Saved

I mentioned this several weeks ago at the end of a post. For those who don't know. Saved is a new show on TNT about the life of a urban paramedic. Alright...here's my take on it, it's TV people. I've read some heated posts on some other EMS mesage boards on how it portrays the job of a medic...a T-shirt wearing, gambling addicted, sex-in-the-back-of-the rig fuck-up of a son- paramedic. I might be in a monority in my line of work, but I happened to like the first show. Yeah, its a bit shaky writing and there were a few screw-ups like the medic not wearing gloves during a childbirth (yeah, thats really really gross) and giving Verapamil during a full arrest (This, I don't really know if thats wrong or not as my system does not use Verapamil, but its used to lower BP if I remember right, don;t full arrest already have low BP, so correct me if Im wrong, but why would you give this during a FA?), but what brand new show hasn't worked out all the kinks? Remember the first season of ER...or CSI? And as for the sex in the box, all I can say is yuck, thats one of the grossest places on earth, no matter how much germiside you use, but Im getting off subject. The humor was great, even if it was a bit outrageous. When the lunitic stole the truck, screaming over the loud-speaker, singing the song "Love Machine" I fell off the sofa. It was funny, I just kept trying to figure out how I would explain THAT to the on-duty supervisor. "Well, he took it, sir. No we didn't stop him. Well, because he was already on Calhoun Street and to be quite honest I can't run that fast. Can we LSD a whole ambulance or do we have to list everything indiviually?" (side note: a LSD is our Lost-Stolen-Damaged form) They did a great job portraying a relationship between partners. These partners are people you are in a cab of an ambulance for a good 1/3 of your time, who would know you better? I don't even spend that much time with my own family. In a sense, these people, like it or not, become your family. The see the same things you see, they feel the same feeling you have, they understand you. You do become close, that is, if you like the guy. I can tell you from experience, that my good partners, the ones that I respect, know me better than people Ive known for years.

Now as for the public opinion of medics because of a TV show, I'd rather be portrayed like the guy in Saved, than that of Nick Cage in "Bringing Out the Dead" He was depressing. Yeah, we all "see ghosts" driving by that house that we worked our first Cardiac Arrest, that first SIDs death, delivered our first child, got our first tube, worked that grusome trauma victim that was missing... something. But there is also humor in our job, we do get to play. I have alot of memories of just playing around. Like the post waking up a Skel, hanging out with the PD, playing with the K9 in a parking lot. When the city opened the New Bridge my partner and I sat at the base of the bridge sitting on top of a Fire Truck watching the fireworks with all the fire guys. Its not always rushing around, sometimes its just sitting still.

So to every one of us that refuses to watch the show because "it shows paramedics in a bad light", it's really not that bad. You might even *gulp* like it. Its entertainment, just like CSI doen't really show Crime Scene Investigation correctly all the time, or Grey's Anatomy's Seattle Grace Hospital doen't really exist.