I essentially stumbled my way into EMS. The winter of my senior year of high school, I was bumbling through a job interview for the summer camp I had worked at the two previous years. I use the term "bumbling" because the camp director is quite possibly one of the most intimidating 6'7" giants I know, and I don't think my answers were ever more eloquent than "yes, sir" or "no, sir". So of course, when he asked me if I would like to take on the additional responsibility of becoming a trip leader for the camp sponsored hiking trips I was left with two options: "yes, sir" or "no, sir". Given that I happen to love hiking and the great outdoors, I went with the former. The director then proceeded to inform me that I was to come up to camp two weeks earlier than the majority of the other counselors and partake in a mandatory training class for this new part of my job; I was to become a Wilderness First Responder.
The reasoning behind this training made perfect sense; given that I would be venturing into a formidable mountain range with eight campers (who were for the most part under age 16), it would make sense for me to have a reasonable knowledge base of emergency medical skills and situations in a wilderness setting on the off chance that something actually went horribly wrong. SOLO Wilderness and Emergency Medicine School was the group that provided our training, and if you are ever looking for an extremely professional, knowledgeable and well run wilderness medical training class, I would highly recommend SOLO above all else (http://www.soloschools.com/). The WFR class is an 80 hour long class and provides an amazing foundational skill set for anybody who is an outdoors enthusiast or interested in pursuing an outdoors-recreational line of work.
Needless to say, I fell in love with my WFR class. I loved the content, I loved the practicals and I loved the sense of knowing that I could be useful in a crisis situation. The class didn't just teach you how to do medical things in the woods. It taught creativity; how to use what resources were available to you; how to manage under stress; how to interface book knowledge with practical application; how to work as a team; and how to be a leader. And luckily for me, all of these lessons came at a incredibly formative moment.
That fall I shipped out to university. University is this amazing opportunity for self-discovery, self-definition and finding direction. In all honesty, those were three areas in which I found myself greatly lacking upon arrival at the school of my choice. Sure, I knew what I kind of wanted to do with my life, but other than that I was S.O.L., to put it quaintly. Cut to gracious stumbling act, part two.
When I arrived at university, I found this amazing wilderness oriented rescue group that was a perfect fit for my interests. My savior complex was satisfied (*grin*), as was my love for the great outdoors, and I finally had a practical application once more for the knowledge I had accumulated during my WFR class. Less than a month into my membership of this group, I was presented with a new option for pursuing what was quickly becoming an evolving passion: EMT class.
Getting my EMT was the best thing that I have ever done. It opened up a whole new world to me that I quickly fell in love with. It was a brand new body of knowledge for me to explore and master, and once again social media played a really big role in my new found passion. In fact, social media only fueled my "sparkie-ness". I was (am?) insatiable, and attempted to get my hands on every POV and piece of information that I could that dealt in some way or another with EMS.
And now we come to today, where I am making my own attempt--minor though it may be--to make a contribution to this world that I have come to love so much, and that has welcomed me with open arms. This blog may be graceless at times, and my ideas or questions might be rough at best, but like the start of my career in EMS, I am not afraid to stumble.
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