Comfort

Last shift before three days off. I come to work feeling like it is my last day, like I am about ready to retire after twenty years. I fight back the nostaligia.

I am working with another medic today -- a woman, one of our best medics who has recently gone part-time and returned to her old job of selling retail. She says she is happy with her choice. She feels like she has a life again. Less stress, better attitude toward life. She tells me of two other medics who are leaving. One of our best male medics is leaving to take a construction job. A woman is leaving to train as a pharamcist. Another medic is going part-time to become a massage therapist.

On the positive side, an old EMT of ours is returning. A good guy we worked together for a year several years ago, he got fed up with the work, then bounced around from several different jobs, payroll clerk, mental health care worker, lab technician, then a security guard/EMT, who after seeing ambulance crews come into his company, got nostalgic for the streets and came back. Plus he'd just bought a house, and needed to make more money, so he is on the schedule quite a lot. I told him I would sign up to fill some of the open shifts with him.

I generally don't like working double medic. I like to be in charge all the time. When you work double medic, you alternate calls. But it is nice to spend a day visiting with people you don't often work with.

We do four calls. The first is for a new onset afib. The woman does a great job. It is a simple call requiring no more intervention that just an IV and 12 lead ECG, but she is very thorough and assuring to the patient, making him feel comfortable, explaining everything to him, making him feel that he is in good hands, which he is. He thanks us at the hospital.

Later we do a man whith cerebral palsy who cuts his head on a towell dispenser and gets a small lac, a fifteen year old with an anger problem, and a medic alarm that an old woman pushed by mistake, and then walked out of her bathroom to find two paramedics and four firefighters standing in her hallway. "Isn't that the gosh darndest thing?" she said. "Well, its good to know you're on the job, that you are there for an old lady." And she laughed. "Isn't that the gosh darndest thing?"

We all wished her happy holidays.

It was quiet for the rest of the shift.

Back at the base, the supervisor gave me a letter of commendation, a certificate, a key chain and a pin all commending my going to Mississippi. The medic I worked with today had also gone and she got the same thing. It was nice. The letter had a personal note on it from the director of special operations down in Mississippi. But when we looked at the signatures on the framable certificate, which included the company President, we saw they were printed on. Still it was nice. Not that I am planning on hanging it on my wall.

On the way out I talked to the medic who is leaving for a construction job. He said he was going to continue to work part-time, he said he just felt he needed a change, needed to start taking care of himself, needed something with a more secure future.

I am lucky becuase I have the suburban shift. I love being a medic, but there are days when I don't. More of those days occur when I work in the city. Those are the days when I am more likely to feel degraded. Over all though, I think that over the years I have reached a certain level of comfort, I passed over the burn out phase. I understand what the job is about, the good and the bad and I am realistic about it. For all its drawbacks, I think it beats most anything else.

Now I'm looking at three days off. I would go home and drink a few beers to celebrate, but I am too tired. I think I will watch a little TV, have a snack, then lay my tired head down.