Looking Back at Myself

At times its hard to remember why I fell in love with medicine, I have been doing this longer than anyone else my age (having gotten my CNA license before my drivers license). There are nights that I question why I was crazy enough to willingly submit myself to the things I do.

But it doesn't take me too long to step back and think about where I was, who I was and where I have come from since then.

This is a picture of me at the ripe ole age of seventeen. I was young, open-minded, excited, and ambitious. In this photo, I was doing what I loved most in the world. Unlike 'normal' seventeen year olds, I didn't waste my Fridays and Saturdays dating, they were spent with a first aid kit. I had been a volunteer EMT at a BMX track since I had turned 15, and was using all the skills I had learned in my EMT-B class at the track. As time passed and I learned more, I was trusted more and my patients would come to me after their crashes and I loved to bandage them up. I had this dream of the medic I would one day be, of how all the injuries I was bandaging up now would have trained me for the gory MVA's I would see later on in my life.

I had seen a lot in just a short while, from head injuries, fractured skulls, broken legs, concussions and heaven knows how many cases of 'road rash' (which was personally my favorite, it was something that didn't require a visit to your friendly neighborhood hospital). BMX parents who worked in hospitals would bring the supplies (remember it was a volunteer medic position) and I would fix everyone who needed the help. The ambulance and fire service in the area of the track and I got to know each other pretty well, and before too long we could transport patients and make it look like a scene from a movie. However, it wasn't just a teenager with a passion to heal people, I was taking care of people that I knew and loved.

On the indoor track, where I spent most my time playing medic, there was what is termed a 'sweeper', which is a flat turn on a BMX track. (A burm is a rounded turn on the track.) Our sweeper was placed behind the third turn, and the track coiled itself nicely around the small equestrian center. However, one night, a new volunteer was sent to the sweeper, and when the dirt gets too wet, too dry, or even too over swept, it becomes dangerous.

An adult male about 35 years old crashed, hard. We didn't see the crash, but we could see his bike flying out from under him and into the air. Grabbing my jump kit we ran to the sweeper and yelled to the volunteers to stop the riders while we assessed the patient. At this time the only other person with first responder skills was my dad, so the two of us jumped into action. I immediately saw that we was lying on his side and as his wife ran to him he fell onto his back. This was when I realized that he was no responding.

" John Doe! John Doe!' I yelled to him, patting his chest. He didn't reply so I immediately instructed another racer nearby to hold the C-spine for me while I moved onto the rest of my assessment, testing to see if he was responsive to pain. He wasn't.

"I need someone to call 911!" My dad yelled. I leaned into my patient and felt to see if they were breathing, they were, then I leaned in and checked for a pulse, it too was there. Adrenaline pumped through my veins and I looked to my patient as I tried to check AVPU again, as I did so, I noticed that a visible hematoma was forming around his cheekbone, and within the seconds it took us to determine the need for 911 his face was becoming bruised. "I need 911!" My dad yelled again.

Adrenaline pumped through my veins like ice and I continued onto a head-to-toe assessment, ust like I had been trained to do. We came to learn from this that not only did he have a facial injury, but was tender around his ribs. As the ambulance pulled into the building and the fire fighters brought out a backboard I obtained the C-spine once more and waited for the direction of the fire fighters to place him on it. We did and as we did so we literally ran to the rig and I explained my basic assessment of my patient.

Two weeks later I got a call from his wife, he fractured his zygomaticus, 2 ribs and did have a hefty bleed in his cheekbone. If it wasn't for quick responders, he may not have even gotten onto an ambulance. It was one of my first real saves as an EMT, even if it wasn't completely my save.

So on nights like tonight that are so slow you can feel your dinner metabolising, and you can hear the nurses heartbeat, I think back to back when. Things have changed since then, even if its only been a few years, and I quickly realize that in a few years from now I'll have more awesome stories to share, and I'll look back at the me now and laugh. It's all a growing process, even when its slow.

________

P.S. I am very aware these are HORRIBLE pictures of myself and I have contemplated NOT posting these, but they were the only ones I have from this era, and they worked all too well.