallagher’s watermelons.
As if things could not be more dramatic we learn that men with spinal injuries develop a penile erection that will not deflate, a truly dire sign. I am obsessing about the permanent erection. Is this the silver lining to the dark cloud?
I am currently married to Xavier’s head. Xavier is a young Mexican-American man who works as a night security guard and wants to be an EMT. He is very big, very sweet, and very shy. I never see him talking to anyone. He looks constantly terrified. The only time I have seen Xavier happy is when he had to lift someone in class. He is immensely strong, and it was effortless.
Harry Downs is showing us how to avoid making someone a quadriplegic. At the accident scene we are to hold the victim’s head manually in a neutral position (that is, straight on) and then have another EMT apply a rigid cervical collar and transfer the person onto the long, rigid spine board. Once the patient is on the board, we secure the head with stiff foam blocks and straps or tape. The main thing is to never, ever, under any circumstances allow the head to move. One tiny shift might be all it takes to paralyze him.
“You are married to that person’s head until you get them in a cervical collar,” Harry barks.
My hands are buried in Xavier’s thick black hair. I smell the lush tropical floral oil he uses on it. “Xavier, I am proud to be married to your head,” I say to him. He blushes. I don’t have the
It is her turn. She squeezes the cuff in retribution, but I refuse to cry out in pain. “I can’t hear anything,” she says. “You have no pulse.” I tell her she has the ear part of the stethoscope backward, and that she has the bell part turned around backward as well. She adjusts everything. Now she hears my racing pulse. “Your blood pressure is high,” she says ominously. She tells me the number and I am surprised it isn’t higher.
I can hear my own heart slapping against my chest wall. “Please God,” I pray, “don’t let any of my arteries explode until after the national boards.”
The human head weighs between seventeen and twenty-two pounds. We are told this by Harry Downs, another paramedic, who shares the teaching load with Frank. Harry is very tall, talks in a commanding voice, and wears the uniform of a Norwalk Hospital paramedic. He has been doing this EMT job for a very long time, and amuses the class with stories from “the war zone.” He has come to deliver the lecture that he immodestly says is “the single most important thing we will ever learn in the class.” It is about the head and neck. He calls the brain’s nervous system the Big Kahuna. He tells us that without it, the body wouldn’t know to breathe, digest, regulate temperature, have a heart rate, or do anything else to sustain life. He gives us a dozen scenarios of hideous things we EMTs can do to screw up the head and neck. They all result in the same thing: irreversible paralysis, people who will end up unable to move from head to toe. One tiny movement of an injured person’s neck the wrong way and you have made a quadriplegic.
The handwriting in my notebook has become neat again as an homage to the seriousness of this subject. “Spinal cords don’t stretch,” I write in my best penmanship, almost calligraphic. We learn about whiplash (hyperflexion) and what happens when you dive into a swimming pool and hit your head on the bottom, jamming your neck (hyperextension). We learn about hangman’s injuries, the break in C1 and C2, the vertebrae that control the breathing nerves and the diaphragm’s rise. We learn the danger of dangling from playground jungle gyms, from sledding, from football, from wrestling, from skiing. The big seventeen- to twenty-two-pound head that sits atop your neck is just waiting to be smashed like one of Gallagher’s watermelons.
As if things could not be more dramatic we learn that men with spinal injuries develop a penile erection that will not deflate, a truly dire sign. I am obsessing about the permanent erection. Is this the silver lining to the dark cloud?
I am currently married to Xavier’s head. Xavier is a young Mexican-American man who works as a night security guard and wants to be an EMT. He is very big, very sweet, and very shy. I never see him talking to anyone. He looks constantly terrified. The only time I have seen Xavier happy is when he had to lift someone in class. He is immensely strong, and it was effortless.
Harry Downs is showing us how to avoid making someone a quadriplegic. At the accident scene we are to hold the victim’s head manually in a neutral position (that is, straight on) and then have another EMT apply a rigid cervical collar and transfer the person onto the long, rigid spine board. Once the patient is on the board, we secure the head with stiff foam blocks and straps or tape. The main thing is to never, ever, under any circumstances allow the head to move. One tiny shift might be all it takes to paralyze him.
“You are married to that person’s head until you get them in a cervical collar,” Harry barks.
My hands are buried in Xavier’s thick black hair. I smell the lush tropical floral oil he uses on it. “Xavier, I am proud to be married to your head,” I say to him. He blushes. I don’t have the
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