Being a paramedic was on my bucket list. Back when I made my bucket list, no one called it a bucket list. I wrote, "list of things I want to do before I die" which, is of course, synonymous with bucket list, but much wordier. And that, is me-I will find the wordiest way to say anything, so blogging is the perfect hobby for me. By writing it down and posting it, I feel important which is way better than the method I've been employing up till recently which is to talk about the aspects of my work that I find interesting, hilarious, ridiculous, moving, disgusting, tough, and merely stupid. However, many of my listeners, i.e., my family, my friends, other folks in line at Wal-Mart, might not WANT to hear about every detail of what working in the fire service is like. But if you found your way to this blog, well, you asked for it.
When I made out my bucket list, I only had one kid. I now have three and my youngest is 16, and my oldest is now 22. Obviously, I made my list awhile ago. I've been doing this for a fair amount of time, but there are old geezers who have been at it much longer than I have. Maybe they should have retired by now, but the same quality that makes us very good at what we do also keeps us from leaving when we should have said, "Adios" perhaps years ago. Some call it tenacity. My husband calls it stubbornness.
I called this blog "Living the dream" because it's something we, along with the cops we often cross paths with, will say in response to, "How're you doing?" It's meant to be sarcastic to the listener, but secretly most of us mean it. It's like when you're ten years old and really, you're too old to be into pretending anymore, but you're not ready to give up your "cops and robbers" roleplaying. You act all cool and nonchalant on the outside like, "yeah, this stuff, I could take it or leave it" when actually, on the inside, you can't wait for another chance to jump into the heat of the moment. Those of you in this line of work know exactly what I'm talking about.
We don't call ourselves heroes, and in the adult parts of our brains, we don't feel comfortable when other people describe us that way. But secretly, in the part of our brain that fantasizes about winning the lottery, having sex with the hottest person we can conjure, or being promoted to the "big dog" position, we ruminate on being heroes. Because it's kinda cool in the same manner that being a rich, sex-having with-only-gorgeous-people-while-issuing-orders-to-everyone-below-us, bad- ass is cool.
But the reality is, we rarely are heroes in the "heroic" sense. Few of us will pull children from burning buildings. Most of us will transport elderly people with difficulty breathing, ten times a day. That's not to say we don't have the opportunity to act in a heroic fashion, because after all, if you weigh 350 pounds and you see a woman who weighs 135 pounds about to pull you from the ambulance, in the cot that is suspended three feet above the ground, you hope for sure that she at least has heroic strength. But usually, our opportunities to be heroes manifest themselves in the day to day chance to just be nice to people who can oftentimes be annoying as all hell.
Everyone outside of the fire service, and the police force, thinks that if a person calls for an ambulance, or a fire truck, that person is just a really sane and nice person who desperately needs help. Not true. We have a saying that 10% of the population generates 90% of the calls. Most of these folks probably have disease processes and suffer from the affliction of being old as dirt, but a good many of them just suffer from idiocy. They've been coughing for 3 days and decide at three in the morning, on the 4th day, that having their spouses drive them to the hospital, or later in the day, to their primary physician, is not worth the wait. This is a true emergency that only ambulance personnel can handle. This constitutes a good many of our calls. Before you get your tax paying balls in an uproar, relax because if you want us ready at a moment's notice for your true emergency, we have to be ready at a moment's notice for your idiot neighbor's pseudo emergency because no one has come up with a test yet to divide the 911 abusers from the legitimate people who truly need our assistance. So guess what, your taxes have to pay us to be at everyone's beck and call.
I realize I sound cynical and in some ways I am, but presently I am able to check my cynicism long enough to still be compassionate to the overwhelming majority of my patients and my co-workers, for that matter. When the dramatic lady whose vitals are indicating she is JUST FINE is clutching at her oxygen mask because she thinks I'm going to remove it, and I want to smack her silly, yet I manage to reassure her benignly that no one is going to take her precious oxygen away, when I really want to tell her to get a grip for Christ's sake, then I know I've got at least a few more years left in this career. A healthy dose of cynicism, or put another way, distance, helps to keep us from getting roped into someone else's drama, or emergency, so that we can remain clear headed. Or that's what I keep telling myself....
But seriously, this line of work is hugely entertaining and rewarding. How many of you, other than farmers and zookeepers, can say that crossing paths with farm animals, even inside people's homes, is part of your job description? How many of you can say that you know of people who keep 50 years worth of trash lined on the sides of every room in their homes and you haven't even watched "Hoarders" on TV? We don't swap gossip at the water fountain, but we will at the side of a highway while shoveling kitty litter onto the fuel leaking out of the massive tank of the 18 wheeler that just swerved to avoid a deer and instead plowed a huge swath of earth bigger than your house while destroying the truck, and the driver's job, in the process.
