Being a Medic, the roller coaster(part 1)

 After my divorce, I had a lot of extra time on my hands, so I decided to go to EMT school. I enrolled in the EMT program at Ogeechee Technical College in Statesboro with a seasoned medic as my instructor. I have never been a model student and was not looking forward to taking tests and writing papers. I was sure that all the other students were 10 years younger than me and were going to breeze through. I will never forget the first time we had class, we were shown a video of a construction worker who was killed by a large cement wall that fell on him. After the wall fell only his boots could be seen from under the wall. Our instructor told us that if we were not able to stand seeing things like this then we should find another profession. 

The class was mostly instruction from the book, there were also videos we watched and practical hands-on tasks that we had to perform. We would learn about different skills and then perform them on each other or sometimes on a dummy. We learned about vehicle extrication and then a guy who worked for the state brought his trailer out and we all got to try all of the extrication equipment. We shattered glass with the porcelain from a broken spark plug, and we used the "Jaws of Life", spreaders, saws, and halligan tools. We had some smaller people in the class and it was so cool to see them use the tools. 

When you are going through EMT school you also have to do clinical rides on ambulances and perform clinical hours in the ER. There were 2 counties that we could do clinical rides in, one was a busy service and the other was on the slower side. My first EMS ride was at the busy service to a motor vehicle collision in the middle of nowhere. It seemed to take forever to get there and it was virtually all for a bumper tap. With the slow county service, my first ride was through the parking lot to the nursing home behind the station. But at that service, I worked rollover crashes, a deformed spinal injury, cardiac arrests, and other exciting calls. In that county, I also spent a lot of time in the hospital ER. The first cardiac arrest that came in I did CPR for what seemed like forever, the doctor tried everything he could think of and even asked the other staff for ideas before finally calling it. At the time I thought that doctor was messing with me, but what that doctor was doing was teaching me. Every life you treat should be treated with everything you've got, you should never give up easily. 

After we went through all the academics, the clinical hours, the hands-on, and the final class test we had to go through the state/national registry. The next testing available was in Waycross Ga which is 115 miles from where I live. The written portion of the test was done on Friday evening and the practical stations were done on Saturday morning. Back when I took the EMT-I test it was all on bubble sheets and took 2-3 weeks to get your results. I went into the written test fairly confident with a slight hint of nervousness. I walked out of the test and knew WITHOUT A DOUBT that I failed that test. I returned to my hotel where I found my instructor waiting, "Well? He said". I looked him in the eye and told him that I FAILED that test. He said, no you didn't, people that swear that they failed...passed. I said well, maybe in the past but not this time. 

So with the fresh failure of my written test in my head, I went to the multiple practical station testing on Saturday morning. I saw the examiners waiting for us and 1 person stuck out to me. I had read an article on the Director of EMS for Ft. Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield Walter Nichols, and there he was in front of me. Oh great, no pressure there(where's the closest hole I can crawl into). Well, it turns out that Walter was the evaluator for the hardest station in my opinion, and that was Trauma. We were advised that we would go through each station and after we went through our practical attempt the instructor was to ask "Is that all?" We were told that this did not mean that we forgot something and it did not mean that we didn't forget anything. So hey you might have been good to go and....you might not have been. It was only at the end that you found out if you passed everything or not. As luck would have it, I passed everything and did not have to retest anything. 

After 2 weeks I was helping a buddy(who was also an EMT) from work move some stuff in his apartment. My cell phone rang and it was my instructor. He said, "How's it going?" I said well, I guess that depends on how this conversation goes. He said, well I told you that you were going to pass, he said not only did you pass but you got the second-highest score in the class. I almost fell to my knees, I was in shock and I was elated. I guess I wasn't as dumb as I thought I was. 

The chaos persists, but so do I...