The Rookie

This beautiful white and orange truck is now officially my new part-time office

I attended my orientation last Sunday and after signing pages and pages and pages of paperwork, I received my uniform and became an official Cary EMS Volunteer Rookie. Which basically means I will be a third rider on the ambulance until I am released as a second rider (where I officially get assigned a partner for a shift and carry full responsibility of everything that happens on the truck). It is expected that we will complete our rookie program in 9-12 months and we have a binder full of responsibilities we are expected to learn and have signed off by our training officers on a regular basis. I am responsible for completing (at a minimum) 5 twelve hour shifts a month and applying all my BLS skills during calls.  It all feels very surreal to me… like I am living someone else’s life and I might wake up one day and realize that it was all a dream – but it’s not and that just gets me ever more excited to start this part of my future.

Now that I was able to live and experience one of my biggest fears, I think I want to share it with the world.

Medicine has always been something I have loved. Helping people, the blood and gore, the lifestyle… everything about medicine has always been fascinating to me and for as long as I can remember I always wanted to do something in the medical field. When I decided to go the EMS route I was always very excited and for the most part knew I would LOVE it! I knew the blood and gore would not (for the most part) phase me and that I had the stomach for it. But one thing that terrified me was the emotional aspect of the job itself. How would I handle death? What if our patient dies in our hands (not because of anything we did), but be alive one second and died the next second.  So to try and experience all different types of calls I signed up to ride-a-long with EMS as an observer. To get a true feel for what they do, how they live and how to deal with day to day calls and trauma. In all my ride-a-longs I got a chance to experience what EMS deals with on about 95% of the calls. Minor allergic reaction, possible broken bone, nursing home transfer, shortness of breath…etc but what I really wanted to experience was trauma. Not because I am sick and twisted (well OK maybe a little), but because I wanted to KNOW that I could handle the stress and emotions that comes with that sort of call. I wanted to be 100% sure before deciding to dedicate the rest of my life to this career that I could handle it.

Well the day had arrived – I had decided to sign up for one last ride-a-long as an observer (pretty much hands off) before becoming a volunteer. I wanted to do it to help with my anxiety and just because I love spending the day with EMS. It was 7:30AM in the morning and we were only about 30 minutes in to our shift when a call came in. Motor Vehicle Accident is what the screen said. We jumped in the truck and made our way to the call. When we arrived I realized that the call was Motorcycle vs SUV and that the motorcycle patient was on the ground and Fire had already started CPR. This was going to be a scoop and run sort of call and that is exactly what we did. As soon as we were in the truck I took over breathing for the patient and we were on our way to the hospital. In the next 30+ minutes it took us to arrive at the hospital I switched between doing CPR and bagging the patient (we would switch duties about every 5-8 minutes) and when we arrived at the hospital, the Dr’s pronounced our patient and called the time of death.

We returned to our (now demolished) truck and started cleaning it out. That is when I noticed different coping mechanisms in effect. One of the EMT’s drenched her self in to cleaning and was ever so lightly humming a song under her breath. The other EMT went back in to the hospital and was talking to people and I, well I decided to do both. I did not have a trued and tried coping mechanism, so I decided to give both a try to see which (if any) would work for me. To no surprise to me, the quite route is what I preferred. I grabbed a bottle of cleaner and slapped on some gloves and got to cleaning. I had time to think about what happened, how I handled the call and also had time to grieve the loss of a life. But I also learned that I had passed my ultimate test.

I know that I will NEVER forget that call.  20 years from now I will remember the call down to every detail and will re-live the call over and over again, but I will also cherish it because it was THE call that helped me prove to myself that I could DO IT… and that through stress, grief, fear…etc I have what it takes to be there for my patients in the best and worst moments of their lives.

After having such a crappy start to my week, I decided yesterday day I am done… I am done being unhappy and depressed (of course I am not saying it wont ever happen again), but this time/today I WIN… I decided to think of things that make me happy and things that I should be grateful for and decided to make a list (if you have not figured it by now, I LOVE making lists)…

I am thankful for…

1- My amazing/funny/loving husband and bestfriend.

2- My four legged kids and their unconditional love.

3- My health.

4- My to do lists (yes, they drive me crazy at times but they also calm me down)

5- My cozy bed and the comfort it brings me.

6- My job and the security it offers me/us.

7- Education and the opportunity to learn.

8- to be given the opportunity to help others.

9- Being surrounded by caring and loving people.

10 – Air Conditioning.

11- Technology.

12…. and many many more!!!

I know I won’t always have AWESOME days and won’t always be HAPPY, but going forward I have decided that I will try and will try HARD. Depression sucks – it is such a lonely dark place to be in, I would not wish it upon my worst enemy. I also know that I do not have control over everything that happens in my life, but I want to make sure that for those things that I do have control over, keep me happy and healthy. I fought very hard to get out of my depression in the first place and having the feeling that things were going back to the dark hell they were was very scary. I don’t want to be that person, that wife, that friend, that co-worker, that daughter… I and my loved one’s deserve better, they deserve to have the bubbly, sometimes funny, loving, caring Poontater in their life.

So, I am going to make a promise to myself that I will try VERY VERY hard to push through feeling like I did earlier this week and try to keep my head up high above the dark sinking hole.

Trigger…

I think I might have found the trigger to my last little anxiety attack. I am not able to make any sense of it or even figure out the whys, but at least I have an idea of what my trigger might be.

The first time I had my attack (or as I like to call it, a visit from the elephant on my chest) was the night after I took my first test. It started in class and by the time I went home I felt like I was shaking, could not catch my breathe (even though my respiration’s were normal) and remember telling Rob that I just felt really weird and kind of freaked out. I went to bed that night and tried to get some sleep and the feelings continued for another week, until I finally made an appointment with my Dr to switch medications. See I had spent an entire week trying to figure out what triggered the feelings I had and could not put my

finger on it, until last night. I was fine while I was taking my test and all the way through, up until the waiting began to receive my test results. I felt a family of elephants make their way on to my chest and started getting the shaky/sweaty feeling all over again. I figured it would all go away as soon as I found that I did well and passed my test, but I was wrong (I did pass and got a pretty decent score), but the feelings never went away. My mind starting going a million miles an hour and all these questions starting popping up – which questions did I miss? Why didn’t I do better? Should I have studied more?…etc

When I got home last night, I googled different ways to deal with triggers that cause anxiety and most, if not all of them suggested thinking about the trigger it self and trying to figure out the underlying cause. So that is what I have been trying to do… trying to dig deep in to what part of a test, or what idea behind a test is inviting this family of elephant’s to come and visit me. I think it is going to be a work in progress, but for now I have managed to not let the feelings escalate in to an attack and I feel like I have some control over them.

I have had anxiety issues for a long time, but they have usually been social issues, so this aspect of anxiety is all knew to me and has been a little scary. I know it is something I can and will overcome, but for now it seems to be a struggle I am going to have to deal with on a daily basis.

If you deal or have dealt with anxiety issues of your own, I would love to hear some things you have done or do to help you get through them.