We love telling our "war stories" which you may actually find entertaining whether you're in this line or work or not. My intent is to share my war stories, the moving ones, the ones where I sound/look/act like an idiot, the unbelievable, the horrible and the hilarious ones. I hope you find it as entertaining as I do.
When I made out my bucket list, I only had one kid. I now have three and my youngest is 16, and my oldest is now 22. Obviously, I made my list awhile ago. I've been doing this for a fair amount of time, but there are old geezers who have been at it much longer than I have. Maybe they should have retired by now, but the same quality that makes us very good at what we do also keeps us from leaving when we should have said, "Adios" perhaps years ago. Some call it tenacity. My husband calls it stubbornness.
I called this blog "Living the dream" because it's something we, along with the cops we often cross paths with, will say in response to, "How're you doing?" It's meant to be sarcastic to the listener, but secretly most of us mean it. It's like when you're ten years old and really, you're too old to be into pretending anymore, but you're not ready to give up your "cops and robbers" roleplaying. You act all cool and nonchalant on the outside like, "yeah, this stuff, I could take it or leave it" when actually, on the inside, you can't wait for another chance to jump into the heat of the moment. Those of you in this line of work know exactly what I'm talking about.
We don't call ourselves heroes, and in the adult parts of our brains, we don't feel comfortable when other people describe us that way. But secretly, in the part of our brain that fantasizes about winning the lottery, having sex with the hottest person we can conjure, or being promoted to the "big dog" position, we ruminate on being heroes. Because it's kinda cool in the same manner that being a rich, sex-having with-only-gorgeous-people-while-issuing-orders-to-everyone-below-us, bad- ass is cool.
But the reality is, we rarely are heroes in the "heroic" sense. Few of us will pull children from burning buildings. Most of us will transport elderly people with difficulty breathing, ten times a day. That's not to say we don't have the opportunity to act in a heroic fashion, because after all, if you weigh 350 pounds and you see a woman who weighs 135 pounds about to pull you from the ambulance, in the cot that is suspended three feet above the ground, you hope for sure that she at least has heroic strength. But usually, our opportunities to be heroes manifest themselves in the day to day chance to just be nice to people who can oftentimes be annoying as all hell.
Everyone outside of the fire service, and the police force, thinks that if a person calls for an ambulance, or a fire truck, that person is just a really sane and nice person who desperately needs help. Not true. We have a saying that 10% of the population generates 90% of the calls. Most of these folks probably have disease processes and suffer from the affliction of being old as dirt, but a good many of them just suffer from idiocy. They've been coughing for 3 days and decide at three in the morning, on the 4th day, that having their spouses drive them to the hospital, or later in the day, to their primary physician, is not worth the wait. This is a true emergency that only ambulance personnel can handle. This constitutes a good many of our calls. Before you get your tax paying balls in an uproar, relax because if you want us ready at a moment's notice for your true emergency, we have to be ready at a moment's notice for your idiot neighbor's pseudo emergency because no one has come up with a test yet to divide the 911 abusers from the legitimate people who truly need our assistance. So guess what, your taxes have to pay us to be at everyone's beck and call.
I realize I sound cynical and in some ways I am, but presently I am able to check my cynicism long enough to still be compassionate to the overwhelming majority of my patients and my co-workers, for that matter. When the dramatic lady whose vitals are indicating she is JUST FINE is clutching at her oxygen mask because she thinks I'm going to remove it, and I want to smack her silly, yet I manage to reassure her benignly that no one is going to take her precious oxygen away, when I really want to tell her to get a grip for Christ's sake, then I know I've got at least a few more years left in this career. A healthy dose of cynicism, or put another way, distance, helps to keep us from getting roped into someone else's drama, or emergency, so that we can remain clear headed. Or that's what I keep telling myself....
But seriously, this line of work is hugely entertaining and rewarding. How many of you, other than farmers and zookeepers, can say that crossing paths with farm animals, even inside people's homes, is part of your job description? How many of you can say that you know of people who keep 50 years worth of trash lined on the sides of every room in their homes and you haven't even watched "Hoarders" on TV? We don't swap gossip at the water fountain, but we will at the side of a highway while shoveling kitty litter onto the fuel leaking out of the massive tank of the 18 wheeler that just swerved to avoid a deer and instead plowed a huge swath of earth bigger than your house while destroying the truck, and the driver's job, in the process.
We love telling our "war stories" which you may actually find entertaining whether you're in this line or work or not. My intent is to share my war stories, the moving ones, the ones where I sound/look/act like an idiot, the unbelievable, the horrible and the hilarious ones. I hope you find it as entertaining as I do.
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