Well, that’s the way it felt, anyway! For a brief moment.
Last fall I talked about helping a helicopter to land — in the middle of the highway in the middle of the night. Just got back from doing it again, except this time it was the middle of the day …and I had my camera ready.
It was one of those cases of serendipitous timing, and why I find EMS so interesting as an avocation. This morning, I jumped out of bed to help a helicopter land on the highway.
I sometimes write about my fantastic experiences as a volunteer medic. Yet sometimes the experience isn’t so fantastic.
All emergency responders put themselves at great risk whenever they go on a call. This is a story of not beating the odds (but it could have been a lot worse).
I don’t tell many stories about the ambulance calls I run on as a volunteer medic here in rural Ouray County, Colorado, but this one is worth telling.
At 12:51 a.m. this past Saturday morning, my pager went off for an injured 16-year-old female, just a few miles from my house. It was in an odd location for a middle-of-the-night rescue, and as my wife and I got dressed, I was a bit confused.
I write True to make a living, yes, and it’s gratifying that enough people support the publication to make that happen. But there’s another reason, too: I want to change the world just a little bit, on both a micro and a macro scale.
A special “extra” story this week. I’ve pulled it out separately because it doesn’t “really” fit in with True’s theme. While it is a bit weird, it’s certainly not about someone doing something stupid.
This week I’ve been dragging after a tough weekend. “Just” two ambulance calls, but they were doozies. I was just starting to make a late breakfast Saturday morning when we got a call for a rollover just 3 miles down the road.
Something fairly profound happened to my wife and me Sunday. I have a group of friends that I communicate with regularly via an email list, and Sunday afternoon I shared what happened with them. One asked, “Great story. Will you be sharing it with your readers?”
There was no free edition on Friday, August 22. There were definitely reasons for that, and at first I decided I wasn’t going to say all the reasons why. But after thinking about it, and recovering from the problem I’m about to tell you about, I decided I owed you an explanation.
I spent most of the day Sunday working at the scene of a school bus that plunged (buses always “plunge”!) over the side of a steep embankment on Ouray County’s famous “Million Dollar Highway” below Red Mountain Pass.
We’ve been totally swamped lately. It wasn’t just the GOOHF water bottles, which were extremely popular and the huge quantity we were able to get sold out in about a month (but sorry: we really can’t get any more, since the manufacturer discontinued them — figures!).
It’s winter in Colorado. No, I mean winter! The temperature here this morning was –12.2F (–25.5C). The high today was 10.7F (–11.8C). This weekend, then, was perfect for the Ouray Ice Festival, held each year at what is likely the premier ice park in the world — at the very least the best public park of its kind, the Ouray Ice Park.
I fully expect to be called “anti-police” for the lead story this week. One doesn’t have to be “anti” anything to decry stupidity, or even to call to task organizations you fully support when they do something wrong.
Here’s the story, from True’s 17 December 2006 issue:
I watched the news reports last Wednesday from Platte Canyon High School in the small mountain town of Bailey, Colorado, with a bit of dread. (It was nothing like Columbine: some drifter took hostages, and killed one of them — a 16-year-old girl he didn’t know. He then shot himself.)
While This is True is a “weird news” publication, — its bigger mission is “Thought-Provoking Entertainment” — social commentary, or an exploration of The Human Condition. While True is my full-time job, I also volunteer as an on-call first-responder medic in my community. These are some of my stories from real medical emergencies.