Stryker Air Pump: Fill & Download for Free

I'm going to agree with Mike Page on this one. The recently extinct US Armored Cavalry Regiment, (the 3rd ACR being the last in 2011, wich is now a Stryker Regiment) was the most powerful and self sustaining force in the world.By self sustaining, I mean it did not require any other unit for its day to day mission requirement. It was equipped with its own contingents of maintenance, finance, intelligence, supply, fire support, artillery, tanks, med-evac, rotary air support etc...It consisted of ruffly 5,000 service members and operated at a division level with a Colonel as the CO. The Col. would rub elbows at the same table with Generals who command 10,000 to 20,000 men in their own divisons. The position of CO in a ACR is usually reserved for the best and brightest of the Army's rising star Colonels.As for power, the Armored Cavalry Regiment excels.With a compliment of 3 Paladin artillary batteries, 9 m113 mortar platoons, 18 Bradley Cavalry platoons with 18 Abrams tank platoons attached, 3 maintenance companies, 3 independent Abrams tank companies, 1 squadron of Apache helos, 1 squadron of med-evac black hawks, and various specialized support personnel. (Such as communications, medical, and intelligence)All of this ordnance is cleared for use by the Colonel and doesn't have to be requested or go up a chain for a General to decide. Everything the CO needs is already assigned to the regiment and under his command.The individual Cavalry troops carry a wider array of weapons than most fellow infantry soldiers. (This varies from unit to unit, but Cavalry units tend to be better equipped.) Operating behind enemy lines, exposes the Cav scout to any number of challenges and he must be equipped to handle them. While not all items are carried, they are stowed in the Bradley and easily accessible.The radio,(with spare batteries) is a scouts deadliest weapon and key to any operation.Crew served weapons, such as the 50 cal, 240b, Mk 19 grenade launcher, TOW missle, the Bradley 25mm cannon, and the Abrams 120 mm, offer options to the vehicle crews.Individual weapons, such as the 240B and 249 SAW (1,000 rounds each), M4 carbine (210 rounds), M9 pistol (45 rounds), 12g pump shotgun (8 rounds), M14 for sharpshooting/sniping, M24 sniper rifle, M203 grenade launcher (36 rounds, but usually just 6), Javelin AT missle launcher, Stinger AA missle launcher (phased out), AT-4 "Bazooka", M18 claymore, M67 grenade, flashbangs, and a bayonet.Addition Added:I recently read that they added an engineer squadron to the 3rd Stryker Reginent. Previously, an engineer unit would have to be attached or tasked out to meet the regiments requirements. The scouts sure are gonna miss stealing wooden engineer signs on projects they built so they can burn em for a warmth.P.S.Sorry to the engineers who built the pontoon bridge over the Tigris at the town of Qayara....it was a cold winter.

