Saving lives

John just left our house...he had stopped by to get a bite to eat before making his rounds around town as the supervising Captain. As Captain, he doesn't get to run many "calls", now he deals with a lot of administrative duties. But, the past couple of shifts, he has run several calls and he was enjoying telling me about them. I sometimes forget what he does on his job. These guys do things that even me, as a nurse, don't want to do. I really believe there has to be some kind of love for the unknown, love for an adrenaline rush, and fearlessness or confidence in what you do. Last night a 911 call came in and John was nearby so he went l"ights and sirens" to the call. He, by himself, was the first to arrive on scene. A man and his wife were driving down the road and the woman "coded". The man pulled his wife out of the car and onto the side of the road where he called 911 and started doing CPR. When John got there, he took over doing compressions on the woman's chest and then put a tube down her throat and into her lungs to breath for her...they shocked her three times. Tonight, again, John went to a call to assist one of his trucks. He again, tubed the patient. This is minor to some of the things he has done in his 10 year career. He has punctured people's chest and put tubes in their lungs, he has tubed children, he has almost delivered babies, he has looked into the face of people that have tried to commit suicide by putting a gun to their body, he has drilled into the bone marrow of a patient's leg to start an IV, he has seen a 3 month old beaten, broken, and damaged due to the anger and abuse of a parent, he has seen stuff that would make most people pass out, he has saved many and lost many. I worked on the Cardiac floor for three years as a nurse and saw so many people "code" and I hated that tense, horrific, hurried, crazy, stressful moment of trying to save their life...I am so glad that some people, such as my husband, like that kind of moment!