What hapened when the vampire started writing poetry?

Easy; things went from bat to verse.

Sorry.

Okay--today royally sucked ASS. I was at Eviljob (and fed the kitties, they are fine), and had to take an eight-hour refresher course held by someone from National. They decided after much whining to remove it from Friday and stick it on Saturday, and that's not what I'm whining about. It was long, boring, and kind of like CEU credit. so whatever.

What I am bitching about is that I was stuck in there along with the remains of my department (it's ok to snicker derisively whenever I say I have a 'department' at Eviljob any longer), and we were lumped in with another group that I am not familiar with in an effort to kill two birds with one stone. And because there frankly isn't enough of my 'department' left to justify a whole entire training, so we have to get put in with others.

Butsoanyway.

A little after 1:30 p.m., one of the ladies in Other Department left the room and came back and said, 'Paul [the trainer], Stephanie's passed out in the ladies' room, and I don't know what to do.'

Oh, hang on--it gets better.

So Paul asked if Steph was breathing, and Girly started to get panicked, and said that she didn't know. Now, I am sitting there hoping that SOMEONE is going to get up; there is NO WAY *I* could possibly be the most qualified to address this. NO WAY IN HELL.

...then Paul says that he isn't sure if he can go into the ladies' restroom.

BWAAH!

Literally in tandem, Baby Bat (who forsook going off to university to stay with our team as a sort-of permanent intern--I have not mentioned this before, I don't think) and I got up and started running to the restroom. I dialled 911 on my cell as I was getting up, and tossed my phone to Paul in the hall when it occurred to me that I cannot chat and perform CPR at the same time.

Stephanie was lying on her back by the sinks, and I couldn't tell if she was breathing; I went to her head to check her mouth and breathing, and Baby Bat tried to feel for a pulse. Stephanie is an amply endowed woman, and BB couldn't find it, so I found it in her wrist as we turned her on her side and BB listened to her back and determined that she was breathing (though not all that strongly) and I took her pulse, which was ok.

Then I thanked whomever might be listening in on my private thoughts, 'cos if it were me, I wouldn't want me performing CPR on me--I'm too rusty. Especially since all I have ever trained on was scrawny-assed dummies, and the only steps that were coming to my mind was single-person CPR; BB *could* have done the breathing whilst I did the compressions, but since we didn't have a face shield thingy (not to sound bad, but this girl could have anything, you know?), it wouldn't have been fair to ask BB to do that.

Butsoanyway.

Then I tried to see if Steph would come to on her own (wouldn't that be a lovely world, then?), so I said (loudly) something to the effect of 'STEPHANIE, YOU'RE LATE! WAKE UP!'

You laugh, but I've been told it works.

Butsoanyway.

Steph's eyes stayed shut, but she did squeeze her eyelids and started intermittently making what looked like smacking movements with her lips; I was trying to decide if she was coming to, starting a seizure, or trying to vomit when I hear a voice from the door say, 'God! You don't have to yell at her!'

BB and I looked over, and THE ENTIRE FUCKING GROUP was at the restroom door. BB yelled for everyone to leave before I could, and they backed away to the back wall of the hallway. Steph then started making lurching movements, and BB held her head while I squashed myself under the sinks to make sure her mouth and airway was clear; I ruled out her waking up, and was still trying to decide between vomiting and seizing, which I told Paul 'cos 911 wanted some information about her. The operator asked if Stephanie was blue (no), then asked if she was pale, and neither BB or I could tell (Stephanie is darker-skinned, and I didn't know her at all), so I called for ONE PERSON who knew her to come in and tell me if she was pale. The girl who went to get her from the bathroom in the first place came in and said that she was very pale. Either BB or I told one of them to go get Security and let them know an ambulance was coming.

Paul said that an ambulance was on the way, and I started asking this girl about Stephanie; she'd just come back from medical leave for something that no one knew anything about (lovely team...all of my departments have always been *so* much closer...or nosy, whatever), that she had some kind of allergy (though they didn't know what), had just eaten lunch (though they didn't know what), and said that she had said that she was having an allergic reaction before she went to the bathroom (telling Girly as she left to come check on her if she wasn't back in a few minutes), that she didn't feel well, had said that she was having trouble breathing, and had asked a few people right after lunch if they had Benadryl.

WTF??? She never asked me, or within my earshot--I always have an ample supply of pseudoephedrine (and usually other antihistamines) in my purse and I'll give it to anyone, FDA laws be damned; that's one thing that when you need it, you NEED it, and pseudoephedrine (which is all I currently have on me) is better than nothing. Plus, I would have gone to the store around the corner to GET Benadryl if an actual antihistamine was needed. Jesus F-ing Christ.

