Labour, if you can call it that

All of my adult life I wanted to be a paramedic. When I was twenty three, my best friend's mom was a paramedic chief, and I used to be fascinated by her stories, and the way she would make a sudden departure every time she was summoned from home to go attend to someone in distress. I was hooked, and desperately wanted to become a paramedic. It was not to be though. I had to wait many years for the opportunity I considered to be my dream job. I had children to raise; I could not be running off to who knows where every time the pager called. I became a fitness trainer instead, bought a gym, and even got into bodybuilding. (Yes, I know now, it's all vain-glory). That career lasted for ten years; I stopped the bodybuilding much sooner.

One day, on a summer afternoon in 2001, a frantic woman knocked on my door. When I answered it, she told me to call 911, as her friend was drowning in the river close by. I made the call and went down to the river to see if I could help. I searched the riverbanks with my good friend Coleen, calling the man`s name, hoping for a response, but we saw nothing and were unable to save this man's life.

A short time later Search & Rescue pulled up and began to organize their rescue and recovery efforts. I was fascinated when they put the boat in the water with the search dog on board. They paddled a few feet to where the man had been sucked down by an undercurrent. I watched, amazed, as the search dog barked frantically at the whirlpool, leaning over the boat as if to convey the presence of the unfortunate man. When the boat travelled elsewhere, the dog was calm, and sat down in the centre of the boat.

I got the nerve up to ask if I could become a member of their team. To my delight and surprise, they told me to start coming to their weekly training sessions. I took six months of training, and then became one of their initial response members. That was when I started working (as a volunteer) side by side with the Ambulance Service. I had almost forgotten about the career I had put on hold so many years ago, but I still remembered the ten years I spent desperately wanting to be a paramedic. As a SAR volunteer, I would harness up and go over the bank to bring the patient up to the waiting paramedics; I would assist in cutting cars apart with the Jaws of Life so that the ambulance could rush the patient to the hospital. I flew in helicopters, searching for missing people, and tracked the lost in the mountains. I loved it!

After two years of this, I applied to the ambulance service and was hired! I knew I could not stretch myself thin, and chose the Ambulance Service over the SAR team. It was, after all, what I had always wanted to do. When I first donned my uniform, I couldn't belive I was getting paid to do something I would gladly do for free for the rest of my life. It has been eight years now, and I still love my job as much as I did then. I love helping the patients and putting them at ease. The diagnostic process is so interesting, with each patient exhibiting different symptoms, that no two calls are alike. I feel blessed to be in a career I feel so passionately about. And apparently it shows. One of my co-workers told me yesterday that she absolutely loves working with me because of the passion I have for my job. This wonderful lady told me that she feels energized when she is my partner; that my love of the job has given her a new purpose to learn as much as possible, and be as good at her job as she can possibly be. I must confess, I blushed when she gushed about my apparent on-the job enthusiasm.

The thing that came immediately to my mind, though, was the prayer to Saint Joseph that I have posted on my sidebar. I try to pray it every day, at least every day that I open my blog. I believe that even those who are trapped in a job they hate, will learn to labour with love if they only would pray like this every day before leaving for work. Here is the prayer that I consider to be one of the best aids for the working man or woman:

Glorious St. Joseph, model of all those who are devoted to labor, obtain for me the grace to work in a spirit of penance for the expiation of my many sins; to work conscientiously, putting the call of duty above my inclinations; to work with gratitude and joy, considering it an honor to employ and develop, by means of labor, the gifts received from God; to work with order, peace, moderation and patience, without ever recoiling before weariness or difficulties; to work, above all, with purity of intention, and with detachment from self, having always death before my eyes and the account which I must render of time lost, of talents wasted, of good omitted, of vain complacency in success, so fatal to the work of God. All for Jesus, all for Mary, all after your example, O Patriarch Joseph. Such shall be my watchword in life and in death. Amen.

Renouncing Your Faith

Yesterday I had the good fortune to work with another Catholic paramedic. I had never met him before, and I didn't know he was Catholic until we passed by a rural Catholic Church on sprawling treed grounds in a very beautiful setting. I commented on how appealing it was, and he told me there was a monastery tucked away in the back. I immediately told him I was Catholic, and he said he was too, and told me he had spent a year in the seminary prior to becoming a paramedic.

