The Lights and Sirens

Preface

My name's not important in this job no one will remember it anyway, I'm a Paramedic I'm 22 years old and I work at an EMS service that is the second largest other than our city service. My company covers roughly 18 townships/"villages" including an international airport. You may be asking how I'm a paramedic so young, well let me tell you. In high school I went to a trade school where you could learn welding, auto body, cosmetology, public safety, etc. As you can guess I chose public safety, I got to go to school for 4 hours and trade for the other 4. It's probably one of the best decisions I made. 2 days after my 16th birthday I was a PA state certified EMT-B, too bad you can't really function on your own until your 18. So I'd 3rd ride with my dad (who's a paramedic) until I was old enough to be on my own.
So 2 years passed, I can function on my own, and I get my first big girl job. I work happily for about 2 years being your obligatory BLS bitch. Non-Emergency Transports, Nets, transfers whatever you want to call them, one after the other. Tripsheet after tripsheet, psych after psych, and every once and a while I got to be cool and do something fun with my medic partner. I work somewhere where how do I put this the nice way the government assisted housing never would disappoint, domestics, shootings, stabbing, the occasional car accident that done fucked themselves up real good.
Finally after enough of being the side kick. (For all the whackers out there you can TMFMS later) I decided to put my BLS power to the side and trade that in for a new shiny paramedic patch. After a year of school, countless mental break downs, 2 resignation letters, and almost getting kicked out about once a week for an "attitude" problem which was really just my EMS sarcasm. I finally did it and graduated. Now to put that into perspective about 1800 hours in 10 months, not including my full time and part time EMT job, overtime, and the countless late nights studying, it was tiring! And after so many people but my dad and a few close friends told me I was too young and not mature enough, I proved them wrong and did it. I smiled all the way to the station and told the District Cheif I fucking did it, but was told "don't get such a big head you have a long way to go." Well I studied my ass off and worked hard as fuck for the 5 minutes of happiness, but that wasn't enough. So now I have been a medic for about a year now, and in EMS in general for about 6-7 years. So this here is going to be some encounters from my EMT-Paramedic days. Some of these will be funny, weird, but some of these are the areas in my brain so deep and dark, I only go there when I need a reminder of how fragile life can be, or my sleeping mind brings me too, or a trigger something so small sends me spiraling into that dark place. PTSD is real and it effects first responders on the daily. So here we go.....