I am the ride

It was a long 36 hours. I worked all night, all day and then all night again. This earning extra money for a down payment on a new Xterra is really beginning to wear me down. But I trudge on with a picture of an Xterra on my bathroom mirror so that I'm reminded why I have been killing myself for the past month. I came home this AM and immediately crashed. I stayed down until almost 3 o'clock this afternoon. Was awakened by my roommates cat using my belly as a trampoline. That and the crashing that was my curtains on my bedroom window collapsing on the floor. They were just rigged up there anyways. I was warned that this job is a hard one. Sleepless nights, the death and sickness, the stupidity of people. My roommate tells me that I save lives. I always remind her that I don't really save them, for the most part I spend my days postponing the inevitable. I have been in EMS for close to three years, I can count on one hand how many lives I have ACTUALLY saved. Yes we can keep our patients alive for the 15 minutes we have them. I can CPAP a CHFer, I can administer Epinephrene to a child on anaphalytic shock, I can give Nitroglycerine to a man having an MI, I can lessen the pain of a Car crash victim with Morphine, but I cannot open a chest to give internal compressions, xray a neck to see it its broken, cat scan a head to know if the stroke is ischemic or hemorrhaging or thread an angiocath to clean a blocked blood vessel. I am the ride.