A Work in Progress

The other day we went for a medical alert call.  The good ol' "I've fallen and I can't get up." call.  These are some of my favorites.  Sometimes they are over fast.  The patient is embarrassed, we pick them up, put them in a chair and they thank us but want us to leave before the neighbors see the ambulance outside.  Sometimes we get to break stuff.  If all the doors are locked and the patient can't get to them to open them, things get broken which is always good fun. And, sometimes we get to stay a while. In the last year I've picked people off the ground many times, but one lady about four times alone.  I don't mind going to her house because she is fiery, funny, and likes to talk.  Boy does she like to talk.  The last time we were there we picked her up, cleared away the mess she had inadvertently made, took trash out and whistled at her new pet bird.  On this occasion, one of our volunteers who works in a big town was rushing things.  He coul

Yeah, I haven't written since June.  Not here at least.  Yeah, I don't really know why.  Yeah, I've kind of waited to get over my crisis of hating the job before I wrote again.  Yeah, sometimes I hate the best job in the world. It's kind of my biennial problem of getting a little burned out, working a little too much, and encountering a few too many people that just make me wonder where the world is heading.  Although, now I've feeling far more Zen about it  than I ever have.  Because, for the first time, I talked to people about my problem.  Not a professional (maybe next time) but I felt other people out about my misgivings and low and behold, it worked.  I found that I am certainly not alone in my feelings.  Also, if I need to benchmark myself against the best people, I have a few in mind. It's easy to lose sight of hope in this business of EMS.  At least I think so.  We do see a lot of silly things.  Sad things, gross things, dumb things.  It's the