I am an EMT. I have been an EMT for the Nashville Fire Department for a year and a half now; it is a job I wouldn't recommend for everyone.

The stress levels we paramedics/EMTs face is incredibly daunting, the schedule is a killer diller, we deal with many different types of people from all walks of life, and we work on holidays AND weekends; we don't get 'em off unless we request 'em off or am on vacation.

We deal with people at their worst: people who are sick and/or dying, people who are stoned out on drugs or drunk on alcohol (or worse), people who are severely depressed (some to the point of mental illness or suicide), people who are hysterical with fear or anger, or people who don't care for themselves when they have a chronic illness or condition, and they don't give a flying fig whether they live or die.

We deal with people who don't speak English (lately it's been many Latinos who need our services, and it's a good thing I am Hispanic and can communicate; most of my fellow EMTs can't or don't understand Spanish). We deal with people who are of different faiths, and we deal with people who have done bad things to others: people who have hit others with objects or their vehicles, people who have shot or killed another person, or people who have burglarized a residence or business. We deal with people who are disabled or very ill, and we have to use our wits to try to save them if they decide to crash on us.

Believe me, don't be surprised when I say I have witnessed it all. I HAVE. I have seen babies or kids near death as parents pulled them dripping wet from the bathtub or family pool, older people with chronic lung or heart ailments who are on their last legs and we have to zap them back to life if their hearts stop, I have seen bodies ravaged by advanced AIDS, cancer, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (that's Lew Gehrig's Disease to the layperson; it's a neuromuscular disorder that can kill in just a few years after diagnosis; it's a lethal disease), and I have seen family members go into fits of hysteria when I try to deal with their mentally ill family member--and the person who needs the treatment is threatening ME.

I have seen kids or adults with serious disabilities, or people with rare or weird syndromes I have never heard of (PKU, Prader-Willi, Rhett's, Wilson's disease, primordial dwarfism, etc.), I have seen people who were healthy one minute be fighting to stay alive the next, and I have seen people with parts of their bodies missing or nearly torn off.

I have been the one who carries a limp, nonbreathing little girl from a burning house, or the one who tells a crying mother that her teenaged son has died from a heroin overdose. I have been the one who has had to shock a tiny heart of a newborn baby boy back to life after he arrested, and I have been the one who had to ask the doctor what to do about a man's grossly swollen, discolored leg after he came down with a rare bacterial infection because I had never seen the likes of it before. (It was nasty; I still have nightmares about it.)

I have been the one dodging lightning bolts or large hailstones as I go to save the life of a golfer who collapsed on the course, or the one who tells the others to get the hell out of my way as I pound on the frail chest of a little old lady who has suffered yet another heart seizure, and time is quickly running out. I have been the one dodging bullets, punches from drunken bar patrons, or bullets as I go to a bar to help someone who has been injured in a barroom brawl or in a shooting.

I have been the one who has to see a child with severe mental or physical handicaps choking as she fights for air, or a guy, whose body is riddled with AIDS or cancer, breathe his last--and there is nothing I can do to ease the pain of family members who watch their loved one die in my care. I have been the one who has to get a mangled body out of a smoking or bashed vehicle, or remove body parts from the same said vehicle. I have seen people without heads, and I have seen all sorts of body fluids enamating from the person. I have seen, heard, tasted, felt death or severe injury (or illness)  on a regular basis.

What I have to see on a daily basis is enough to do me in; yet in the end, when we save a life, or a person comes back from the brink of death, whoa, now, there's nothing quite like the feeling I get. I get a feeling of deep satisfaction, deep joy, deep elation; the feeling is so powerful it is enough to consume me. On the other end of the spectrum is the painful feelings I get when I have to see a child die in my arms because it was too late by the time our rig (ambulance) arrived at the scene, or see a teenager, bright with promise, die of AIDS in my arms, or an overweight man commit suicide by jumping off a two-story building because he could no longer deal with life.

I don't know why I do this thing called Emergency Medicine, but I guess it's because when I was a little boy, I was a huge fan of the 70's hit show, "Emergency!", and when I grew up, I "wanted to be just like Johnny Gage". The paramedics on that show were hot-looking as far as guys go, and I thought their red fire engine truck looked--and sounded--cool when the sirens were on full blast. I loved the adventures they faced every week, and I looked forward to watching it every week after I got home from school or completed my homework.

I have followed that dream. I thought being a paramedic/EMT would be full of glamour or excitement. A lot of the time it is, but then again, it isn't. Sometimes being on the front lines of emergent care isn't all what it is cracked up to be. There is much in the way of heartbreak, and you have to have strong intestinal fortitude to put up with the crazy hours, unstable co-workers who are just as crazy--or worse--than you are, you have to see brutal sights day in and day out, and more often than not, you are handling cases that have little in the way of emergency care in them. I have had to rescue cats from trees, get a kid's kite from the roof because his daddy was scared of heights, or go to a restaurant and reprimand a mother for not watching her kid after he got bored and called 9-1-1.

The really exciting cases, such as when a child stops breathing, or a guy suffers a major heart attack at a racing event, or when a teenaged girl smashes herself up in a doozy of a car crash, are fewer than you realize: more often than not, you get calls for someone who is lonely or bored, or you get calls for someone who has a common cold or some guy who wrenched his back out of whack again after he decided to be cute and try the limbo, just to impress his fellow beer-drinkin' buddies. It's really a pain in the ass, if you ask me.

The pay is shitty, the hours are long, and you get very little in the way of gratitude. You save a life, yet you get very little in the way of thanks. You're lucky if you ever hear the words "Thank you" from a person, and more often than not, people give us dirty looks when our rig is screaming down a country road. And when we blare our sirens or flash our warning lights, do you think people pull over? HELL no. They just keep on going, and go abou their business, which pisses the hell outta' me. People nowadays don't have the compassion or the courtesy; a dead goose has more courtesy than a lot of people do nowadays.

Well, I have to go: the emergency tones are going off; time to handle another call. I will write in here again; stay tuned~

~Hector Rogelio Gonzales, EMT, Nashville, Tennessee.