Friday, June 30, 2006

Fireworks safety

This is a public service announcement from Doctor Anonymous.

Since the Fourth of July is next week, I just wanted to review some important safety tips when it comes to fireworks. The Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Council on Fireworks Safety offer these tips to help make your holiday a safe one.

In addition, please review the following educational video to see what could happen to loved ones when fireworks are used improperly. You may want to turn up the sound a bit to get the full effect. Click here for video. Remember, fireworks are not a toy, so use them wisely. (It's a tough day to be a stuffed animal -- HA!)

Thank you and have a happy and safe Fourth of July holiday weekend!

12 comments:

Lea said...

Fire in the hole!

I hope everyone makes it through the holiday with their eyebrows in tact.

ladybug said...

YIKES!!!

and...dont forget also...dont drink and drive!!!

have a great weekend everyone!
take good notes, i expect some great blogging of fun-times this weekend ;)

GaffLady said...

i know it says to have an adult present..but what if you are the adult who needs help? happy 4th everyone!!! cyber coronas on kt :)

Dreaming again said...

That's why even the adults need to just leave it up to the professionals.

My brother was a pyrotechnic .. till he and his wife almost got killed during a 4th of July display ... when a person who didn't keep control of their dog ... let it get loose, scared to death, it ran wild ...and it ran into the display, attacking the display, knocking one over, just as it shot off ... and headed right toward my brother and sis in law.

At that point, they realized that even professionals weren't safe ...and well ... it's better to just watch the stuff.

Anonymous said...

Amen to that. FYI, I posted yesterday on the same topic, only I told a personal story about a sparkler-induced fire . . .

http://difficultpt.blogspot.com/2006/06/fireworks.html

Be safe!

the granola said...

Reminds me of a story.

We gave our then 5 year old a sparkler. She started waving it around and having a grand old time. She didn't see the spark from a fountain that fell in her hair and started smoldering, but we did. So to her, all that happened was mom whacked her on the head for no apparent reason, something completely foreign to her experience.

I guess it didn't cause too much harm - she still loves fireworks.

Cathy said...

Dr. A...Happy 4th. of July weekend to you as well!

Anonymous said...

Not a fireworks aficionado ... been invited to a pool party tomorrow, or I probably wouldn't even have noticed the holiday.

My idea of fireworks is the pot of baked beans I was asked to bring ... >;o)

I'm going celebrate by eating, having a Corona with lime, eating, having a Grateful Dead, eating, and having a Dundee's Honey Brown Ale ... and ... did I forget to say eating?

Have a happy and safe 4th of July!!!

Dr. Anon ... you're not on call, are you? That could be unpleasant ...

the granola said...

Oh yeah, and never get sick in July, right?

NeoNurseChic said...

Oh yes...while July seems to be a favorite month of many doctors, July is most definitely a dreaded month for most nurses and sick people. Nurses have to teach the residents the ropes because, let's face it, at least on my unit, they don't do a very good job of teaching each other! I remember constantly calculating total fluids and fluid rates for this one emergency resident rotating through neonatology last year, even after he made repeated comments about how the kids only went bad after the nurses touched them. Things such as, "he was fine until the nurses touched him." or "If the nurses would weigh him right..." At one point, during rounds, I heard him make one of those comments, and I shouted his name through my gritted teeth and said, "That's inappropriate!" Everybody laughed as I sounded like his mother. :)

Then there was the summer of 2003, where I was in the hospital for about 15 days, starting in June, ending in July. I was actually in the cardiac ICU for 2 of the days (I think), so I spent the remainder of the stay on the intermediate cardiac stepdown unit. The only good thing was that, at age 22, lots of nurses would come in to chat with me. But the only bad thing was that, at age 22, half the cardiology residents/attendings believed that I was too young for them to worry about SVT and a resting heart rate of 110. So anyways...my PICC line had gone up my internal jugular instead of following the subclavian to the heart, and we deemed that it was "not a good idea" to infuse continuous IV lidocaine in the direction of the brain, so we were waiting for a central line. All IV access was gone at that point, and I went 24 hours without any meds at all, except what I could take by mouth. So I was in poor shape when this new neurology intern came up to tell me that I would not be getting a central line because I "was not a priority patient." Then proceded to tell me that she could very "easily" get an IV in my foot. Famous last words.... I'm a very tolerant person, and I'll let almost anyone "learn" medicine while I'm in the hospital, since it is a teaching hospital, but this woman...who had been very rude to my face...poked around at my foot for a good 5 minutes before I finally yelled, "OW!" I soooooo wanted to kick her in the face...but I didn't... ;) Needless to say, she didn't get an IV in my foot. I left by July 7, feeling somewhat better all things considered (I wasn't in the ICU afterall!) but largely in part because I couldn't take the new docs for a second longer. I felt that if I didn't leave, they were going to end up sending me to the morgue. haha

At any rate, 4th of July is my 2nd favorite holiday, after Christmas! I love fireworks!! I doubt I'll get to see them live this year, but I'll watch them on tv and um...maybe my dad will illegally shoot a few off from the driveway.... haha Living in the Philly area, we certainly are not having a "dry" season this month! My hometown got 15 inches of rain dumped on it last week and everything is still saturated from the floods!

Have a very safe and happy 4th of July weekend!!!

Carrie :)

The Tundra PA said...

Bad day for Barney, but funny! I'm on your bandwagon of "leave it to the pros"--don't blow your hand off! Like much of Alaska, here in Bethel we don't have fireworks for the 4th of July. The sun doesn't set until after midnight, and even at 2 am it isn't dark enough to really enjoy them. So we do our big annual fireworks display in January, after the start of the Kuskokwim 300, our big mid-distance sled dog race (300 miles). Most people watch from inside their cars with the heater on full blast, as it is usually really cold! As much as I love our midnight sun, I miss seeing fireworks on the 4th.

Milliner's Dream, a woman of many "hats"... said...

I found a (pretty gross and graphic) photo of a hand after a firework exploded in it. Pretty gruesome.

Hh

P.S. Dare I share it?

http://nielsolson.us/archives/2006/06/be_safe_this_fourth_of_july.php#comments