Tough Times

“I’m scared,” he tells me. I stare at him slightly dumbfounded but try to continue my assessment. I’m scared too. Terrified in fact…and I’m doing everything in my power not to show it. His fear, on the other hand, is quite genuine and evident by the tears that are sliding down his cheeks and plopping silently onto his orange jump suit. I swallow hard and turn my attention to the deputy nearby, asking about any safety risks with my patient. She is rather unhelpful so I set about the task of getting my patient moved over to our gurney so we can transport him to the hospital. He has had a week of progressively worsening chest pain and he is legitimately scared that his heart is giving out on him. I try to reassure him but the irony is overwhelming. I never imagined at any point in the course of my life that I would be calming an anxious inmate. He obediently moves to my cot and lets the deputies shackle him. In the ambulance, he is somnolent as the tears continue to slide down his cheeks. He is just like any other patient now...vulnerable and terrified...with just me to try to buffer the angst. The trip to the hospital and the tranfer to the medical staff was uneventful, just like most other transports. The after-effect of this one, however, was quite different for me. The last several months have been an array of highs and lows for me. I have now been precepting for 13 months and have, quite frankly, hit the wall. My level of frustration is at an all-time high and I am more than ready to be done with the entire thing. I have had many days that I could care less if I ever get signed off to work independently in our county. It is not that I can't take care of people, it is the fact that I haven't had enough high acuity calls to be able to "prove myself" to my preceptor. And so, the days, weeks & months drag on. Don't get me wrong, I still love being a paramedic, but some days it doesn't seem like enough to cover the frustration that is my life currently. It doesn't help that lately, my personal life has been caving in as well. And so, there I was, staring at my terrified inmate patient, and realizing that, no matter how fed up I was with the world, he needed me to be at the top of my game more than he needed anything else at that moment in time. And it was at that moment in time when I knew that I needed far more of a pick-me-up than I could muster on my own. When I made the call, I'm sure my voice cracked at some point. Even as I drove across town and sat down at the table across from one of my 3 preceptors, I was shaking inside and holding back tears. I was burned out, emotionally drained, and ready to give up. "You know your medicine. I would trust you any day to take care of my family. You just need to get the calls, take charge and you WILL get through this," he told me. We talked for over an hour. I don't think he had any idea how much I needed to hear his words of encouragement. My other 2 preceptors had tried, without much success, to cheer me on. I know they meant well but something about my 3rd preceptor finally hit home. I nearly hugged him when I left that day. I wish you could understand all the terrible things that emergency responders deal with on a daily basis. And at the very same time, I'm glad that you don't have to cope with those types of things. In spite of our best efforts, at the end of the day, we are still only human and, as much as we hate to admit it, we too need help sometimes to get through the tough times. I still have a ways to go in my precepting. But I know now that I am further along than I originally thought I was. The end will come and, when it finally does, I know I have 3 amazing preceptors who will be there to celebrate with me.

Not Quite Like the Movies

We've all watched them...the so-called “medical dramas”...more drama than anything medically related. Accuracy is sacrificed for the sake of a good story line. I actually have a hard time watching most of these types of shows just because they are so off base from what actually happens. The majority of my days don't play out like TV shows but there are rare exceptions when things are so surreal, it feels like you are blasting through an unscripted movie scene. Here is my most recent one...

Paying Tribute

The paradox in my blogging continues...when I have time, I have nothing overly interesting to share...and when I have loads of things to share, I don't seem to have time to put them in writing. So, it's a few days late but I will relate to you the events from my September 11^th, 2013...

Precepting

Yet again, it has been far too long since the last time I posted here. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of varying degrees of craziness and I have finally found a few minutes to put it into words. Three weeks ago I sat in my car outside the main station of the ambulance service which serves as our primary transporting agency for our county. My hands were sweaty, my heart was racing and I truly believed that if I had tried to get out and walk the 100 feet to the front door that my knees may give way. I don't recall the last time I had been so nervous about embarking on a new adventure.

Grandpa

Today I am not sharing any adventurous tales of my recent ambulance escapades. Granted, I have had a few lately but I will share those in another post. Today, instead, I speak to why I haven't been my regular blogging self in the past couple months. Yesterday marked 9 weeks since I received that painful phone call. Nine weeks. In some ways it seems as if it was just yesterday. The pain is still so fresh...as if I am still shakily holding the phone and hearing the news that Grandpa was dead. In other ways, the searing pain which has tugged at my being for the last 9 weeks seems to be enough pain to fill an eternity.

I have spent the last 9 weeks trying to condense the 69 years of my grandfather’s life into just one concise blog post. But the following is my best attempt at such.

Happy 2013!

Here we are, a week into the new year and I haven't even had a chance to recount my New Year's Eve adventures. For whatever crazy reason, I voluntarily signed up to work New Year's Eve. For the last several years, I have worked it as a dispatcher but this year was the first time that I worked it on the ambulance.
My partner that night was a baby-faced rookie EMT. He impressed me early on by completing all the truck checks while I ate dinner with my family. When my family had left, Baby Face confided in me that he didn't feel 100% comfortable with the layout of our district and asked if we could go drive around for a while so he could familiarize himself with the some of the major areas.
Before we could vacate the station, a veteran firefighter called to cajole me about working that night. He told me he had worked the last 3 years. Two of those nothing happened and on the other they had a stabbing. "You probably won't have much going on tonight," he told me. Although I secretly hoped he was wrong, my rookie partner & I wandered into our district unabated by any calls.

Blast from the Past

Two blog posts in one day...albeit this is going to be a shorter one than most. I guess I am making up for lost time...and I feel it best to write while things are still fresh in my mind. Yesterday was a sort of surreal day for me. Not that the majority of my shifts aren't but some have greater moments than others.

Elation and Tragedy

It seems like just yesterday the world held it's breath and wondered if we would reach a technological apocalypse at the turn of 2000. And now, here we sit at the dawn of 2013. The last month of 2012 was filled with tragedy both on a person level and a national level which accounts for my lack of posts. It doesn't seem like it was November the last time that I was able to muster the mental fortitude to spew out a blog post...let alone a quality one. So, here is my first attempt of 2013.