EMS Truth or Dare

EMS Truth or dare

Ok... So over my years in EMS I have been asked a lot of questions about what its REALLY like. One of you suggested I write a blog about EMS. So being a smart ass I picked common EMS misconceptions and or truths. 

  

We all mainline coffee

               In my experience Mountain Dew (diet or regular) seems to be an EMS staple more than coffee. I think it’s to do with coffee getting cold quick and our calls usually coming with in the first bite or sip of something warm. Every. Damn. Time. And mountain dew is pretty awesome. SCIENCE!

Coffee break.. when you take a break from coffee this happens.

We all watch Chicago fire or Grays anatomy

               Meh.. Some of us do. Most of us find the amped up, unrealistic drama on the shows a little too much. The group favorite for no real reason seems to be NCIS. It seems no medic can pass up that show. I think its Abby.

Seriously. Abby Rules.

We all have twisted senses of humor... usually at inappropriate times. 

               Motherfucking truth, but with a reason. We may whisper “come on you bastard, show yourself” While trying to intubate a patient. We aren’t talking to the patient but their vocal cords. We may make Frankenstein jokes while coaxing electrical current through a heart to tease it back to life. We may even push D50 on the hypoglycemic patient then step back and call out “ARISE AND WALK SON!!!” It happens. It’s not disrespect. It’s a coping mechanism. If we walked around looking very clearly at the terrified family members, near dead patient and the situations we get called to we would probably all be scared shitless all the time and frozen in place. By cursing stubborn vocal cords we can remind ourselves to focus on the issue at hand and not the father with the heart that stopped depending on that tube being placed right.  Frankenstein jokes when we are close to getting someone back help stop the panic from welling up that we might lose this nice grandma’s heart beat with 15 grandkids again. We are the personality type that will fake it until the call is done then we will collapse into a puddle of medic Jell-O. 

Usually your partner...

We are Jocular with each other. 

               Yeah, this one is true but again for a reason. We aren’t all morons who take nothing seriously. We all are pretty good at reading situations quickly and figuring out the best what to make contact. That being said if one of us had a rough call and I wander up with my precious moments doll expression on and ask “ Aaaarrreee Youuuu Ooooookkkkkaaaaayyyy?” in that whispery therapist voice that grates on the nerves that person will shut the fuck right down. It’s too intent, too real and feels too invasive. Now if I wander up and say “holy hell, that call sounded fucked up! Was he crammed in the bathtub again?” that person is likely to laugh nod and respond easing into talking about the rough part of the call. We aren’t being insensitive to the patient we are offering an easier less intimidating way for our partners to access the emotions of the call.  We aren’t stupid. We have a method to our madness. 

 

We all hook up

               Nope. Gah. Sorry. Not because we aren’t an attractive group.. we usually are but you spend easily 16 hours in a small space with someone day in and day out. Listening to their problems, snores, family issues, jokes, and other things you become like a family. A Brotherhood (the genderless one) is probably the closest description.

Not only are you with that person a lot you are with them in high pressure, sometimes dangerous and/or ridiculous situations. You are in that spot frequently and with no forward warning. So a whole level of got your back trust builds there. This isn’t to say we don’t annoy the living hell out of each other sometimes. We totally do but it becomes in a pestering your sibling sort of way. (One of the many EMS perks is the ability to tell your partner to shut the fuck up without HR getting involved. We all tend to be the get it out and let it go personality types.) So no, no matter how many firemen calendars you may own they are all still like brothers or sisters to us so hook ups would be incestuous and gross. 

We are all crazy lead foot drivers

               For the most part this is true. If you ever want to rob a bank and need a getaway driver recruit a medic. Not only do we know all the back roads and routes by heart we practice in a heavy unwieldy front wheel drive truck. Put us in a car with muscle and no one can catch us.

Bringing out the Dead is a representation of EMS

               Sort of. It’s a fabulous example of burn out. This can happen to someone who doesn’t debrief after calls or holds traumatic calls close to the vest until it builds up like a game of Tetris from hell. A bad call for one of us is usually close to an episode in any saw movie for most people. If we call it a bad call its fricking BAD. We for the most part are good about talking to our partners, friends or family about calls but even with debriefings some can and will haunt you your whole career.

