Category: Outside Life

The People Who Make Up My Life

My wife joined my life journey unexpectedly, and has remained a steadfast and constant source of compassion and comfort.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how people move in and out of my life. Quickly. Slowly. Suddenly and abruptly. Gradually or almost without noticing. The amount of time they spend in my life, in my physical presence seems completely unrelated to the amount of time they remain in my conscious and subconscious mind for days, weeks, and years after we part ways. Did they become a part of my life because I was born into a family they were already a key part of, as with my Gramma, and so I never knew a world without her as I grew up, forming every early memory and becoming the person I am today with so many of her fingerprints all over my way of thinking, of being, how I interact with people, how I think about the world around me? Or were they a coworker who became like a family member to me, a brother or sister, who I could trust with my life in a heartbeat, and who would trust me with theirs just the same? Were they a patient? Brought into my life by maybe the worst part of theirs, expecting me to solve their most dire problem at a moment’s notice, together for perhaps only minutes or an hour, and gone again just as fast.

Continue reading “The People Who Make Up My Life” →

I owe some of you an apology…

Throughout my EMS career, I’ve often wondered why a certain subset of people call 911 so often. Seemingly minor concerns are blown way out of proportion, and, throwing logic and reason to the wind, they demand that the patient be taken to a specialty ER for examination by a specially trained physician.

Who are these people? What subset of the patient population could I be referring to?

Continue reading “I owe some of you an apology…” →

Bringing New Life Into the World

storkI don’t often share much about my personal life through this blog, but I am elated to share with you, my readers, that my wife and I are expecting our first child, a boy, due in January 2018! Admittedly, this is a very happy, hectic, exciting time in our lives, and I can’t help but think back on some of the times that I had the opportunity to share in the beginning of a new life in my EMS career.

I’ve had the privilege of assisting with the delivery of 4 babies in my career. I know plenty of medics who go their entire careers without a single field delivery. I guess I’m just lucky? I do feel that it’s a privilege. Very few calls are so high-acuity, with the potential for SO many things to go wrong, as a childbirth. At the same time, very few calls can be SO thrilling and amazing and emotional when everything goes right and you end up with a healthy baby to hand over to Mom. Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, doctors are much better at predicting due dates and monitoring pregnancies as they progress, so field deliveries have become much less common than they were in decades past. However, sometimes things catch you by surprise, sometimes mothers (for some reason) elect to forgo prenatal care, and sometimes it’s just chance that a mother winds up delivering a baby at home or in an ambulance. For the record, if I never have another field delivery in my career, I’d be OK with that. It’s a stressful, messy, high-acuity call, and having been a part of 4 of them, I can say that I truly do appreciate the miracle of life.

Continue reading “Bringing New Life Into the World” →

Knowing When You’ll Die

mt-neboFirstly, I’d like to apologize for not posting to the VEB blog for a couple months. The holidays kind of ran away from me and I have been particularly busy at work. Thank you for remaining a reader and subscriber, to those of you who are still with me. This post is a sermon I delivered at my synagogue back in October. Some of the references in this sermon are from the Hebrew Torah, (or the “Old Testament” as many of you may know it) and are easily found using Google if you need a refresher or are unfamiliar. For the most part, it’s not particularly religious, it’s more philosophical, and I talk a bit about EMS in it as well, so I hope you enjoy it. A number of people have requested that I share this online for re-reading or being able to share it elsewhere. If you do share it, please remember to credit back to me at this blog or by email. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, I always welcome them at dave@ventricularescape.com or by leaving a comment below the post here. Thanks again for reading – and Happy New Year!

Continue reading “Knowing When You’ll Die” →

The Socially Awkward Medic

03ff4d26895997.5635dddabbf33I’m awkward. I’m introverted. I struggle sometimes with depression and anxiety. I’ve been, at one time or another, diagnosed with clinical depression, major depression, social anxiety, social phobia, and an anger disorder. You might be reading this paragraph and wondering aloud, “how the hell does he function as a paramedic?” – and you’re not alone. I wonder this sometimes myself.

There is a part of me that is unsure of myself, self-doubt abounds, especially when I’ve made a mistake, or think I’ve made a mistake. I try to always do right by my patients, to ease their pain, settle their mind, make them more comfortable. Some patients are unhappy no matter what I do. Some patients die no matter what I do. I’ve been in EMS for about 10 years now, and I’m starting to accept this reality, that dissatisfaction and death are a regular part of my job, and that there’s not always anything I can do about it except smile, do my best, and then move on to the next emergency. Continue reading “The Socially Awkward Medic” →

End of Shift

This post authored by Ventricular Escape Beats contributor siren911.

bootsI may be hanging up my boots. I was diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2007 but was probably infected long before that , perhaps even before I was a Medic in 1996. It was diagnosed as Chronic Tertiary (or end stage) neurological Lyme disease because of the length of time that I had had it, that it was in my CSF and brain and that I was as far, stage wise as I could be. I honestly didn’t take it as seriously as I should have. After all, I got sick every 4 years and always recovered. Continue reading “End of Shift” →

New Home, New Site!

Welcome to the new home of my EMS-related thoughts and rantings! For those of you who followed me on The Nightshift Squirrel, thank you so much for making the jump to this site. I’m not entirely sure what happened to the guys I was working with on that site – they’re still active on facebook, but have completely stopped updating the site and have stopped responding to my emails and messages. So, rather than just continue to manage their facebook page for them, I’ve decided to step out on my own. I plan to recruit a couple other EMS and public safety type folks to contribute here, as well.

For those of you who are just joining us out in TV land, WELCOME!! Thanks for joining me. This should be an exciting adventure. I plan to post as often as I can, but in all reality, the life of a paramedic is an unpredictable one, and some months I might post several times and other months you might not hear from me. If YOU would like to contribute, please email me at dave@ventricularescape.com and I’ll happily add you as a contributor to the blog or the facebook page, whichever you’re interested in.

Take a look around – I’ve reposted my favorite blog posts here, and I plan on migrating over some of my other, older entries, too. Stay tuned!

Best Job I’ve Ever Had

 

ambulanceThere are some nights that I wonder how I ever got myself into this career. There are other nights that I wonder how I ever thought I had a meaningful job before I got into EMS. Most nights are a blend of both extremes. Toned out in the middle of the night for an MVC on the interstate. A drunk driver has crashed his car into a guardrail. Continue reading “Best Job I’ve Ever Had” →