Our instructor stood there, arms folded across his chest, suporrted by his pot belly. He looked at us; going through, row by row. "Now, let me tell you my story." He took two steps and turned toward his class. "I was in Paramedic school. I was riding with the seinor instructor and two medics." He stopped and looked in the void air and recalled memory lane. "Thats all I remember. It was in Spokane. we got a call for home delivery. 16 year old girl just found out she was pregant; 25 weeks. We wasn't living at home, she was living with her boyfriend," he used his fingers to make quotation marks for the, 'boyfriend', "We get there and she delivered the baby in the toliet. She delivered at 25 weeks. we cut the cord and they said 'oh it's at 25 weeks, not worth resucitating.' corse I'm standing there with no idea what 's going on, I'm new at this, and we bring the baby and the mom uptp the OR. We showed the nures the baby, and she said, 'oh you did the right thing...it wouldn't have been worth it.' But the old nurses...watch the old nurses, they've been around, and they *blank* well know what's going on, they know when something is wrong. So we handed off the mother and gave the child to the nurses at the nursery. Once that was done and we're standing around in the OR....what do we do when we are in the OR?"
The class responded to his question that he answered earlier, "Run!"
"Your right I did! I didn't want to be there!" the folded arms were now visual aid to his story, " I ran to the ER! Once in the ER I sat there and did my report." He mimicked what a cartoon might look like scribbling away at a piece of paper. " Then I heard a helicopter land, thought, oh that's odd, and kept writing my report. Well, I look and I see a TN and neo-natal nurse run past me. So I quickly finished my report haded it off to a tech and went up to OR. They bundled that 25 week old baby up and took it to Holy Heart. They resuscitated that baby and that baby lived for three days in neo-natal intensive care unit. Then the baby died. "
Our eyes were fixed on our storyteller, our mouths were open and we were hushed.
"I sat in the Medical officer's office. He asked me, would I have done anything different in retrospect? Gang, if it at all resembles a human...resuscitate. If it at all resembles a human, resuscitate." His arms were folded back over his chest again. He stood there and looked out at us once again. "I've made some mistakes for you already..."
He turned to cue the slide for the next subject, a quiet, "thank you," came out from someone in the class.
...if it at all resembles a human resuscitate.
There are some things that textbook just can't tell you.
Experience, they say, is the best teacher, but rarely can you afford the tuition. Though textbook can't tell you everything, let other's field trip experiences be our classroom lessons. Be it in ethics of EMS, life choices, relational decisions...anything! May we view our textbook of other people's costly experiences and fellow students field trips as a elite opportunity to learn and avoid our critical fails.
"Life is a test, pass it." I've heard a friend quote. If life be a test and critical fails present, for most of us our critical fails won't end our test, for some of us it will.
Our Instructor is there, coaching and waiting for us. He's handing out all the hints, the clues and the answers! But will we take it and head them? Or will we pay our own dear price? When such a price has already been paid?
On the cross, it was paid in full. It was paid for you and me. It's a free gift. I'd take it....I'm broke, I can't afford the price. But He can, and He did.
Thank you.
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. " - Romans 6.23
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