This past weekend I volunteered for the fourth time as a medic at the 27th, annual A-Kon anime convention in Dallas, Tx. It was stressful, exhausting, and a ton of fun. Already can't wait to go back next year.

I arrived at the Hilton Anatole on Thursday, got checked in with the heads for Med Staff, got my badge, and immediately went to work. Probably one of the biggest things I was involved in was the setting-up and first-year execution of a dispatch position intended to help organize and keep track of the usual chaos of medic'ing a convention of a few ten thousand people with not-even two dozen medics, and certainly not all of them at the convention at once or available at once. And now I'm involved in getting things ironed out and prepped for next year by crafting Excel documents which can be used to keep track of things according to how we wish they had been this past year. That's gonna be a fun task....

Let's see, what else did I do?

I bought the DVD set for .hack//SIGN, an early 2000's anime about a person trapped in a digital world, unable to escape and with hardly any memory of who they are. I saw the briefest glimpses of it ages and ages ago, and it was on my mind for years and years until I finally sat down and watched it. I was happy I did.

I fought off anxiety attacks at one of the midnight dances. I do not do well with loud, crowded atmospheres.

I looked at a blood screening someone wanted an opinion on and applied something I learned in med school to assure them that the medic that had told them a day or so ago that it was likely that they were full-blown diabetic had been extremely over-dramatic and had leapt to one of the worst conclusions he could from what he saw. Guys, don't be afraid to admit to either yourself or the people around you that you don't know something for sure. I looked at the test results with the spoken caveat of "I probably won't be able to tell you much" and was only able to say anything because I knew what a "Hemoglobin-a1c" test was and what the result communicated. In this case, that the patient was not diabetic, but was at risk. That they were "pre-diabetic" according to just that test, and barely so at that. Maybe if all I had to go on was whatever the other medic knew I might have agreed, but I would have seriously couched it in such language as to communicate that I can not diagnose you if I am unable to properly interpret the data at hand, and a list of symptoms is not the full story. Symptoms sure do narrow things down, many times down to a diagnosis, but without more data... and without knowing what that data means... in short, don't speak as though you know things you don't. It hurts your credibility later once it is known you did so, and can be a big barrier between you and the people you are trying to relate to.

You may be wondering why the name change for the blog, and what it is referring to. "Third Deck Parent Side" is a location in Kyle Field at Texas A&M. Before all the construction, the medical station for 3rd Deck Parents' was at the top of the stands. If you were sick or injured, you had to climb or be carried up. There were gonna be fewer patients anyway because it's Parent Side. They alumni and family there know how to take care of themselves, unlike the students. Then you add on the question of "why would a sick or injured person want to climb stadium stairs to the top of the stands?" and suddenly you have barely a dozen patients, if that, in an entire football season. Funny thing: a bunch of the events and main areas in A-Kon are a fairly good walk away from the med desk. Plus, we're stuck in an area marked on maps and emblazoned on the wall as "Conference Registration." Needless to say, the vast majority of people that walk up are asking either if this is where they get their badge, or if we have information about the con. Oh well. Maybe next year the con will listen to us and get us some signs to ward them off and a banner to cover up "conference registration."