Will the good outweigh the bad??

One of the glorious things about being a paramedic is what I am doing right now. I am writing a blog, while at work. However, that doesn't mean that at any second the tones might go off and interrupt my train of thought. But I wanted to take a minute to explain my handle, "Disgruntled Paramedic".

We all start out in this job the same. I started volunteering for the local fire department when I was 15. Full of energy, craving excitement and adrenaline and truly hoping to make a difference in this crazy world. Like most new employees I have seen trickle in here, I once thought the crusty old medics, that we used to call Crispy because they were so burnt out, were heartless and needed to go away. I will never get like that I used to think.

For the first few years, I remembered every name and face of every call I went on. How could you not remember Mrs. So and so? I would ask.

And perhaps had I stayed in the small community I started in, I would have stayed the nice niave medic I started out as. But I did not.

I have spent a decade and a half dealing with the scum of the earth. The only people that have it worse than us in the scum department is cops. Those guys deserve a dang medal just for showing up to work each day. Nine out of ten people that call us do not need an ambulance. They are either too lazy to drive themselves to a doctor, too poor to pay for the doctor, or stupid to understand the word emergency.

By that same token, my best friend who is an ER nurse says almost all their worst patients come in by private vehicle, not wanting to cause a scene or "put anybody out." Something is majorly wrong with the system.

Needless to say, without going on my rant about taxis vs. ambulances and why i shouldn't have to take a self defense course to be a medic, I have managed to burn myself out. I now make the most inappropiate (albeit, HILARIOUS) jokes at others expense, cringe when I get the patient info of nausea and vomiting for an hour, (For real?? Drink some sprite and camp out on the couch!) or have to pull out my handy hankie with perfume on it as I near a transient.

Truth is, if you don't get that sick sense of humor or the ability to weed out the riff raff from the people who truly need you, you will go stark raving mad! So next time a nurse, doc, medic, cop or firefighter says something so utterly offensive you want to puke, remember the crap they have seen and have to deal with and that without this outlet they would collapse as a human being.

I have seen so many new people with their positive attitudes  and promise of never getting crispy break from the sight of trauma and pain and the inhumanities we see. They have no source of outlet and feel they fail if they give into it. These people last a year or two then move on to something else. The dream shattered.

So yes I am disgruntled and crispy, but don't confuse that with hatred of my job or the human race. I am simply surviving.

 Cartoon by Steve Barry