Looking Through the Retrospectroscope

If I had known then…

…that EMS is more giving rides than saving lives, I’d have worked harder in college and become an emergency physician.

…that emergency physicians do a lot more rectal exams and boil lancing than chest tubes and intubations, I’d have decided to be an interventional cardiologist or a thoracic surgeon.

…that if I had not been too cocky and proud, I’d have asked for help, and a few people would still be alive. A mother would be seeing her first grandchildren about now. A brother would be seeing his younger siblings, the ones he practically raised, graduate from high school this week.

…that I’d one day find myself laying in a sandy ditch, trying desperately to secure a man’s airway by flashlight while he bubbled and frothed blood and broken teeth, that he’d be fogging fetid alcohol-laden breath into my face as I intubated him, I’d have chosen the less unpleasant task of fetching and toting equipment. And the man would be dead.

…that I’d one day have nightmares and no one to comfort me, that one day I’d come home to an empty house with no one to tell about my day, I’d have told my wife I loved her more often instead of assuming she knew.

…that it would take my skills five years to catch up to my ego, I’d have been humbler sooner. Less people would think of me as arrogant, and I’d have made more friends.

…that I’d one day grieve the death of a regular patient, I’d have never talked to them on those rides to the dialysis center and gotten to know them. I would have insulated myself from caring, and kept my distance. Then again, I wouldn’t have known the names of their children and grandchildren, how they felt when they saw their son graduate from college, or what it was like to live in your car during the Great Depression.

…that the skills I had learned as an EMT-Basic would serve my patients far better and more often than the things I learned in paramedic school, I’d have never gone to paramedic school. And maybe, just maybe, a handful of people would be dead instead of alive. It’s hard to tell.

…that one day I’d go through the pain I did after my separation, I’d have never gotten married in the first place. And I wouldn’t have this child dozing on the couch with her head in my lap.

…that one day I’d have to stretch my infant daughter’s limbs every night as she screamed in pain, that I’d drive 620 miles a week for a year to bring her back and forth to therapy, I’d have never tried to have a child in the first place.

Then again, I’d have never known how it felt to see her take her first steps. I’d have missed the joy in all those little victories. I wouldn’t know how calming it feels to hold her against my chest after a bad day.

…that some companies would value unquestioned obedience over good decision-making and critical thinking, I’d have never taken the job.

…that other companies, good but only mildly dysfunctional ones, don’t appreciate having their dysfunction constantly criticized, I’d have been more tactful and less blunt. Perhaps then they wouldn’t have fired my ass, and we could have fixed those little problems.

…that those same people could fire me, with my child struggling for life in the NICU and my wife on unpaid maternity leave, I’d have never bought their “we’re all family here” recruitment pitch. I’d have never gone to work for them, and chosen another company instead. God knows I would have been paid more.

I’d have also learned a lot less, laughed a lot less, and made less good friends. I’d have missed working with some of the best partners in the business, men and women whose equal I have found no where since.

And I also wouldn’t be vacillating between grief and spiteful gloating to see how that company has declined since I left. Triumph and tragedy in equal parts, there.

And that’s EMS in a nutshell. Triumph and tragedy in equal parts.

Lots of drudgery, interspersed with the occasional adrenaline jolt.

Numbing, mindless, repetitive work, with a piss-poor paycheck. And an occasional shining moment to make that all worthwhile.

Idealistic adulation from people who don’t know better, and undeserved scorn from people who should know better.

So when I look back through the retrospectroscope at the cocky little adrenaline junkie I was, and speculate that if I had known then what I know now…

I’d have never chosen EMS as a career.

And that would have been the biggest mistake of my life.