EMS week.

We find ourselves in the process of preparing for EMS week. This week was designed to remind the public to thank their local EMTs, Paramedics and Fire Fighters. Why?

People already have been asking me why, and let me explain how my day can go. Let me explain to you some calls that I personally have responded to. Or calls that my friends, or my sister have responded to.

I work 12 hour days. My morning starts at 1100 (11 am, for the non military/EMS folk). I start my shift my checking my ambulance. I check for all my equipment. I ensure that I have all things that I need in case YOU have an emergency. In case your mom gets hurt. Or your nephew. Or your daughter.

You may check your desk when you get to work. You may check to make sure that you have a pen, and a back up pen. Paper, stabler, highlighters. If you find yourself in sudden need of a pen and you don't have one, well, you may delay turning in some assignment to your boss. You may need to make the walk of shame to your office mate to borrow her pen. You may need to run to the supply closet to grab one.

If I don't check I ambulance and I don't realize that I don't have oxygen. Someone could die. If I don't have Narcan, someone could successfully overdose, that I could have prevented.

I check out my ambulance, I check to make sure my uniform is clean and ready to meet today. Knowing that today I could be covered in blood, or vomit, or urine or poop. I check to make sure my backup uniform is in my locker.

I need to be well rested for my shift. If you go to work tired, you may accidentally order 10 boxes of staplers, instead of one. If I go to work tired, I can miscalculate a medication and cause injury or death to another human being.

Throughout the twelve hours you have no idea what to expect. You may be called to a roll over accident. Upon arriving to the scene, you see that one person is lying on the pavement, seemingly in tact. When you get closer, you realize that the person is dead. And the person is family.

You could be called to a transfer, a small child going to a specialize children's hospital. Along the way, you find out that this 7 year old boy whose feet and ankles and hands are swollen is going to die. To find out he's going to die because he took too many tylonel pills because he didn't know how to tell someone that his father was beating his mother, and he wanted out. You realize that this child killed himself, and will die an agonizing death.

You could get called to a cat in a tree. When you show up, a 'cat in a tree' turns out to be a drunk college student who is dressed up as Cat in the Hat and his frat brothers put him in a tree whilst he was passed out.

While dropping off at one of the downtown hospitals, you pull the bed out of the back of the ambulance right as a hoodlum across the street begins shooting at the ER bay where you are now parked. Knowing that you are easily in the line of fire, but really having no place to go.

You're pulling overtime at the local marathon, thinking that with this extra pay, you may actually get to pay all your bills this month. And while you're budgeting two bombs explode, killing 3 and injuring more than you can count. Literally body parts are everywhere. Blood, carnage. Injury. so much for an overtime shift.

You may get called to a legal blood draw. Somebody was in an accident where someone was killed. That someone was their wife of 40 years. The driver was drunk. You have to keep him calm enough to draw the blood that will convict him of vehicular homicide.

You may get called to an "injury accident". When you roll on scene, you find a car engine. No car. Just a car engine. You find 3 bodies. Only one is still intact. As you look around to try to find out all the body parts you can and mark them for your report, you note a car seat. There's no child inside. And you know you won't be sleeping tonight.

You go on a psych transfer. A young girl who is suicidal. During the 2 hour drive to a state mental hospital, she tells you that she was sold by her parents into a sex-slave position so that he family's debt could be repaid. When she escaped, her family was murdered.

You could get called to a suicide. you arrive and find your step-dad who called you two days ago and you didn't answer because you were working. Now you know you never can.

You could get called to a CPR in progress. And after working together for 6 weeks, you are a well-oiled team. You do not need to talk, you do not talk. And by the time you leave the hospital, that patient who 25 minutes before was dead, is sitting up and talking. His wife, crying.

You know that when you're out with your family and something happens in the community could pull you away from your family at a moments notice. You know that your 12 hour shift could turn into a 16 hour shift because a riot draws all ambulances in the city to their knees.


These careers are difficult because you are constantly giving and giving and giving of yourself, and you rarely have anything put back into your reserves of emotional strength, your spirit, your compassion and love. And you know that if you don't refill somehow, you can't help those you are charged with caring for that day.

In an office, you may have an accountant you trust more then anyone else. An assistant that you spend most of your day with. On the ambulance, you share a 3foot box for 48 hours a day with one person. You see them more then your husband, more then your wife. They become your "work wife." They see you at your worst. they see you at your best. Even if your personalities clash and you hate them. You learn to trust them with your life. Because your life for 12 hours a day, is in their hands. They are the one beside you in the ghetto of the city, watching your back. They are the one that pull you back and tell you that the body in that room is your step dad. Your partner is the only one who knows what it was like to tell that baby's mother that her son would never breath again, because he was there with you. You find yourselves spending time outside of work, because they get you. They get why this week your just too tired emotionally to do anything big.

We celebrate these workers next week because they do a job that they love. They do this job because they want to help. Really help someone. They want to fix problems in the world.

We celebrate them because they do the work they love, even though they are told that they make $200 a month too much to qualify for food stamps.

So love your EMS personnel next week. They need it. They deserve it. They've earned it.