We all want to save the world

               Nope. We want to make a difference where we can. Saving the world is for people with capes and iron men suits. We are the personality type who see something horrible happening and want to help make it better. Not fix it. Not erase it from happening. We want to help that person through it. That’s how we cope. We jump in and try to control the chaos. That’s more the motivation for a lot of us. Order from Chaos. We know realistically that there are people we can never save. They are too far gone, too deeply addicted, too injured to bring back. To those we offer comfort. To the ones we can we smooth the chaos and try to make it a little better.

We are all fitness freaks

               HAHAHAHahahahaha… Nope. Most of us are active, yes. Most of us take an interest in our body and our health. Some of that is because our livelihood depends on our ability to fetch and carry. Most of it is because day in day out we witness first-hand what poor nutrition, drugs, alcohol and bad genetics can do to the human body. Me personally I have Asthma. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was in my 20s. Up until that point I thought running always meant chest pain for the first mile. I have seen enough people with asthma not conditioning their lungs run into some serious issues that lead to their inevitable end. That’s definite motivation to keep things running as smoothly as possible.

No we are not all health nuts either. To balance the health side we all work under a huge sleep debt, high stress, pressure, time from family, interrupted meals, gas station food, interrupted or missed phone calls, and all kinds of chaotic distractions. In the end we hope it all balances out by the end of the day. Or week... Maybe month.. next year?

  

We are all easy going

               I think most of us learn to be this way given time. There are all types of personalities in EMS. Just like your work there are type A personalities, a-holes, wonder kids, ricky rescues and people putting in their time. However, if going on a whole lot of 911 calls teaches you anything its what’s really worth getting worked up over. Which in the end is not all that much. Problems can be talked through. Arguments discussed. We tend to take long views of problems and try to see the other person’s perspective on situations. In the end this makes us pretty damn mellow.  Now, when we are driving lights and sirens and some idiot won’t move… Then we hulk out. But generally we all tend to be pretty chill. 

        

Over all its a pretty awesome, hard, rewarding, exhausting job. We may have all come to it for different reasons but we all stick with it for the same reason...

Easy out for speeding tickets. 

(No.. Not really) 

      I will leave you with the Lounge's ten commandments of EMS

Did I miss anything? 

Pilfering Pixar

Pilfering Pixar

      Ok before I start let me lay down this disclaimer. I love me some Pixar. I love what they do and because I have a young kid I have watched most of their movies over and over and over until I feel like the CIA is trying to tell me something. (Do we even have a CIA still? You would think I would check these things but—OOOOoo Shiny!!) That being said I want to point something out that probably a lot of you didn’t notice. 

 Pixar is making you more literate.

               When Pixar first started making their films they were pretty sly about this fact. It wasn’t really discussed much. As time has gone on they have become more open about it.

Back before children’s movies got popular (you know when we all rode dinosaurs to work and subjugated animals to be our devices) Children read books. Like real books with alliterative similes and paragraphs. (The Fuck you say!) With the dawn of movies, cartoons and such some of the big constants in libraries have faded into the middle ground only to be resurrected by stubborn nerds like me. Then came Pixar.

 Do you know the tale of The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson?  Not your generation? Ohhh but you do know this story especially if you watched Frozen.

god damn it.. I am learning.

 Miss out on the velveteen rabbit? Not if you watched Toy story.

He was loved so much is fur.. I mean paint rubbed off.

The country mouse and the City mouse? Yep.. That one was Cars.

Poor Mater..

Hmm… Little girl goes through a magic closet door to a land of beasts and animals who talk… Monsters Inc. Meet the Narnia story.

Minus the walking through Furs because Peta likes to complain.

Shrek Meet the Lord of the Rings,

Frodo and  bilbo.. Meet Shrek and Donkey

 Tangled... yep Rapunzel.(that one is obvious)

Now with extra frying pan

Up? Blend island of lost horizon with wizard of oz.

No cone of shame here.

Epic.. Hello adventures of Tom Thumb and or Thumbelina.

 One of my favorites... Despicable me? I’d bet my bottom dollar that’s based off of Annie. Lets see... Crabby lonely man with an empire of his own is forced to adopt little girls and falls in love with them. Minions instead of employees and yer done.

