The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Paramedic

So, you going to ride in the ambulance, huh? Well, I hope you've got a strong stomach and a lot of patience, because you're going to need both.

Here's the deal--you'll go to school for a couple years and learn all the extreme first aid you need--the whole piling doughnut bandages like a ring toss game to stabilize the screwdriver sticking out of some guy's eye socket, or looking for missing digits after one of those Japanese "cook it at your table" guys gets a little too enthusiastic while chopping the beef.

You think you'll be able to handle it, but when they tour you through the pediatric burn unit, your resolve will wither away to the point you consider dropping the whole thing. Eventually, though, you steel yourself for the worst you can imagine and you jump into the game. You'll quickly recognize the unique combination of adrenalin rush and sickening dread each time you get called out to an accident. It won't take you long to accumulate enough nightmarish dismemberment stories to supply a hundred pre-graduation safety presentations.

Of course, there will be the other frustrations of the job to keep your mind off the memories of the most horrible scenes--frustrations like the people who call repeatedly for no good reason, or your anger at not being able to throttle the crackhead father who claims his youngster "keeps on fallin' down the stairs". You cross the line the day that father overdoses and you treat him just slowly enough to ensure he'll never hurt the kid again--it's your own brand of justice and you never doubt you did the right thing--until eight years later you treat the same kid for wounds at the hands of an angry john.

The hospitals annoy you too--some of the emergency doctors don't accept your triage advice, and you resent the fact that you do the same work in the back of a swerving vehicle that they do in a hospital but they get to drive home a Lexus or a BMW, while you'll be lucky if you can ever get rid of the ten year old rustbucket pickup truck you drive. It will also gall you that even though you're the senior paramedic on your team, everyone talks to your partner first because you're female.

When you get assigned to the downtown station, you quickly become another redneck who wants to toughen up drug laws to help keep you from having to avoid needle sticks from the same junkies every weekend. You contemplate carrying an air rifle to shoot out the windows of the jerks who hear your siren but don't bother to pull over--it doesn't help your career when your boss calls you in to ask why you gave the mayor the finger...

My best suggestion--keep the liquor cabinet full until you've got enough seniority for a good stress leave arrangement. Just don't drink and drive--you wouldn't want to have your colleagues hose you off the pavement, after all.