the beginning

Since everything has to start somewhere.......here is the beginning.

I suppose there should be some sort of explanation as to why this exists in the first place. I'm not really sure as to what exactly that answer is. A good friend of mine suggested it. Right now, I see it as a place to vent whatever my mental pressure cooker has in it.

I think everyone would agree that we all live in a very screwed-up world. Those of us that work out in the real world, on the street, see that very clearly. I should probably clarify something here. I am a paramedic.

disclaimer: I can't speak for police, firefighters, firemedics, or anyone else who deals with humanity for that matter. Just me, take it or leave it. You do have a back button you know. Now, back to the scheduled program....

I am proud of that fact and I hate it at the same time. It has made me have a very distorted view of humanity. I haven't always hated people. Once upon a time, I wanted to be a doctor. I thought that taking care of people was a good thing. I thought that helping another person was a rewarding thing to do. The eventual pay wouldn't be bad either. Now, I doubt I could be paid enough to do it. People simply aren't worth the amount of time I would have to dedicate to them. This also creates a paradox.

As bad as I dislike people in general, I hate shitty medicine. People put their trust in someone to take care of their health and, more often than people know, the ball gets dropped. Sometimes it's the doctor who doesn't do things right, the hospital that refuses to staff enough people for greed, or the nurse who is either too over-worked due to said hospital or is too ignorant to know better. Notice I said ignorant not stupid. There is a difference although stupid also works in some cases.

Basically, I do my best at a profession that deals with people I don't like but I don't want anyone else to take my place because they wouldn't do it right. Frued(sp?) would have a field day with me.

I have to interject my personal philosophy here. EMS does not, I repeat, does NOT save lives. We buy time. Period. We are all terminal. The reaper always wins and we all die, it's just a question of when. We slow down the process of dying and get them to someone that can hopefully fix them, providing their insurance is good. (But that is for another day.)

Too many people get into EMS thinking that they will save lives only to have a streak of people die on them. They then go crazy, get depressed, start various unhealthy things and such. Or, they like the blinking lights and screaming sirens, which gets old after a while by the way, and haven't really got a clue as to what it is really about. Same end result which can be summed up with one word, burnout.

I have noticed something though. It isn't the really bad things that get witnessed that end careers most of the time. Don't get me wrong, really bad experiences can end careers and do. Look at the statistics of how many paramedics that worked in the New York area on 9/11 are still on the job. The answer is not many and I can understand that. Most times, it is the mind numbing BS that goes on day after day that really causes the trouble.

Now that that is all out of the way, I probably should put something here but I think I have said enough for one day. I'm pretty much stalling because I'm at the hardest part of this entire blog thing. Pushing the publish button for the first time. I have never done something like this before and it is a bit daunting. I do hope that someone reads this. Comments are always welcome whether you agree with me or not. Oh well, Tim, here goes.