Can I still call myself "Paramedic"?

Well it official...I am leaving the ambualnce full time and going into the controlled chaos of the Emergency Room. I wrote about this several posts ago, while I was still out in injury. This is not a choice I made because I wanted to, it was because I had to. I am a 26 year old paramedic that at my young age had back surgery. Back in March, I started having pain. Pain I had been familar with since I was 15, but at 15 I was not carting 80lbs of gear and lifting gurneys up flights of stairs. So I made the trip to my spine doc I had been dreading since the day I put on the uniform. Surgery, he said, could fix me, but if I wanted to keep walking like a normal person, EMS is not where I needed to be. So after four months, during the recovery period of my spine post surgery, thinking about what to do now, I came up with it. I would quit the job I have grown to love, go back into the ER, and start respiratory therapy school.

EMS is not what I wanted to do when I began college. I was a fine art major in college, learning all the finer points of photography. It was, however, photography that got me into EMS. When I was studying, my mother worked in the Trauma Center. For my final, our assignment was a photo essay. I did my essay in the ER. After having all the papers signed and the rules laid down (really only one...No patients). I spent the next 13 weeks shooting in the ER, getting to know the night shift and becoming like a little sister to all the staff. My mom moved to the Pediatric ER during the shoot, but I would still come around get a couple rolls of film off and go home. I was there every weekend shooting. I learned that they cut all the clothes off of trauma patients and was told by the staff if I ever came in as a drunk MVA they would cut my clothes off no matter how bad I was injured. I watched as the cracked chests, fixed broken limbs, and intubabted asthma patients. And I fell in love with it. The mess, the chaos, the blood. Yes, I was hooked. So that summer, I started in the ER as a EDT. After a few years, the medics pushed my into the streets. S here I am, a busted up and broken medic, having to go a few steps backwards to go forwards.

I will still be on the ambulance part time. I worked to hard to get through the hell that is paramedic school ( I lost 30lbs and never got more than 3-4 hours of sleep a night during the almost two years of school) to just give it up compleatly. I do love it. I love the patients, working with the other public servants (police fire my co-workers), driving the three ton truck compleate with lights and sirens, like I stole it. Where else can you drive on the wrong side of the road, and get away with it? I will continue to play paramedic as much as possible. And I will continue to blog about my experiences.