The McKenzie’s Blog…

Waking up this morning it was a spectacular day out there.  Not a cloud in site and nothing but blue skies and Sun, but cool, 14C on the outside temp. 

I decided to take the kids to the Linton Zoo, south of Cambridge.  We’ve been there a few times before.  It’s a nice little local zoo.  We heard a talk about the tigers they have, the youngest one which is just over 2 years old will be sent to Sweden for breeding.  Apparently it’s quite common for zoos to pimp out their animals for breeding purposes

Here are some of the pics from today, see the all the pics at Linton Zoo Pics

Back in the June/July issue of the Cottenham Newsletter there was an article about the need for new MAGPAS volunteers.  I think MAGPAS is a very worth while group to say the least.  They provide a buffer between the time you call 999/112 and the ambulance actually turning up.   In some a lot of cases the MAGPAS responder will arrive before the ambulance and get treatment started, then handing over the casualty to ambulance crew or paramedics once they arrive on scene.  So, I decided to sign up for this service.  The process starts with an application and a CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) Check. A clean check is required, clearly mine came back clean :), then it was getting booked on the courses..

From the MAGPAS website they say:

Community First Responders are non-medical volunteers who save lives in their local town or village.

Magpas fully trains all Community First Responders and also provides the vital equipment they need to make a difference to patients. We organise our Community First Responders into local groups and currently have 33 such groups across Cambridgeshire. The types of emergencies they attend include choking, cardiac arrests and strokes.

Basically, MAGPAS really limits the range that it’s responders are dispatched to, generally around about 3 miles from home, so really that means in your own village and very very near by areas just outside.  This provides a very quick response time with very little travelling.  This can in some cases mean saving a life or not.  In some places, such as Canada, a lot of the time the fire fighters are fully trained as first responders and can do everything a MAGPAS responder can do, this means when a 911 call is placed a fire crew will roll as well as the ambulance crew.  The obvious disadvantage of this system is the cost of man power and equipment expenses in having to dispatch a fully loaded fire truck with a crew.  However, it can also mean the difference between life and death for the casualty depending on the distance the ambulance crew has to travel.

This weekend (Sep 6/7) I was on the first bit of training under MAGPAS.  This was a modified First Aid course run by St John Ambulance.   The focus of the course is on situations that MAGPAS volunteers are called out for, such as:

• Fainting
• Shock
• Allergic Reactions (Anaphylactic Shock)
• Seizures
• Hyperglycaemia / Hypoglycaemia
• Strokes
• Asthma Attacks
• Choking
• Cardiac Arrest
• Angina and Heart Attacks

The second part of the training for me will be in early November and will cover the use of portable Defibrillators, insertion of airways  and administering pure Oxygen.  I’m looking forward to that course.  There will also be more emphasis on improving our CPR skills.  Part of this weekends course was having to do 8-9 sets of compressions and rescue breaths, so about 5-6 minutes of non-stop CPR.  It sure does tire you out.  I’m sure in real life there would be a rush of adrenalin that would help to keep you going, but it sure would tire you out if it went on for an extended period of time.  Currently, we aren’t called out for such things as traffic accidents, trauma cases, severe bleeding cases or calls involving children under the age of 8.  These are only attended by the normal ambulance service and MAGPAS doctors and paramedics (Medic250 as they are called).

All things being well, I should be on the local rota late November or early December and starting to respond to call-outs.

Today was the first day of Pre-School for Emma for this year and the first day for Lisa in the “big” school.  Both were very excited to get back and see their friends again.

From this year Lisa has to wear uniforms to school.  That’s a good thing.. uniforms are pretty cheap and it means no fighting with her on what she can wear for the day :)  Well she can decide between the 2 official uniforms of the school so it’s limited choices.

You can see the rest of the pics here: Ready for School

Sorry, no pics from the school.. it was was chucking it down with rain today and couldn’t be bothered.

Yesterday we had a small gathering of friends around for a BBQ.  Everyone brought a different type of salad with them.  Everything was awesome.  Steve turned up like 3 hours late, but that’s par for the course for him

1)Rob at the BBQ

2) Left - Right: Debbie, James (Deb’s BF), Karen (Deb’s ex-roommate), Nick (Liz’s husband - we didn’t get a pic of Liz, sorry Liz)

3) Hamburgers and Sausages

4) Chicken Wings (Yuki), Chinese Salad (Yuki), Leaf Salad (Deb and James), Pasta with Tuna Salad (Liz & Nick) and Couscous Salad with Butternut Squash and other veg (Karen)

5) Salads again

6) What’s left of Yuki’s Tiramisu.

A good time was had by all!

Today after I finished work, I decided I needed to get out for a walk.  Emma was sleeping and Yuki was hoping to get some sleep before she started work in the evening.  Lisa didn’t at all want to have a sleep.

So, I decided to take her with me.  The question was where too.  I decided to take her to Wicken Fen again.  We’d gone there before (Wicken Fen…) with Lisa’s school.  That visit was good for the kids but we didn’t really get to see too much of the place.  Today when we went back we’d ended up walking about 1.25 to 1.5 miles around part of the area.  Lisa had a good time but sure was tired.  Surprisingly she didn’t fall asleep on the way back home.

There are some pics and a video from the day HERE - here are some samples.

Lisa’s case of Chicken Pox ended about 10 days after it first showed up, and about 5 days later Emma broke out in them.  Emma was quite upset the morning Lisa woke with her spots.  Emma wanted spots too! haha she was upset that Lisa had something she didn’t. 

We kept telling Emma she’ll get spots too and she had keep looking for them and tell us as soon as she found her spots.  The day they came, she came running to tell us she’s finally got spots.  About 2 days later she stopped liking them

Emma can’t quite say “chicken pox”, it comes out sounding more like “chin chin box”.

All in all both of the kids have come through this pretty easy.  Lisa has only one spot that was on the verge of getting infected but I don’t think it really did.  It’s quite large and still visible, but it is going away slowly.   Emma so far only has one that looks like it’s going the same way as Lisa’s, but we’ll have to wait and see how it goes.

I’m glad both have gotten it now and it’ll be clear before they go back to school in early Sept.  It also means we won’t have to deal with this ever again.

I’ve been working on this project for a few weeks (lack of time).  Basically, I bought a huge 120A/hr battery to go camping with and to use for other things, such as portable amateur radio work.

Well, that’s all well and good, but how do I connect things to it?  I wanted some easy way to connect multiple things to the battery without having to have a number of wires getting attached to the battery.

So, not wanting to spend ARM+LEG and either our first or second born to buy something already made, and it wouldn’t include the cig plugs either.

So, I made this:

Read on if you’d like to see the other pics .. or, you can just go and look at them in my Flickr Gallery

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