EFMB Fail

The Army has enough “what in the heck?” moments on an ongoing basis that there’s a whole website dedicated to them, aptly named “Army WTF Moments“. There’s also an accompanying Facebook page and Twitter account. Let’s just say that between the things I’ve personally observed and the things I’ve gotten second-hand via those sites and the stories of friends, there’s very little that surprises me any more when it comes to soldiers doing dumb stuff. And then along comes a story like this one, reported by the Reuters -

Forty-three soldiers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina were evaluated for heat-related illness on Friday after taking part in a 12-mile march, a base spokeswoman said. Thirteen of the soldiers were admitted to Womack Army Medical Center, including one who was admitted to the intensive care unit, said Fort Bragg spokeswoman Jackie Thomas.

(…)

The injured soldiers were among 56 service members vying to earn an Expert Field Medical Badge, a competition that began September 18 and includes a grueling series of hands-on tests. The march represented the culmination of the competition. The temperature at the time of the test this morning was about 72 degrees Fahrenheit but officials said the soldiers were carrying heavy packs.

Let me first point out the obvious math – when 43 out of 56 soldiers have to be treated for heat-related injuries, that means just about 77% of soldiers became heat casualties. That’s an awfully big casualty statistic. There were probably instances in World War I where units took fewer casualties, percent-wise, walking into German machine gun fire. Of those 43 soldiers, 13 were admitted to the hospital – that’s 23%. Almost a quarter of all soldiers on this road march.

The thing that really, really bothers me about this are not the ridiculously high numbers of heat casualties, but the fact that these soldiers were setting out to complete earning their Expert Field Medical Badges. Testing for the EFMB is limited only to US Army medical personnel. Let me repeat this – medical personnel. MEDICAL. Let me spell it out … M E D I C A L. You know, those people who are trained to recognize and treat illness and injury in soldiers. Like, oh, say, heat exhaustion, for example. Or heat cramps. Or heat stroke.

I don’t think there is any excuse whatsoever for medics competing for their Expert Field Medical Badge to suffer this amount of casualties due to heat exhaustion, or heat stroke, or any other heat-related issue. They should probably recognize the symptoms as they come across them … if not in themselves, then in the guy next to them, and take appropriate action.

As far as I’m concerned, I think the entire class should fail and not be awarded their EFMBs. I don’t care how well they took on their tests. I don’t care how well they did at any other portions of the test. I do care that these medics fell out like flies. This indicates to me that they either don’t recognize the symptoms of heat-related illness in others, or don’t give a rat’s ass, or don’t have any common sense.

Look, I get it … the EFMB is tough to earn and everyone wants to earn it. Especially under the current climate where we’re facing cuts of thousands from the Army, either because it’s become more difficult to get promoted before hitting your retention control point, or because they’re plain looking for reasons to kick people out, whether it’s via quality review boards or chapters, so every accomplishment helps. But I wouldn’t want a medic next to me who’d let his fellow medics fall out left and right to earn a badge.

 

EMT Playlist

Because I’m a big fan of lists, I made myself an EMT playlist that contains vaguely medical-related songs. It’s alphabetical, even … through the power of Excel.  If anyone has any suggestions that might fit into this list, please feel free to suggest away.

Bad Religion – Anesthesia
Bad Religion – Sanity
Beatles – Help
Ben Folds Five – Hospital Song
Buckcherry – Rescue Me
Donots – Good-bye Routine
Donots – Room with a View
Evanescence – Bring me to Life
Flogging Molly – The Worst Day Since Yesterday
Foreigner – Urgent
Fray – How to save a Life
Green Day – Restless Heart Syndrome
Gregory Isaacs – Night Nurse
Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around
Kill Hannah – Lips like Morphine
Kill Hannah – Mouth to Mouth
Massive Attack – Teardrop
Matchbox 20 – Disease
MEST – Cursed
MEST – Take me Away
Ohrbooten – Keine Panik
Paramore – Emergency
Pink Floyd – Goodbye Cruel World
Pink Floyd – Keep Talking
Placebo – Haemoglobin
Placebo – Special K
Prodigy – Take me to the Hospital
Rolling Stones – Ventilator Blues
Scissors Sisters – Comfortably Numb
Sequoya Rain – The Angel
Shock Stars – EMT
SixxA.M. – Life is Beautiful
These Green Eyes – Paramedic
Three Days Grace – Pain
Thrice – The Artist in the Ambulance
Van Morrison – T.B. Sheets
Voivod – Ravenous Medicine
White Stripes – St. James Infirmary Blues

Health and Welfare

Have you ever had one of those moments where you thought to yourself, “Self, I need to blog about this right now because it’s incredibly important and relevant, and I need to rant about it, but if I don’t do it right now I probably won’t remember it later!” You have? Me, too. That’s why I’m here, blogging now … except that, in the time it took me to open the WordPress “Add New Post” page, I forgot what I was going to blog about. So, I’ll give you a completely random entry instead.

