Just Another Day In the Life of A Paramedic
When GOD made Paramedics………
When the Lord made Paramedics, he was into his sixth day of overtime
When an angel appeared and said, “You’re doing a lot of fiddling around on this one.”
And the Lord said, “Have you read the specs on this order?
A paramedic has to be able to carry an injured person up a wet grassy
hill in the dark,
dodge stray bullets to reach a dying child unarmed,
enter homes the health inspector wouldn’t touch, and not wrinkle his uniform.”
“He has to be able to lift 3 times his own weight, crawl into wrecked
cars with barely enough room to move,
console a grieving mother as
he is doing CPR on a baby he knows will never breathe again.”
“He has to be in top mental condition at all times, running on no sleep,
black coffee and half eaten meals. And he has to have six pairs of hands.”
The angel shook her head slowly and said, “six pairs of hands…no way.”
“It’s not the hands that are causing me problems,” said the Lord,
“It’s the three pairs of eyes a medic has to have.”
“That’s on the standard model?” asked the angel.
The Lord nodded. “One pair that sees open sores as he’s drawing blood,
and asks the patient if they might be HIV positive,”
(When he already
knows and wishes he’d taken that accounting job.)
“Another pair here
in the side of his head for his partners’ safety.
And another pair of
eyes hear in front that can look reassuringly at a bleeding victim and say,
“You’ll be all right ma’am when he knows it isn’t so.”
“Lord,” said the angel, touching his sleeve, “ rest and work on this tomorrow.”
“I can’t,” said the Lord, “I already have a model that can talk a 250
pound drunk,
out from behind a steering wheel without incident
and feed
a family of five on a private service paycheck.”
The angel circled the model of the paramedic very slowly, “ Can it think?” she asked,
“You bet,” said the Lord. “It can tell you the symptoms of 100
illnesses; recite drug calculations in its sleep;
intubate,
defibrillate, medicate, and continue CPR nonstop over terrain that any
doctor… (or nurse)…would fear…and still keep its sense of humor.
This
medic also has phenomenal self-control. He can deal with the multi-victim
trauma,
coax a frightened elderly person to unlock their door,
comfort
a murder victim’s family, then read in the daily paper how paramedics
were unable to locate a house quickly enough, allowing a person to
die.
A house that had no street sign, no house numbers, no phone to call back.”
Finally the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek of
the paramedic,
“There’s a leak,” she pronounced. “I told you that you
were trying to put too much into this model.”
“That’s not a leak,” said the Lord, “It’s a tear.”
“What’s the tear for?’ asked the angel.
“It’s for bottled up emotions, for patients they’ve tried in vain to
save,
for commitment to hope that they will make a difference in
a person’s chance to survive, for life.”
“You’re a genius,” said the angel.
The Lord looked somber.
“I didn’t put it there,” said the Lord.
Author unknown
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