What led me to be a paramedic.
Who am I? That is a question many adults ask themselves. My story sounds much more complicated than it really is but it has created who I have become today. Today I am a Canadian living in North Carolina who is a wife, a mother, and a paramedic that is passionate about helping others with a love of essential oils. Let’s take a step back in time and I’ll tell you how it all began.
My passion for helping others started as a child. I don’t remember the date but I will never forget the day. I was seven years old and living in Nova Scotia. We had family that lived outside Boston and would visit a couple times a year. Every vacation was planned. We always had medical insurance when we travelled…except the one time we didn’t.
My father is a hard working man. He is a mechanic and at the time he owned an Esso station with a service garage. In his free time he raced stock cars. Many nights my mother would take me and my older sister out to the tracks to cheer him on. Some of the races were far enough from home we would make a little vacation out of it. We had a van that was converted into a mini RV. It had a very small kitchen and bathroom. The dining table and chairs folded to make a bed. Above the front seats was a loft with another mattress. There was just enough space to hold our family of four.
One night my father came home late. As a surprise to my mother, he told her to pack some of our things for the weekend. Traci, my older sister, and I were sleeping. He carried us down the stairs, into the camper, and started to drive. We were going to Massachusetts! When I woke up we weren’t in Nova Scotia anymore. We weren’t even in Canada anymore. We were almost to Boston and we were going to meet all our aunts, uncles, and cousins for breakfast. We stopped before we got there so we could all get cleaned up and dressed. I changed into my favourite clothes: silver sequins slip-on shoes, blue/stonewashed coloured leggings, and an oversized pink sweater with the word DENIM in denim across the front. Usually a happy day, right? Well it was…and then I had to pee.
The bathrooms in the restaurant were down a hallway with a heavy door separating it from the diners. I know it was a couple paragraphs ago but remember I was only seven years old at the time. I tried to open the door but I wasn’t strong enough. The door did not have windows so I did not see the lady coming out and she didn’t see me trying to get in. I had my left hand on the wall to the side of the hinges trying to get some leverage to push the door open. Suddenly it flew open and slammed shut before I could get in…well, in the hallway, that is. My thumb slipped off the door frame and into the hinges just in time for the door to close fast and heavily. Now, not only do I have to pee, I can’t go anywhere because my thumb is stuck in a door I couldn’t even open before, when I had both of my hands. Sooo many people came running. The door flew open again, only this time it didn’t close. I heard waitresses screaming and diners gasping. My hand was free! As my arm dropped down after my thumb was released, the oversized sleeve of my favourite sweater fell down over my hand. I knew it was hurting and there was blood on the floor so I wanted to see how bad it was. As I lifted my arm up to look at my hand, my father came running from across the restaurant, grabbed my thumb, and pulled it over my head before I could see anything. A waitress showed up with a white wash cloth filled with ice and pushed it at my father. By the look on everyone’s faces, I knew it must be bad. But how bad? No one would let me see.
I don’t know who paid for breakfast or if anyone even thought about the bill but a bunch of us piled into the camper and tried to find the nearest hospital. This was long before GPS devices or cell phones. The restaurant was in a shopping complex that fortunately had a hospital across the street. As luck would have it, the street was a major highway and the shopping complex had very few exits to a road. After searching for on ramps and exit ramps and navigating city streets, we finally made it to the hospital. My father was still gripping my thumb tightly over my head, blood was still trickling down my arm. I don’t remember walking into the hospital that day but I do remember laying on a stretcher next to the wall in the hall of the hospital, Mom and Dad beside me. I am assuming our family took Traci to be entertained while we spent our day at the hospital but I can’t be sure. I don’t remember when they put a different dressing on but the washcloth and ice had been replaced with sterile gauze. I do remember the look on the triage nurse’s face when my father showed her the extent of the injury and quickly told him to go back to holding it. In that hallway is where we sat. Waiting for surgery. Yup, it was that bad.
I remember the surgery. All of it. I remember going into a different room. I remember the local anaesthetic. A long needle filled with stinging medicine into the already mangled, nearly severed, extremely painful appendage of a seven year old is not something you can easily forget. I squirmed. I moved. I pulled back my hand. Thirty years later I still have a scar from that needle. My little thumb needed to have the nail bed completely rebuilt and it was not guaranteed a nail would ever grow back. Although only short to begin with, the bone on the top of my thumb is a mere stub now. I received over 150 stitches that day. My thumb was only holding on by a thin piece of skin when we arrived. When we left, it was put back together. The hospital staff had put up paper barriers between me and the doctor so I couldn’t see what he was doing. He was wearing glasses and I fixated on the reflection. I watched every detail. The surgeon was calming and kind for the entire procedure. He asked me where I got my shoes and I told him “you can only get them in Canada”. (My mother likes to remind me that I sounded like a Red Rose Tea commercial with that reply.) He kept me engaged and distracted. I still watched the reflection in awe but I talked with him too. Hours later he let us leave with the promise to follow up in one week. Our spur of the moment, quick get away turned into an extended stay vacation…all because I had to pee.
I wish I could remember his name but my surgeon was amazing. Not only did he do a fantastic job repairing a massive injury to a tiny digit, he was reassuring and compassionate. He had compassion not only for me as his patient, but also for my parents. Major reconstructive surgery on an uninsured child visiting from a foreign country and a week of lost wages due to needing follow up could have been devastating to our family. He billed us for a “minor laceration requiring simple sutures”. I doubt a doctor could do that today. From that incident on I wanted to be a doctor. He is the reason I wanted to be a healer. More specifically, I wanted to be a paediatric trauma surgeon.
Fast forward to high school graduation. My parents still owned a company making their income too high for me to get a student loan. We couldn’t afford college because of that same small business and I didn’t qualify for a scholarship (that would have required doing my homework). At the suggestion of a family friend, I decided to become a paramedic. I could find out if I like emergency medicine before spending years and thousands of dollars for a career I wasn’t happy with. The plan was to move out on my own after getting a job. Soon I could get a loan and go back to school if I really did enjoy that line of work. There is only one flaw with that plan. Public safety gets in your blood and you can’t get it out. 17 years later I am still a paramedic and I wouldn’t change it for the world.
I really wish I could find that surgeon. I would love to let him know what kind of an impact he had on me. He is the reason I am a paramedic. He is the reason I am who I am today.
Needle Scar
Surgical Scar
Oily Minded Medic 