"Yo EMT, you like your job?"

So this evening as the night began, I was waiting outside of KFC for my partner to load up on fried chicken. A local gentleman walked past and shouted, "Yo EMT, you like your job?" In all honesty I was thrilled that the guy referred to me as an EMT and not ambulance driver. Then again, he was just able to read the patch on my shoulder. My reply was "Would you like to be doing this?" The man just laughed and kept on walking. 

But then I began to ponder. Was he asking a serious question or was he just another asshole who felt like he had something important to say? He more than likely had nothing important to say and was just looking to be heard as most people. These are the same people who think it's funny to jump out in the road and flag you down just to see if you'll stop. Lately for these people I've been stopping and getting out to ask them what their emergency is. They immediately clam up with fear and admit that they were "joking" around. I give them the ol', "how would you feel if we were going to help your grandma, and we had to stop because you were joking around?" I walk back to my truck trying not to think of my non stop back pain and carry on with my night. 

But back to the point. Can I say that I enjoy my job? It's a hard thing to answer. Let's weigh out our pros and cons here.

Pros....pros...pros...hmm quite a question. There are the typical douchey answers of, "helping other people", and "I enjoy saving lives". Those are all well and good and if you jump on a truck and help your neighbors out one night a week, I can give you that one. There are certainly some pros to the job. You certainly gain a feeling of teamwork. You also grow a great appreciation for being a member of something bigger. 

I can honestly say that any of the people I work with on my team would lay their lives down on the line for one another. Other teams and the daytime tour, I certainly don't think so. But I know that the team that I work on would. When the shit hits the fan we all seem to put our differences aside. 

You see things that will change your way of thinking. After seeing multiple people who have gotten killed on motorcycles the idea of buying one quickly went out the window for me. Perhaps you see an innocent life become lost. Maybe you have to turn and tell the parents that unfortunately you did everything you could, or even worse, that it was too late to do anything at all. You may even get a chance to see the life of a person you know, end suddenly in front of you. 

It sinks in and runs deep, but you become numb to it after a while. People then say that you're insensitive and that you don't care, but it's how we survive. If we were to grow attached and take it personally, then we will never survive in this field. 

You get to see the world in a way that no normal person would never have the opportunity to see it. You get to see the hard and fast, the cruel and unusual, and more important the real life. You learn that the world is not a fair place. Bad things happen to good people, bad guys get away, and feelings will get hurt. But most of all is that you learn. I put emphasis on the word learn. You have a front row seat to the greatest show on earth. 

Now alternatively there are some cons to the job. But they make you certainly appreciate the things you do have. People that you come in contact with are mean and nasty. The places you go into are run down and broken up. The hallways are covered in urine and feces, and there are roaches everywhere. The elevators never seem to work, and the stairs aren't safe to look at never the less safe to walk or carry someone on. 

The hours are long and the food is shit. Most people get to go to work and they have a climate controlled office or they have a nice chair to sit in. Hell they get a lunch break. I couldn't imagine a job that I get a break. Here you are lucky if you get enough downtime to make your way over to the food place that makes a hot meal before they close. More often than not you are going to get a call someone near the place and you won't get your food. 

What this leaves you to do is improvise. Many emts and paramedics know how to make a meal out of random "food" that is found at your local 7/11. If you're really lucky you are blessed with a wawa in your jurisdiction. To those people, you are living like a king. 

The other side of this card you have the dashboard cookers, which is something that I am planning on writing a cook book for. Every vehicle has a defroster, but the wise can use it to their advantage. Tonight I am heating up turkey chili in my Tupperware bowl. Hopefully by the time I get a break, it will be lukewarm and semi-edible. More recipes will follow and before you can all mark my words. I'll be the next Paula Dean. 

This job forces you to grow up. You aren't able to get by with your nonsense, simply because you know that someone is going to smack you down. Either your partner, your team, the senior person on your team, or a boss. Someone will straighten your ass out or you will be out the door. If you can't straighten your ass out, people will make your life hell until you go. 

You lose out in trips and vacations. The ones you do maybe get to take, more than likely ate up all of your vacation time and took you a year to save up the money to go. For this I recommend the all inclusive. The booze alone are worth every penny of these trips. You will miss Christmas and birthdays but we all have to at some point in time. 

You are going to get hurt. You are going to have bumps and bruises. You are going to have strains and sprains. You are going to have aches that never go away and pains that never hear. These are both mental and physical. The public doesn't care if you get hurt. The patients don't care if you get hurt. Some of them are out there to hurt you. Some of them feel that you are working for the government and are out to get them. These are people that you never hear about until something bad happens, yet you come in contact with them all the time. 

My personal favorites are the people who know your job better than you do, and demand how to take care of the patient. They can't walk to the truck but they can do laps around the apartment. These are the people who swear they need oxygen when they are speaking in complete sentences. 

There is the joy of being bitched out by nurses. You are downplayed and assumed you know nothing of what you do and are incompetent. Those are my favorites because usually these are nurses that are directly out of nursing school. This is their first job and have never actually seen a patient, nor do they have any clue as to what we do. 

I must say that there are the times where you happen to be in the right place at the right time. You may receive an award or get your picture in the paper. This however is quickly followed by a great deal of ball breaking by your coworkers. Or the sad reality that you unknowingly broke a company policy that is so deeply buried in the stacks, that it took a coworker that has a hard on for you almost 2 shifts to find it. This usually lands you on the fast track right out the door, complete with your award. This forces you to avoid the spotlight at any and all costs, realizing it's better to be the sheep than blends in with the herd. 

You go in and go out day after day. You are viewed as just another body. You are considered disposable and just like any other job you are out there to make the company money. The mission is plain and simple, go where you are told.  Put your body through hell on a constant basis to the point you don't have an appetite. Twist, turn, bend, contort, and push yourself in ways that would make a personal trainer cry. Most brag about how much they bench or squat, and this makes me laugh. There's no workout for the 320 pound full blown, panicking, filled to the top CHF'er, that was drowning in their own lungs and flailing in a last ditch effort of survival. Yet we somehow managed to get him out if that rickety house and down those death trap stairs alive, and still perform life saving interventions. Not at any point of that call did I sit and worry about how much I was able to bench at that point. I know all too well I possess more strength and would love to watch them come attempt to do this every night. 

I've seen and experienced the human body face and perform under the most extreme conditions fueled on redbull, shitty coffee, and newports. Not kale, wheatgrass, and carrot juice. (Sadly there was a shortage of kale in our MRE's during sandy)

So as go over the pros and cons, I am still left without an answer. Do any of us like the job? The answer from most would probably be no. This is a imply because for many of us, this is a stepping stone. A foot in the door while we are waiting for a call to go somewhere else. There's not much of a pension and there is certainly no respect, from the job or the public. Ems are the forgotten, the step children, the ones that always just seem to be outside of the proverbial spotlight. We handle what the police don't want to, and what fire can't wait to get rid of. We work multiple jobs because one is never enough to pay the bills. But it doesn't explain what it is.

What is it that keeps us coming back for more? Why don't we just all say "fuck it" and quit? Why do we put up with the shit our jobs, patients, and union put us through? Some say that this job is a calling and to some it may. Some say it is gods work, going out and helping the weak and the lame. I don't think it's either. 

I think it's a a because we a separate type of human. A type of human who can't just turn away and give up. We don't have it in us to just give up and walk away. We are afraid to leave the people behind, we are afraid to leave each other behind. It's a bond that can't be placed into words. 

So as I stare at my Tupperware full of chili that is attempting to warm up on the dashboard, I continue to turn that question over in my head. It's a lot more than just a matter if you "like" your job or not.