While sitting in line at McDonald’s drive through this afternoon to pick up lunch for the hubby and I, I noticed something peculiar on the drive-through menu. There’s a little corner on the bottom right where all their salads are listed. (The bottom right corner is an apt place for said menu since most people who do eat food from McDonald’s certainly are not there for any salad.) The font for all of the menu items is white … except for the Asian salad. The Asian salad font is yellow. And while probably unintentional, you do have to wonder just a little bit if that isn’t racist toward Asians.

The reason I was at McDonald’s is because I had been just down the road from McDonald’s at my doctor’s office. Since we moved from Gouverneur to Carthage, I’ve had to change my TRICARE Prime primary care manager. Which is a good thing, believe me, because I’d been considering changing primary care managers anyway.

My previous PCM, Dr. H, was not exactly high up on the list of favorite people on the face of the planet. I don’t know whether that was largely due to the language barrier – Dr. H being of Middle Eastern origin and perhaps not quite as good at speaking English as a doctor practicing in the United States with English-speaking patients ought to be – or whether his manner just rubbed me the wrong way. I consistently got the impression that he was talking down to me and did not really care to address any concerns I may have. That, and the fact that he was forever going on about my weight. His initial “diagnosis” was one of obesity … considering I’m 5’6″ and was less than 200lbs, well…

At any rate, I am glad to have a new doctor now and I am really liking the new practice. It’s a much bigger practice and it offers a lot more services right there than my previous doctor’s office did. At the previous office, I had to go to the hospital on the other side of the parking lot to give blood or urine samples. At this one, they do it right there. The last one would give me a written prescription and send me on my way. This one faxes it to my pharmacy. And the staff at this one are very nice. As is the doctor. Actually, this doctor told me that as long as I exercise regularly and try to eat healthy, I shouldn’t obsess about the number on the scale.

Anyway, I’d gone to an initial visit at my new PCM’s office about a month ago, at which point they took some blood and some urine to see where I was at, health-wise, and where I was at with the thyroid medication my previous doctor started me on. (My thyroid had been under-active – hypothyroid, in medical terminology – which may have been one of the reasons why I wasn’t losing any weight no matter what I did.) And this visit was a check-up to see how I was doing. I’m happy to report that all of my systems are running normally. I’m producing happy blood, apparently, with happy blood cells of the right size and consistency. My kidneys are functioning happily, as is my liver. My blood sugars are normal, as is my thyroid (with the medication). I am, in other words, perfectly healthy. Which makes me a happy camper.

I have noticed that my blood pressure has done an interesting thing since I started working out more … whereas it was normally around 120 to 130 over 80 to 90 (that is, between 120/80 and 130/90), it has been down to 116/68 recently. I don’t know if that’s partially due to the fact that I’m much more relaxed at this doctor’s office versus the old one, where I was stressed out the second I walked through the door, or whether it’s actually related to exercising more, but I am definitely making an effort to exercise more.

Matter of fact, I just earned my second green stripe on my yellow belt in traditional Chung Do Kwan style Tae Kwon Do. On Tuesday, to be exact. It wasn’t a hard test, either – demonstrate the forms for yellow belt, intermediate yellow belt, and advanced yellow belt; demonstrate my 7 step-sparring techniques and 9 self-defense techniques. And break a board with a front kick. I’d never thought of my front kick as being a particularly powerful kick because it (still) feels awkward to be striking straight out with the ball of the foot, but I guess it’s a solid enough kick to break with. First try, too. Yeah, that felt pretty good.

I also recently started taking American Kang Duk Won Karate, which is an American form of an amalgamation of Japanese martial arts and Korean Tae Kwon Do, for lack of a better description. It’s an odd beast, at any rate. Many of the techniques are the same, in principle, as the techniques we use in Chung Do Kwan style Tae Kwon Do, although it seems that Kang Duk Won is a whole lot less formal. There’s less of an emphasis on perfect stances and big chambers and more of an emphasis on speed and power. Which is fine … but if I had to compare coming from Chung Do Kwan to Kang Duk Won and starting out in Kang Duk Won with no previous instruction or experience, I would probably not have the technique (or the speed, or the power) that I do have now.