The patient lies unconscious on the operating room gurney, a tube down their throat, IVs in their arms, tubes here, there, everywhere.Men and women in surgical scrubs, gloves, masks, hair nets and foot covers busily prepare for the operation. Instruments are unwrapped, equipment checked and rechecked. Equipment beeps and trills. A steady blip blip blip of the patient’s heart rate monitor is background to the beginning of this minor adventure. The anesthesiologist is ready; the patient is unconscious and feeling no pain. The OR nurses are ready. The bypass tech is ready.Cardiopulmonary bypass pumpThe surgeon begins the operation. His assistant makes the first cut, from the top of the chest to just above the patient’s navel. The Stryker saw vibrates its way through the ribs, then the ribs are spread apart by a Finochietto retractor. The heart is stopped, chipped ice poured into the chest cavity to slow metabolism. The heart/lung bypass machine is hooked up. The delicate act of replacing the patient’s faulty mitral valve begins.Stryker sawThe 26 year old respiratory therapy student stands next to the anesthesiologist, a few feet away from the patient’s open chest, looking on in awe. Little did he know that he was looking at himself, a few short years in the future.***At 29 he learns he has a murmur, an abnormal sound caused by irregular blood flow through the heart. An echocardiogram, an ultrasonic image of the heart, shows a prolapsed (literally, "out of place") mitral valve with mild mitral valve narrowing, or stenosis, both signs of heart plumbing gone bad.“Mild” sounds so benign. Mild weather. A mild sedative. Mild is OK, mild is pleasant, or at least nothing to fret about.Not this mild.At 35 things begin to go south. An occasional racing heartbeat. Some shortness of breath on exertion. Over time, it gets worse.Over time echocardiographic imaging reveals a continuously narrowing valve area. The pump is choking down, like a carburetor taking in too much air.At 40, he starts taking blood-thinners, little pills that increase the time it takes for blood to clot. His blood is becoming stagnant, like an algae-laden backyard pond.At 41 he experiences his first episode of heart failure. Mowing the lawn, he pushed himself too hard, drank too much fluid, got his heart rate up too high. He coughed up blood, couldn’t catch his breath.That was it, time for a new valve.St. Jude bi-leaflet heart valve***I’m not sure if I was particularly scared or worried about the surgery. I know I spent a lot of time thinking about it: about the odds, the pros, the cons. About my family. About life, the universe, and everything. But I was resigned. No choice. Buck up. Face the music. Now or never.***He woke up. It took a while to remember where he was, what had happened. The breathing tube came out quickly. He had survived of course. His chest hurt like the dickens, especially when he coughed. Oh man it hurt.Four days later, he was home. Still in pain. Difficult to walk for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Going up a flight of stairs was murder.He got a little depressed at the two-week mark. But soon after, on a sunny and relatively mild Vermont winter day, he was able to begin taking long walks up the hill behind his house. Slowly at first. The body still had to make adjustments to the shiny new valve, a titanium bi-leaflet St. Jude mechanical heart valve.His mind had to make some adjustments too. His heart was stopped, and then jump-started. The Earth had stood still, and then had moved again. And he had walked away. Fooled death. Missed a bullet.Life kind of rushed in on him after that. Time was running out, leaking out, getting away from him. He lost his mind for a while, but eventually he found it.That’s another story.***I’m 60 and 1/2 years old now. I’ve had the valve for nearly 20 years. You can hardly see the scar that runs down my chest. I still take warfarin- a so-called “blood-thinner”- but no big deal. I take antibiotics before dental work; don’t want a nasty heart infection. That’s all there is to it. Oh and no sky-diving. No rock climbing. No chain-sawing. I bleed just a little too easily.I run 20 miles most every week: a long slow run one day, speed drills and hill repetitions on others. I like to run 5Ks, trying to improve my personal record every year. I also strength train: pushups, chin-ups, dead lifts, the whole deal. I eat right, sleep well. I’ve never felt better in my life.Wasn’t always this way. The heart valve thing is just one part, albeit a major one, of who I am.I have asthma. And allergies.They're annoying but in control.And atrial fibrillation/atrial flutter, a byproduct of an enlarged left atrium. It’s an arrhythmia, a heartbeat that’s out of sync. I had a cardiac ablation a year ago (ablate: to remove or destroy by cutting or abrading but in this case burning with high radiofrequencies) in an attempt to fix it, but no dice, so I take medicine every day to keep it at bay. Yeah, another pill.Depression and anxiety have come and gone, off and on like a garden hose. I think I’m a bit bipolar too. Just a bit.I’ve had my right anterior crucial ligament (ACL) replaced. Stupid accident a few years ago.And I used to drink. A lot. It’s been four years now and I haven’t looked back. Except with regret. I’m working on that. I made some mistakes in the past, broke a lot of things with no hope for repair. I’m trying now for some redemption; still have some debts to clear.Here’s something to consider: the heart-lung machine, or cardiopulmonary bypass pump, was first used in 1955; the first mitral valve replacement was performed in 1961. If I had been born anytime in history before about 1880, I never would have made it much past the age of 41. Heart failure, permanent.But I’m still here; the heart clicks on. Ever so quietly. You can’t hear it unless it’s utterly quiet.Stop, hey, what’s that sound?Just the tick tick tick of my telltale heart.

