Skip to main content

Half-assed introductions and ramblings

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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Our Place In The Universe

We live on one simple planet, Earth.  That planet is about 12,712 kilometers in diameter from pole to pole.  The entire human species is just a speck on the face of this planet.  That planet is part of a solar system made up of 8 other planets which revolve around an average star that we call the sun.  Our solar system is approximately 287.46 billion kilometers in diameter.  Just to give you some perspective on our small little tucked away corner of the universe, the Voyager 1 probe was launched from earth on September 5, 1977 and has been traveling ever since.  The total mission duration is about 36 and a half years.  During this time, the probe has traveled at a velocity of 17 kilometers every second (that's 11 miles every second).  As of August 25, 2012, the voyager finally left our solar system and ventured into interstellar space.  That is the scope of our solar system.  Let's move out a little more and see how small this massive so...

Respecting Beliefs

You hear it all the time.  "respect my beliefs!"  you've all heard that phrase repeatedly right?  When is it usually said?  Usually anytime that you disagree with someone's beliefs and they don't really want to talk about it anymore. I say fuck that phrase.  No belief demands respect by default.  Nor should it ever be so concrete that it ever demands respect.  I respect that you have the right to believe whatever you want, and that is very important.  However, the beliefs that we hold, individually, should be tested and challenged constantly.  "But I don't know enough about the intricacies to defend it".  Fair point, but then again maybe you shouldn't espouse it as a belief then if that is the case.  If you can't pose a justified reason as to why your belief is true, then you probably shouldn't hold it as a belief.  If you don't know, just say you don't know.  There is no shame in that, and it is far more honest of a posit...

The Beautiful Chaos of Kids

Everybody thinks that they know exactly how to raise kids...when they don't have kids.  When you've got the time to sit and ponder and think and spend days, weeks, potentially months finding solutions to complex problems of child behavior it all seems so simple. The truth of the matter is that you are never going to have all of the answers readily at your disposal.  You will make good decisions and bad decisions.  Some days will go smoothly, some will go very badly.  You will be exhausted most days and the answers that once seemed so clear in the silence of your pre-child life will be increasingly absent as you go along.  You will try your best, and that's all you can do.  Others will constantly criticize you for decisions you make and how you handle things with your children.  Especially people who have no kids.  Don't waste too much time trying to explain yourself to them or trying to justify yourself to them.  They just simply don't unders...