by Jeff Moore

Created on: June 10, 2008

Fresh Air

At first it was the simple things I savored. Standing on a highway in rush hour, pulling some poor guy from his car that was heaped up against the overpass support. Sometimes a semi would go by and it would suck the wind from my lungs. I loved working in the middle of roads, walking across them where cars usually travelled. It gave me a surge of adrenaline to be so near my own death while trying to prevent someone else's. I liked the smell of diesel as we worked on someone in the back of a truck with the doors open. I liked being in the back of a portable ER and having the world just a step away. My favorite part was the lights. Not during the day but at night, in the pitch dark, as we screamed down the road. I loved the flashing blue and red, shining off the ditches, throwing garish flashes across fields and dark roads. When we were out in the boonies and there were no cars around, we would kill the wailing siren and fly. The cabin of the truck sealed, the hulking thing became graceful and silent at 90 miles per hour as just our flashing lights heralded us, the ones who could save your life.

It was those simple things that mattered at first, why I loved being a medic. But as I worked my way through school, I discovered that I had a natural talent when it came to being a paramedic. Early in my internship, the period when you act as a paramedic in every capacity while an instructor watches over your shoulder, my save rates went up. I had a knack for every part of being a paramedic, and my confidence grew.
During this time I received my first serious call. The dispatcher came across the radio with a "conscious choking person". A person choking means that there is no air getting into their body. No air in the body means no oxygen in the blood or the organs. No air equals death. We were lucky that the guy was only a mile away at a Sirloin Stockade. The dispatcher told us when we were en route that the manger had tried, unsuccessfully, to use the Heimlich on the patient. I looked at Dave, my preceptor, and he looked at me and gave a half smile. "This is it, your first real call" he said. My hands started to sweat a little, and I felt my heart start to thump.
One of the first things you learn about being a paramedic is to be calm. You learn that when you walk on to a scene that everyone looks to you for direction. If there is panic, you have to calm it. So no matter how bad something is, no matter how bad you want to crap your pants, you have to act like

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