Another day, another sarcastic paramedic. An instructor @ my school I might add, so I’m a wee bit nervous. All in all a good day (for a student): started wi/ a apnic 4 week old, then a mix of chronic medical problems, car wrecks, a drug user and a hydrocephaly patient.

  Something hit me today with the baby & the hydrocephalus patient: What I do isn’t honorable (as in worthy thereof), it is an honor to do it. To have a new mother not only allow strangers to take and hold and even cause pain to her first child but to ask them to do so is an amazing gesture of trust. The same goes for the man who could only recognize & understand his regular caregiver and the fact that his head hurt & he didn’t want us to touch him. For someone who has fewer effective self-preservation instincts than aforementioned infant to calm down for a stranger and allow himself to be safely restrained from self harm (pounding his head on the nearest hard object) is to reach out on a level I can’t pretend to understand or know and trust more than a child can.

  I’m humbled. Both of these calls left me with tears, not because of the outcomes or initial situations although they were sad. But because a mother, her child and a disabled person put their very lives & wellbeing in my hands.

P.S.  All were O.K. @ the end of our contact with them.