Unleaded Gas In The Diesel Ambulance

"Wanting something is not enough. You must hunger for it. Your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order to overcome the obstacles that will invariably come your way."-Les Brown

My first day on the job as an EMT in Quakertown (Medic 108) the Chief calls me in the office and says, “Why don’t you take the ambulance out and drive around the town and familiarize yourself with the streets.”

            

             “By myself?”

            “Is that a problem?”

            “Well. No.” I had really really wanted this job. I’d been working in an office, vomiting every morning before I drove to work because I hated it so much. When the call came to work for Medic 108 in Quakertown (three months after I’d put in my application), I felt I’d won the lottery.

            “Take 108-4. The keys are in the garage.”

            “Sure. Sure.” I start to turn around and he stops me.

            “You HAVE driven an ambulance before, right?”

            I’m facing the door. “Well, no." I confess. "But you never asked that when you interviewed me.”

He doesn’t respond so I turn around; his head is face down on a pile of papers on the desk, and he starts softly pounding his head on the desk. Finally,  he lifts his head just enough so he can speak to me, “Just take the rig and drive very carefully around town. Do you think you can handle that?”

            “Sure. Of course. Not a problem.”

            So off I go, driving around the small town, thinking how much better this is than sitting at a desk and watching the second hand tick away the most boring moments of my life. After awhile I feel very confident with the big rig, and pull into a super market parking lot to get a bottle of ice tea and a yogurt.

            As I try to squeeze between a van and a station wagon, I accidentally hit the station wagon.

            OHNOOHNOOHNO.

            My father’s voice calmly speaks to me, “Park somewhere else, wait for the driver to come back to the car, and explain what happened.”

            So, I glance around to see who was watching. No one.

            I back up, move a few rows above the car and park where there are no cars. I walk to the station wagon and am totally relieved that there isn't a dent or scratch. God Bless strong, sturdy, old cars.

           Now I'm torn. Should I wait for the driver? No dents, no marks, no harm, right? 

           But I was taught to be honest - and what if someone saw the bump...what if it's on a camera? I'm sweating. This is my first day on the job. I quit an office job that I hated so much I would pull over and vomit on the way to work. I hated being confined. I hated how boring it was. This was the job I never thought I'd want growing up - but now that I had it, I could think of no place else I'd rather be. 

            I don’t want to lose this job.

            I bargain with myself, “I’ll go in, buy my lunch, and if I come back out and the car is still here, I’ll wait for the driver.”

            I turn my father’s voice off and walk into the grocery store with a pounding heart, sweating hands, and every person I see I try to figure out if they belong to the station wagon.

I stand in front of the dairy section for about ten minutes. The radio I brought in with me squawks…it’s my Chief.

            “You making out okay? Are you lost?”

            “No, I’m fine. Just getting lunch.”

            “Okay, stop at the gas station and fuel up before you come back."  ”

            “Sure, not a problem.”

            “Don’t crash!”

            Now I’m thinking he knows. Could someone have called the station to report me? He’s testing me to see if I’ll tell him about the accident. Maybe he’s thinking, “If she’s just honest with me, we’ll give her another chance.” But the radio goes silent.

            I grab a yogurt, even though I know I won’t be able to bring myself to eat anything, and a diet ice tea and head to the check out. Even though I could easily have looked out the front windows of the store to see if the station wagon is still in the parking lot, I keep my head down, staring at my two little items as they move along the black belt.

            Outside the sun blinds me and I hold my breath as I scan the parking lot.

            The station wagon is gone. But there the knot in my stomach grows larger because I know it could be that someone saw me and will call the station.

             Of course, then I stop by the station to fill the ambulance up with gas. 

             I barely make it half a mile on the road before the engine starts to sputter, choke, and just as I pull it to the side of the road, the ambulance seizes, sighs, and dies. 

            The Chief and mechanic show up. 

            No one had told me that the ambulances take Diesel gas. 

            I had used unleaded gas. 

            Just as I thought destiny had opened the door to EMS, I wondered perhaps if these two stupid mistakes on my first day were signs I wasn't meant for EMS...but I refused to believe that.

           In my gut, I knew I was in the right place. 

           Sometimes were given signs to tell us we're on the wrong path...and sometimes were given obstacles to test our determination, our faith, our confidence. 

