Working EMS in Rochester during the winter is one heck of an experience. There is nothing quite like the feeling of getting out of a perfectly warm ambulance and sinking your feet into a three-foot-high snow bank, the air a brisk -10 (with the windchill...which--let's face it--is all that really matters anyway when you're outside). Of course, that's only the beginning. Then there's the thrill of trudging your gurney through that same three-foot-high snow bank with a patient on it who has had a Big Mac for breakfast one time too many. Then there's the excitement of driving your 7,000+ pound ambulance on a fresh sheet of slush and ice while trying to manuever your way safely through a whiteout. Ah yes, the joys of Rochester EMS during the wintertime.
Nevertheless, I think beginning my career in Rochester was probably one of the best things I could have possibly done. I certainly won't make the mistake of taking for granted the perpetual sunshine or even the occasional rain shower. As the people at work tell me now, no one will believe me when I become a paramedic in Los Angeles and start telling stories about the pulling a gurney up a driveway covered with three-feet of snow and having to bundle my patients up in five layers of blankets just to keep them from getting frostbitten (or worse) during the trudge back to the ambulance.
Yet, in spite of all my complaints, I think that--in a perverse way--I might actually be starting to enjoy this. But don't tell anybody...
posted at 20:31