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Half-assed introductions and ramblings

By Ryan

So. A little background. Ive been a paramedic for five years now. I started out with no direction after my educational career and mainly sat around smoking pot all day, doing odd jobs that sort of thing. My mother saw an ad in the paper for an EMT class being offered at the local hospital. Free of charge. She told me basically in no uncertain terms that I was going to be taking that class if for nothing other than getting out of the damn house. So I did. I really latched on to the subject matter and it became second nature pretty quickly. Now I'm not saying that I am a master at what I do but I feel like the information really stuck to me.

I've seen a lot in the short five years I've been running the streets and fields of rual Mason county. Punk ass kids experimenting with various drugs that got away from them, fatal car accidents, fender benders, successfully resuscitated cardiac arrests with a near total return to normal function and the majority of the time the unsuccessful arrests.

I would like to say something profound that being so close to death and dying patients has taught me. I can't. I guess the only thing I can say is don't fucking resuscitate me. If I suddenly go into cardiac arrest while doing a pound of blow out of a strippers anus. Leave me the fuck alone. Let me die with my last memory being candy's ass candy and not the face of a over stressed, overworked, overweight and underpaid paramedic. Sweat dripping off of his fat face and falling into my ever gaping mouth as he grunts and compresses my chest with almost no confidence in successfully bringing me back. Just going through the motions so he won't get sued by my family; so he can tell my wife that they "did everything we could to save your husband" but all the while knowing that the hospital is by that new Taco Bell and they have those new Dorito tacos that he hasn't shoved in his face yet.

My job has colored me jaded. I used to be Gung ho about going to work and saving lives but the reality is, the lives you save are so few. The majority of my time is utilized by Joe Dickbag who has decided at three o'clock in the morning the minor cough he's had for two weeks can't wait any longer. Not worried by the fact that the responding EMS crew hasn't had an hour of sleep in their near ending 24hr shift. Many of whom have been pulling extra shifts because Joe Dickbag has alot of friends that think the same way as Joe and over utilize the ambulance service.

In truth the lives saved that are few and far between, far exceed the seemingly limitless drunk assholes and dipshits. It's an adrenaline rush that's indescribable. I guess you could say EMS is like meth. The overwhelming highs in the beginning, and the addict scrambling to attain that high by scraping the pipe for residue.

I guess I've always had an addictive personality.

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