             Pixar has stayed pretty close to the formula since the beginning and have gotten people to yet again connect with classic literature that was timeless. For that I fucking love them. That they have done it in such a charming way with some new modernizations just makes them all the more awesome in my book.

 Thanks Pixar.

The Armor of Ghosts

The girl who ran from ghosts

             There once was a girl who ran from the ghosts of her past. The ghosts harried her as she ran as fast as she could in what ever direction offered the least resistance. They clung in her hair and whispered fears of terrors past. They grasped her ears whispering her deepest fears as truths.

      She ran until her legs gave out and the path choked off to a thicket. There surrounded by the ancient trees she collapsed, her body unwilling to carry her farther. The ghosts swarmed. They licked her ears with lies. They pounded her heart with doubts. They showed her visions of her failures until her skin felt as heavy as stone.

          Slowly she ran deeper into herself, her legs unable to flee so her mind took flight withdrew and built a wall of stone from her skin. Twisted her heart until the beat of it seemed as distant and cold as the moon. Farther away she retreated to the deepest reaches of her thoughts and became stone.


        Alone and bleak a human figure crouched in exhaustion. The ghosts swirled and twirled about her as leaves before a storm. Whispering her fears to her as truths. Her nightmares as rewards. For a long time the girl remained in her prison. So long she forgot the feeling of sunlight on her face. Wind on her skin. The ghosts still danced around her sliding past her awareness like a cool breeze. She slowly unfurled her thoughts and reached out to the sensation. The slip of fingers on marble, distant, cool but tenable. slowly she reached out beyond the ghosts to the wind. The real wind moving through the near by thicket and bringing the smells of clean green things. The ghosts whispers rose and she reached out to pluck the smallest one from her mind merging the whispers with the sounds of the wind sighing in the trees. Slowly, painstakingly, the ghosts were harvested one by one and she twined them into the wind. The tone of whispers and sighs all becoming something new and lovely. An ache with the promise of clean green things to come.


           As the last ghost was plucked she slowly began to feel the sun slip across her shoulders, warming her skin. The breeze pulling gently at her hair. The sensations startled her, scared her. So overwhelming after the cool distance of stone. The whispers and sighs pulled around her like a gentle current urging her to slide, slip, sway. No longer stone, she reached out to the sensation of her sun warmed skin. The ghosts slid beneath her skin and became a silent armour of lessons learned and fears conquered. Lightly made of light, she stood. She slowly walked into the woods in her armour made of ghosts listening to the secret promise of clean green things.

Stupid Boobs

Stupid Boobs.    

               I grew up a hard core tomboy. I rough housed with the boys, played capture the flag like a motherfucking boss, played pick up games of rink hockey and baseball, and trolled the woods behind our house for animals and maybe pirate treasure. (hey, somethings never change) I lived in pants or shorts, loved nothing more than getting lost in the woods and coming home filthy and exhausted. 

         My mom is a southern woman, though shes trained the accent out of herself with near fanatical devotion. She attended the Villa and had cotillions and such. My older sister was the girly girl. Big blond hair, delicate features and loved dressing up. So needless to say when it came to me my mom was at a total loss. Her previous experience with my two brothers helped but she refused to apply boy logic to her daughter. And while I pushed back at the time I am very glad she stood her ground. She encouraged me to try figure skating which I was fairly good at. Taught me to sew, to cook, the beauty of colors and manners. Taught me that knowledge was elegance and a key to where you wanted to go. Occasionally  I would remember those skills but by and large I spend a lot of time hanging out with the guys, getting dirty, wrestling and climbing trees. 

Truth.

        As I neared my teen years I remained a tomboy. I had equal parts female and male friends. I was maybe closer with a few of the male ones than the female ones. Eventually my body decided to advance and then things changed. Most of my male friends started to act weird. Some of them refused to blindly accept me as an honorary guy anymore. Boobs had happened and that’s confusing for everyone. I wore lots of sports bras to hopefully slow the growth and hide any progress. I took to loose clothing. My closest guy friends adamantly refused to acknowledge anything had changed and I loved them for it. 

