On the Other Side
“The whole time I was thinking, here I am, carrying a woman who is nowhere near as sick as I am supposed to be, out to an ambulance. ”
I had an amazing experience the other night and I'm still trying to make sense of it all. A friend of mine is an EMT on the local volunteer rescue squad. She invited me to ride along one night. Now, I've spent a lot of time riding with police and fire units, but I had never ridden with an ambulance crew.
The first call was a man who'd had a stroke a few days earlier and whose blood sugar was dangerously low. But some dextrose or glucose — I'm not sure which it was — brought him around almost immediately.
The second call of the night was a woman who was clearly in distress. She was nauseous and dizzy and my friend was worried that she was having a heart attack. She was in the back of her house in a room too small for the gurney, so she had to be carried out on a stretcher. I ended up helping to carry her. And the whole time I was thinking, here I am, carrying a woman who is nowhere near as sick as I am supposed to be, out to an ambulance.
We took her, by chance, to the ER where I was first treated back in December. That's where I went when I was having symptoms of the brain tumor, although we didn't know that at the time. It was so strange being back there. I felt that I had somehow switched sides. I was hanging out with the other EMTs, the nurses and doctors. For them, it was just another night on the job; they were talking about vacations and other normal stuff. But then I would look into the cubicles and see the patients, the looks on their faces and on the faces of their loved ones. Looks of sheer terror, but also that confusion when you realize you have lost control of your life. It was weird to be on the outside looking in.
And then across the ER, I saw a familiar face. The doctor who had treated me that first night. The doctor who told me I had a brain tumor. I went up to reintroduce myself. I figured that with the number of patients he must see, he would not remember me. But to my surprise, he did. He said that he had wondered what had happened to me. He explained that ER doctors see people come through and then they go off somewhere and no one in the ER ever knows what happens to them.
When I last saw him, I had a brain tumor and had been given six months to live. I'm sure he was surprised to see me. We had a great talk. I told him what was happening with me. I don't quite know how to explain why that conversation meant so much to me, but it did.
When the shift was over, it was a hot Washington night, so I drove home with the windows open and the music blasting. It all was sort of overwhelming, being back in the ER, seeing the patients and the looks on their faces, and being, in their eyes, on the other side, one of the people who was supposed to help them. It was almost too much to make sense of. But I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
7:14 AM ET | 07-18-2006 | permalink
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