      In the next 4 years, I'd have many obstacles - my faith in myself, in my choices tested many times, but I after that first day, I never doubted I was where I belonged. I spent the next 4 years of loving a job so much I never once bitched about getting up at 4:30 in the morning to be to work by 6.  4 years of fighting over protocols and patient treatment and who's turn it was to clean the bathroom. 4 years of late calls and bullshit calls and doctors with attitudes and nurses who were bitches.  

I loved every minute. 

 Excerpt from Girl Medic: Confession of Chaos and Calamity Behind the Sirens.

Load N Go Or Stay N Pray?

Load and Go or Stay and Pray?

If you’re in EMS – you know what I mean by load n go or stay n pray.
If you’re not in EMS – a brief explanation; some medics prefer to get out of the house as fast as possible and “work the patient up” while they patient is in the ambulance. Load and Go medics bring as little equipment into the house as possible. Load the patient onto the litter (stretcher) and then Go out the door. Asking questions, taking vitals, doing medic type stuff on the way to the hospital
Stay n pray medics would rather pitch a tent (thus we called them Campers), haul all the equipment into the house and make a mess.
I really hate messes.
Back in my early days, when I was an EMT at Medic 108, we had a part time medic who was notoriously a Camper.
He was a nice guy – but man, he turned the simplest call into a Lifetime Original Movie. Campers like to spread all their equipment on the floor. They like to ask the patient 5 million questions. They like to ask the family 5 million questions. They like to gather up all the medications littered throughout the house and put them in a brown bag to transport with the patient (as taught to do in medic class).  They do every thing by the book, line for line, word for word.
County dispatch would always check in with the EMS crew if, after 20 minutes, they heard nothing from the crew. And thus, when we worked with the Camper, county was always checking in on us.
“Medic 108, for the third time today, Status Check?”
One time, and I’m not proud of this (I’m lying, I totally am proud of it) – the Camping Medic, myself, and another EMT (back in those days, we ran 2 EMTs and 1 medic – good times!) were on a call at the local nursing home that was just a few blocks from the hospital.
I don’t remember exactly what the call was, but I do remember it was a class three patient – nothing serious.
Of course, the Camper was dragging his feet, and actually left the room to go to the records room to make copies of some paperwork.
I don’t even think there was a conversation about what my EMT partner and I  were going to do – eye contact was all that was needed as he and I wheeled out the patient to the rig, drove two minutes to the hospital, dropped the patient off, gave a report to the ER nurse, replaced the dirty sheets on the stretcher with clean ones, and we were loading the stretcher back into the rig when country radio called us: “108 – could you return back to the nursing home? Apparently you forgot your tent.”

More EMS stories available in the book - Girl Medic: Confession of Chaos and Calamity Behind the Sirens. Available in ebook format on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

EMS: Heroes or Adrenaline Junkies?

Chillin After Dinner at SARS Substation 

I am was no hero.

I want to make that totally, unabashedly, clear.

As a matter of fact, I'm possibly very selfish.

Being a paramedic gave me back more than I put into it.

It's not an untruth to say I was attracted to it because I wanted to help people.

But the real truth is, the rush I got from the adrenalin of pushing a needle into a vein, or delivering a shock to a fluttering heart, or snaking my way into the crushed metal of a car, was the main attraction to the job.

Every medic, every EMT, every firefighter (if being honest) would tell you they love to hear a report of a major pile up on the turnpike or a four alarm fire with entrapment. When the words "put the helicopter on standby" or "fly the bird" are broadcast over the radio, our veins constrict; our hearts pound, our pupils dilate.
Yeah, baby, this is good shit.
It's not that we want suffering in the world, it's that, if there's got to be some tragedy going down, we want to be there so we can witness it first hand, so we can patch up the holes, so we can save a life.

So we have stories to tell.

When the summer nights are long and the calls are slow and we sit in a semi circle on white plastic chairs smoking cigarettes under a full moon, we have this to say:
"Remember that Easter we got hit out for the accident on 309? When we pulled up to the scene there were three bodies lying on the road? And Darin almost ran right over one of the bodies?"
"Remember that water rescue? We spent two days searching for those teenagers and then it turns out it was just a prank? Lori broke up with me because I missed our anniversary dinner."
"Remember that car rescue in front of the bank? The one where that Hilltown firefighter smelled like booze so the cops kicked him off scene?"
"Remember how Martin and Shoppy got into a fist fight during that rescue in front of the motorcycle shop because Shoppy forgot to crib the car?"
We are not heroes.
We are junkies.
Adrenaline junkies.
Story junkies.

 Excerpt from Girl Medic: Confession of Chaos and Calamity Behind the Sirens.