a great great great day all around.

Was on a very busy ambulance, with some really really wild stuff. The absolute best preceptors, ever. Two guys I was really sorry to leave, I could have done another shift! They totally let me take the reins whenever I wanted, and they were very funny, friendly and cute

Then after my 12 hours there, we went out with our friends M and J. I was almost dreading it because I was so tired, but after hooking up with them for about 5 minutes I remember how much I love being around them. The boys played pool all night, and J and I sat at a table and just talked incessantly.

Sometimes you meet people and you really like them, but you're not sure if they're really going to be friends, or just short term buddies. We meet a lot of people like that that turn out to be not as compatible as we'd hoped. But we've gone out with them 4 times now and it just keeps getting funner and funner. I really like J, we both really feel like we've connected.

So now here it is 1:30, and I've been up since 6. And not just up lolling around, I was runnin calls, baby! I'm telling you it was one call after another and it was awesome stuff. You know, up till now there hasn't really been anything super specific that I've wanted to blog about but some really wicked stuff happened today, and I really have to be careful about what I say, because the Federal R*gulations regarding pa*ient pr*vacy are extremely strict.

But we went on calls today that M and J had heard on the news. Calls that I ran. The medics I was with let me completely do whatever I want, from just hanging back and lurking - or running the whole call from beginning to end, making all of the decisions, and telling them what to do. And we got on some scenes where it took me a good 3 seconds to look around and go "oh my god, I can't believe I am looking at this tragedy/mess/bullshit."

Every student that has stayed in class this long knows they are gonna see some shit. And we all have the same feeling... - 'I can take it' - but when you get on a scene, it takes a minute for it to sink in. For your brain to process what you are seeing. It makes you just pause for a second and go "Daaayyuuummm..."

Some calls are so sad - I was bummed about a guy we had that doesn't have a very good prognosis - and he was perfectly fine yesterday. He has a wife and baby - and if he beats the odds and lives, his quality of life will be very poor. His wife looked me straight in the face on scene and asked me if he was going to be ok.

She rode up front on the way to the ER, which turned out to be a really bad idea because he nearly coded on the way there and it was an ugly scene. She was freaked.

We went back to the hospital hours later to see what had happened with him, cause that was a really exciting call. The Dr.s told us he was slipping from bad to worse and it was weird how we were all quiet in the ambulance for a while after that.

And some calls leave you open-mouthed in sheer awe - like "Wow, I didn't know a F*rd Ta*rus would fit around a pole like that."

They let me call medical control, which is the job of calling the hospital ER en route. "This is medic so and so with *company* and we're coming in emergent with blah blah" - and waiting for a doc to tell you what advanced measures to take. I'd never ever done that before, even in a scenario. Very nerve-racking.

God, it was fun.

Ok, look what time it is. I have to go to bed, have to.

Thanks for letting me verbally explode about my day. I'll try to keep it to a dull roar in the future.