Bonfire of the Gravities

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.

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Tough Weekend

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.

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Missing In Action

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.

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Big Changes at TRUE Central

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!).

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War on Drugs

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:

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Ability Meets Need

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.)

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EMS Stories: a New Series

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.

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