The biggest thing that kills me about American Kang Duk Won is the fact that they do not do Poomse forms, as we do in traditional Tae Kwon Do, but Palgay forms. Where the rest of the techniques and even the self-defense does not vary much between the two separate disciplines, the forms are a killer. However, because I do know all the techniques and the self-defense techniques, once I’ve learned the first Palgay form, I’ll be able to test for my yellow belt at Kang Duk Won.

Besides forms, there are differences between the two schools as well. It’s the difference between learning from Mister Miyagi and training at the Cobra Kai, to use a pop-culture reference. Both teach martial arts. The Mister Miyagi technique of teaching, so to speak, focuses on good citizenship, avoiding fights, and perfecting technique so one would be able to fight if needed but not looking for a fight. The Cobra Kai technique of teaching focuses on bringing people in the door, teaching technique, and increasing speed and power in technique.

Being that I have been doing Tae Kwon Do and am new to Kang Duk Won, I find myself comparing the two, especially where my brain tells me that things could be improved or should be different, based on my previous experience. One thing that bugs me in particular is the lack of a student creed or bowing to the flag in Kang Duk Won. My Tae Kwon Do class starts every lesson by bowing to the American flag, then to the instructor, then reciting our student creed, which goes as follows -

 

1. I will develop myself in a positive manner and avoid anything that would reduce my mental growth or my physical health.
2. I will develop self-discipline in order to bring out the best in myself and others.
3. I will use what I learn in class constructively and defensively to help myself and my fellow man, and never to be abusive or offensive.

 

I think that, especially in the children’s class, this sets a good foundation regarding what martial arts is all about. It’s about learning something for the purpose of defense but doing it in a way that is focused on doing good for other people. It also means teaching each other and being a good citizen. Which is what a martial arts class should be – especially a kids’ class. It isn’t about kicking and punching, nor should it be. (Although that’s the fun part.) The absence of this in Kang Duk Won bothers me. Not that it isn’t there – there’s a bit about it in the manual and the instructors talk about it in class, but it’s not a formal part of classes in the same way.

Overall, I find that Kang Duk Won at the particular dojang I go to lacks structure and discipline, especially for the younger students in the class. Whereas my Tae Kwon Do class will not accept children under a certain age and will ask parents not to bring their children back if they are clearly too young to focus and participate properly, my Kang Duk Won class does not seem to have any such restrictions. I see a lot of fidgeting and looking around from younger kids at Kang Duk Won that would never be tolerated at Tae Kwon Do. I’ve even seen kids walk out of the formation if they got bored, or just sit back and watch the class instead of participating. I understand that the instructors don’t want to lose kids from the class, but I think they need to set limits and enforce discipline somewhere. When you’ve got kids that have yellow belts (or higher) and they’re talking in the class or goofing off, it just looks bad.

Because my Tae Kwon Do class is a lot smaller than the Kang Duk Won class, it tends to progress in a different way. Tae Kwon Do, where I take it, is about perfecting technique. Getting everything down to the millimeter, ending forms in the same place you began them, doing forms under a specific amount of time yet with a good amount of power. We do a lot of work correcting foot-position or hand position in our basic moves. Kang Duk Won … not so much. I see purple belts in class who don’t know to keep their knees tucked in when doing a back kick, which takes away a fair amount of their speed and power. And I see instructors not correcting them (or not noticing).

My Kang Duk Won class is more of a workout than my Tae Kwon Do class because we do a lot of repetitions of all the moves … like 100 Karate pushups at the start of the class, which are an awkward combination of stretching the inside of your thighs and your lower back and a pushup. They’re more stretch than pushup, at any rate. And we do a lot of repetitions on our forms … most dreadedly (by me, anyway) the center punches from a horse stance. Anyone who’s ever spent 20 minutes in a horse stance will understand why that’s one heck of a workout. (Oy, my thighs.)

I guess I will eventually need to make a decision as to whether I will continue with one or the other. Cost is about the same. The biggest difference is the distance – 3 minutes’ versus 45 minutes’ drive. Which becomes especially relevant once it starts snowing in the near future. In the meantime, I’m doing both.