I asked BB if she would be ok for a second, and she said that she would (BB was keeping her head in position, 'cos Steph's body was not cooperating with Recovery Position very well), so I got up to check the first aid kit in the break room just in case there was an EpiPen in there (which was almost without a doubt *not* there--the only crap in those kits are Band-Aids and antiseptic wipes, but I figured if Stephanie was asking for Benadryl, if I could just get hold of an EpiPen, then BB and/or I could do rescue breathing if it came to that until Stephanie woke up, or the ambulance got there, 'cos her breathing still wasn't great, but if this was anaphylaxis there might not be a whole lot anyone could do if her airway was constricted), went out in the hall and saw Donna, my favourite security guard coming down to us and remembered that the main Security desk is where the AED is kept (which until that moment I had forgotten that we had), so I yelled down the hall to Donna to ask if Security had an EpiPen, which Donna yelled back that they didn't, so I asked another girl in the hall to go through Steph's purse and see if she was carrying an EpiPen.

Well, she could have had one and wanted to save it for an emergency, or something stupid like that. People do some really retarded things sometimes.

What's funny (now) is that I had to tell her that it would look 'kinda like a tube of Superglue or Krazy Glue when it's in the little plastic container, and it will say "EpiPen" on it, or maybe some other name, but anything roughly close to that shape with instructions on how to inject it'. Thank god Stephanie carried a smallish purse, or we might still be there looking.

Stephanie started lurching again, and when I got back down in front of her (again with the under the sink thing) I saw foamy spittle was collecting in her mouth, and so BB and I turned her more forward (so that we could keep her mouth clear more easily and she'd be less likely to aspirate) just in time for her to start vomiting.

No, this is good. Well, it's *probably* good. Well, as good as it gets--a seizure would be A Bad Thing.

So we kept her mouth clear as she vomited and got her back into a more normal recovery position once she stopped lurching.

Girl With Purse called over to us and said there was no EpiPen--I asked her if she was CERTAIN and asked BB if she knew what an EpiPen looked like (else I would go out myself and look), and one of the guys in the group said he knew and there wasn't one in her purse.

Then Stephanie--still unconscious--coughed and started vomiting again, and we tilted her downly-forwardish again to clear out her mouth more easily, and that's when--thank you god--someone said the paramedics were here.

There were--LITERALLY--ten or fifteen people: paramedics, fire rescue personnel, and god knows who else. Two--TWO--drug bags (I need one of those); stretcher, oxygen...all that fun crap. BB and I told them as quickly as we could everything that we knew (in sum, that whatever in the fuck she was allergic to, she was asking for Benadryl, and good luck with that now), and they asked for the room to be cleared and the door closed, so BB and I exited.

Everyone was still standing out in the hall, so I asked Paul if he was willing to call an unscheduled break and since he was, I left and went out back. BB stayed because she'd put her coat and cell phone on the counter, and needed to get them back before they vanished (which I would do also if it were my crap in there).

I forgot to notice the time, so I don't know how long it was before they wheeled her out, but once I saw that I gave it an extra few minutes before I went back in. She appeared to be still unconscious when they took her out, though when I got back in there a few of her teammates said that they were pretty sure they heard her talking in the bathroom. On the other hand, there were two female emergency personnel in there, so who in the hell knows what they heard.

And then, of course, everything went back to normal.

...except for the part about my being really freaked out 'cos if things hadn't gone ok, I sure as crap didn't want to be responsible for any of it. I maybe need to go get re-certified, so that I am not relying so much on my shitty memory if anything like that ever happens again. And I could just smooch Baby Bat something fierce--she was wonderful; no way could Stephanie's head have stayed in a good position without her.

And I am now sporting two knees with great big bruises on them from all the jumping on them I did getting from one side of Stephanie to the other, though my left knee is way worse than my right one. And Meg says (yes, she's staying to babysit her car's situation and her cat and my cats when I'm not at home) that I have a large bruise across my back that I can only assume came from the underside of the sink counter. What's *really* funny is that I don't remember hurting myself or banging into anything. I mean not at all; when I got home and changed, I looked at my knees and was like, 'where in the hell did *those* come from?!?'

And something really, really nice happened today, but I am too tired to go into that now. It was actually one of the most considerate things that has ever been done for me--and...I don't know. This other thing eclipsed the nice thing. But it was a really nice thing. And I am still figuring out if it was an intentionally nice thing, or if it was an accidentally nice thing and I am reading too much into it.

Sigh...more later when I am not so damned tired.

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