            My females friends became closer and we found more common ground. I traveled abroad and learned that elegance and fashion are a unisex equation. The men in Europe chose styles to reflect personality not to define gender. The women did this also but with a permissive sensuality that has nothing necessarily to do with being girly. It offered an alternative option, one that I embraced. Slowly the woman and the tomboy figured their shit out and made a somewhat shaky truce. I continued to be a tomboy. I fought, taught martial arts, weapon trained, rock climbed and learned to read the outdoors. But I also figured out boobs were cool. Make up didn’t mean blue eye shadow and pink lipstick (shut it, it was the late 80’s) and hair could be functionally short and still feminine.      

Pass.

       

I grew up in theater and was signed by an agent in high school. She pushed hard for me to try modeling and I gave in. I did a few photo shoots and some anti-drug campaign for Pepsi and then ran like hell. My first job I brought a soda and a protein bar to the set. It was booked for a six hour gig after a day of school so I thought I would be prepared. I sat down in the prep room and opened my homework and grabbed my power bar. The looks I had got from all the ‘models’ who had been starving themselves for years could have set my skin on fire. One, mistaking my dinner for bulimia started trying to trade tips. I did the shoot and got the hell out never to return. 

               I eventually landed in emergency medicine, which is a fairly male dominated field. I wear mannish like uniforms, I am accepted and viewed (as most females are in this field) as a neutral gender with in the EMS family. Not girly but not a dude.. More like a sister. I still train with martial arts. I am more at home in leggings and a ninja turtles t shirt than a dress. I frequently get sweaty, dirty and get lost in the woods. SOo… Not all that much has changed. I just added a few new skills.

               I am telling you all of these things as a back story. I was talking with an old friend of mine a few days ago. We were discussing what makes someone attractive and/or beautiful. She was of the opinion that its an absolute. There is a sort of check list and if you have or attain that you’re in the “club”. In shape, good hair, nice face, not a horrible individual..etc. I came from a different point of viewing beauty as inconstant.  Any woman who catches herself in the mirror first thing after a shitty night of sleep knows what I mean. I grew up around guys and in an industry that values marketability. I saw first hand guys find one girl attractive for one thing and find the same thing in another repelling. I saw lovely girls universally rejected by most guys for no appreciable reason. I watched casting directors reject absolutely gorgeous women because to them they were weird looking.  I watched people over time see what was once beautiful and hasn’t changed now is not attractive at all. In my head it’s a moment to moment descriptive. Angelina Jolie could wander into somewhere and I would think god damn she is beautiful. She could then punch a kitten (don’t ask me where she got one.. it just appeared and my head is weird) and suddenly shes even uglier than possible because of her cruelty. 

HOLYSHIT! I am not alone!!

Maybe I am the only chick to have this view. As I have mentioned.. I am weird. Because of this perspective dating and life definitions have been… odd. I work in a career with uniforms and a family like connection. Most of my hobbies require equipment and/or padding, sweating, books or fresh air. None of those are specifically beauty minded. I don’t have a physical “type”. I am fascinated by the back story and who the person is at their core. The physical components are not really defined and I tend to notice them later and view them as bonuses.  For my own self image, while I know people probably wont start gathering pitch forks and torches when I wander in somewhere, I also don’t hold the mental view of myself from the times I am at my absolute best as a baseline. Someone miiight blow their whistle and try to toss the low self esteem flag on the field for that one but slow your roll. I know my value. 

I don’t think many of you who know me would call me shy or not out spoken. Sure I second guess myself at times and have things I am self conscious about but growing up the way I did cemented in a strong foundation for independence and knowing who I am. I just don't place any trust/value in someone seeing me as attractive. Its a slippery slope and one that can change fast. (So I stick with funny and smartass, those are fairly consistent.)  what ever the reason, I am happy to have formed this opinion.  I would hate to forever be mentally checking 'The List' to see if I qualified.

Seriously google this shit. Its depressing.

          For me,  my judgements of beauty are based on memories of my childhood. Of things that come with stability and are made of firmer descriptive.  Of laughter, smiles, strengths, watching each others backs, trust and most important of all humor. Of the boys who knew me at my core, accepted me grimy sweaty and smelly, and remained with me even when my boobs showed up and the other boys teased them. 

To me that’s Hot. 

WERK!