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In the beginning...

Hard and Fast.  That's how you do appropriate CPR.  Hard and fast is also how working in the field of emergency medicine usually feels. 

My first shift as an emergency medical technician was in August 2002.  I was going to save the world.  All people were good.  All people were created equal.  People were going to appreciate what we could do to save their lives.  I was only going to do it for a year and then go to PA school.  Emergency Medicine wasn't going to change me.  I was going to have a career... healthy relationships... a husband... children... a house with a picket fence and a dog...

I was naive.  

I still see the blue eyes of the old gentleman laying on the side of the road.  Staring up at me blankly.  My first trauma arrest.  He took a pickup truck doing about 55 mph into the driver side of his car.  His bloodied head laying on his wife's lap.  

I see every pediatric code I was ever involved in.

I still hear my name being screamed by a devestated mother as we tried to revive her 30 ish year old son.

I remember the house fires.  I know what burnt flesh smells like.  And a gi bleed... and strep throat... and bacterial vaginosis...

I never went to PA school.  I did become a Registered Nurse.  I did get off the bus and into the Emergency Department.  I did become a nurse practitioner.  I did get my doctorate and I did become an Emergency Nurse Practitioner.  I'm involved nationally in organizaitaons that represent what I do.  I teach NP and PA students.  

I was naive.

This life changes you.  That emergency life.  Body fluids of others are no longer a big deal.  I've worn them all.  Now I hear blood curdling screams and block them out so I may take care of my patients like they're the most important person in the department... even if they only have the sniffles.  I can be in one room doing CPR on a young person and walk out and into another to do a pelvic exam.  I can only begin to tell you where my fingers have been.

Strange coping mechanisms.  Warped sense of humor.  Unhealthy relationships.  If you know someone living that emergency life, you probably recognize at least one of these traits in them.  We're not bad people.  Quite the opposite.  We're just trying to live among the normal while dealing with the best and worst of humanity every time we go to work.  Trying to make a difference.  Trying to help.  Maybe even saving a life. That emergency life seeps into our veins and into our real lives.

Every shift has a story.  We forget a lot of them.  We have to in order to go back every day.  To have a career, to live that emergency life, we have to forget the details to mantain some sense of sanity.  A colleague and I recently discussed this.  I told him I once thought about writing down the stories.  He's nearing the end of his career... I'm nearing the middle.  He encouraged me to write them down.  So that's what I'm doing....  sharing with you a small piece of 

That Emergency Life.

Dr. D


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