What would happen if the United States launches an invasion into Canada?It would not be a surprise attack as the two militaries are fairly well integrated, particularly though NORAD.US buildup on the Canadian border with bellicose rhetoric flying fast and hard for several weeks. American civilians head south and Canadian civilians head north in response to new visa and visitor restrictions.D-Day - Thousands of American soldiers, tanks and other equipment surges across the border expecting a sharp, short series of battles with the skilled but heavily outnumbered Canadian military. Overwhelming numbers will carry the day though. But there is nothing - no fighting back whatsoever. WTF? Then in the rear areas, the oil pipeline feeding the staging area in Montana blows up spilling oil into the water supply for the staging area.D-Day + 1 - Logistics people within the US occupation forces are struggling to buy local fuel and food supplies as rail lines going north in the USA have been disrupted. Canadian retailers are either saying no or charging outrageous prices. Still cannot find any Canadian military personnel outside of some Navy types.D-day + 7 - 10% of all occupation forces are on medical parade for food poisoning from locally sourced food and half of the vehicles are down due to spiked or mislabelled locally sourced fuel. Train and road bridges damaged preventing major movement of supplies. The entire Eastern Seaboard is in the dark as the integrated power grid goes down and attempts to repair are thwarted by Canadian service techs being out sick. Sixteen major oil refineries in Texas are now ablaze from a well coordinated military attack using rocket launchers, military grade explosives. First responders were attacked by military grade automatic weapons fire from multiple sources. Five attackers were killed. They were identified as Canadian infantrymen.D-Day + 14 - A military convoy from US Army Base Barstow is pulled over by uniformed MP’s who seize the Stryker armoured personnel carriers, drive them to Lake Mathews and use the weapons to destroy pumping stations and outflow piping. This causes widespread local flooding and cuts off about 50% of the Los Angeles water supply. Rationing of water begins immediately with widespread rioting following. Ongoing resistance, blocked roads, hacked GPS and occasional sniper attacks keep occupation forces on edge and busy.D-day + 21 - coordinated blasts at midnight cause the destruction of the Washington monument and Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, the Statue of Liberty in New York, and The Gateway arch in St Louis. Mount Rushmore carvings are severely damaged in same attack. Traffic signal systems are hacked in Dallas, Miami, Chicago and Seattle resulting in hours of gridlock and multiple deaths due to blocked roads. Occupation forces start receiving anonymous letters with photographs of their families mailed from their home towns.D-Day + 28 - 8 men in District of Columbia Air National Guard uniforms and passes enter Joint Base Andrews and requisition eight F-16D aircraft that were ordered to be armed for ground attack. The aircraft take over CAP role in Washington airspace as scheduled and then attack the White House, Capital Building and other major buildings before landing on I-295 and being destroyed. The explosions destroy a major bridge entering Washington. Occupation forces determine that their seized barracks have been contaminated with radioactive waste. Any food purchased locally is expected to be contaminated as is fuel. Ongoing sabotage makes bringing in food and fuel from USA difficult. All bridges east of Lake Superior have been destroyed. Schools in the towns where units are based are blown up - at night.And so on……The only way for Canada to defend against an mythical American invasion is to not fight on the border but to take the fight to the heartland of the USA. Canadians can pass for Americans, know the USA, visit regularly. 50,000 highly trained military personnel with cached supplies and weapons, prior training and objectives, expertly forged and backed up identification, uniforms and intimate knowledge of the enemy.As well 33 million people who know Americans as well as they know themselves with high tech skills, massively integrated infrastructures and over 1/3 of them armed.Even if they do not fight and are absorbed into the American populace, that is 33 million people who think that Secretary Clinton was too right wing, who expect single payer medical insurance and a government that actually functions. The Republican party, with its current platform, would never see the inside of the White House except on a tour.