We had an amazing day, talking about our faith in between calls. He showed me the rosary he always carries in his pocket, tucked safely inside a bright red cloth. He asked me if I understood the significance of the red cloth. I said yes, it is a reminder of the Precious Blood; how Jesus suffered and died for our salvation. He said yes, but each time he looks at it, it is also a reminder to him of how he would shed his own blood for Jesus; that he would gladly die for the faith.

There was a time in our history when people were executed for being Christian, but that happens less frequently now. It is much less common to be a martyr for the faith today than it was centuries ago. Which brings me to the title of this post. Could you really renounce your faith if it came right down to choosing evil or salvation at the hands of an executioner? We may never get that opportunity, and being a martyr like the saints of old may never happen for us, because today our faith is being renounced in a different way. It is being eroded one TV commercial at a time; one movie at a time; one magazine, one book at time. Our faith is challenged every season by the fashion industry; it is challenged on the beaches and even in our Churches when we are exposed to liturgical abuses and quasi Catholicism.

We may never get to shed our blood for our faith. We are instead tasked with something that may prove to be more difficult and impossible to accomplish - we must uphold our Catholic faith in the midst of a secular world that tries at every turn to erode and erase the faith of our fathers.

The desert fathers understood how difficult it would be to uphold the faith in our later times. Once, a desert father was asked by a young monk about the devil. The monk inquired if people in later times would be able to persevere in the fasting and all night prayer vigils that the desert monks subjected themselves to. The desert father said, "No. People in later times will be weak and they will barely be able to fast a day without feeling faint. They will not be able to stay awake and pray all night, for they will be too weak."

When the young monk asked why they would be so weak, the desert father replied,"It is easy for us to do these things. We are fighting Satan chained. In later times, people will fight him unchained."

Did I mention

...that I am taking a 12 week course in pharmacology for medical credits? Every year, in order to maintain my paramedic license, I have to get 20 continuing medical education credits; courses which are usually supplied by my employer. But due to our strike, which is in its sixth month and still unresolved, it is up to each individual employee to seek out courses and upgrade their credits. So, you see, my absence from this blog is justified! I have been hitting the books, and I know you probably don't want to hear about drugs and their interactions, receptor sites and pharmacodynamics, so I won't bore you with the details.

Just wanted to let you know I have been busy!

On a different note

If you ever text while driving, watch this enactment of what could happen to you:

Numbering your sins

Wisdom 11: 21 ...But thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight.

Tomorrow on my day off, I have to work an eleven hour shift for free. That's right; I have to get up early, drive to work and put in eleven hours for free. Why? It's some kind of a scheduling anomoly where I was assigned ten hour shifts instead of the usual twelve, (through no fault of my own) so now I have to pay back the hours that I "owe" to my employer. Most of my co-workers show up and then book off sick without ever having to turn a wheel when this happens to them. That way, they still get credited for the "owed" hours, (after all they did show up for the shift). Then they go home and enjoy what was supposed to be their day off to begn with.

I think that is stealing as well as lying, and I will not be following their example. As much as I don't want to work for free for an employer that:
1) claws back seventeen cents on every dollar I make
2) makes me work an eighty hour work week but pays me for only seventy hours
3) claws back a good portion of my overtime earnings (ie. I get paid 1.5% for OT but only see 1.2% of it because they keep the rest in a process they call "factoring"

I still, in spite of the above unfair practices, I will not be "sick" tomorrow. Why not? Sure, it would be a sin, but I could just go to confession after, right? Wrong!

According to Scripture and many of the saints, God has fixed for each of us the number of our days, the degrees of health and talent which will be given to us, and so has He determined the number of sins He will pardon; when this number is completed, He will pardon no more. Citing Scripture, Saint Alphonsus Liguori tells us in his book Preparation for Death that God witheld His vengeance against the Amorrhites (Genesis 15:16) "for as yet the iniquities of the Amorrhites are not at the full ." Saint Alphonsus compares the number of our sins to a harvest, that when it is ripe, God will pluck it. Then the holy Doctor goes on to warn us that one more sin may be the one that causes us to reach that pre-determined limit that God has set upon us and cause God to remove His mercy from us:
Ecclesiasticus 5:4 Say not: I have sinned, and what harm hath befallen me? for the most High is a patient rewarder. 5 Be not without fear about sin forgiven, and add not sin upon sin.

It's tough to be Catholic. We always have to take the high road, but that is the surest way to heaven.

Where I've been

I have been too busy to post anything these last four days. Busy with work, that is. One patient after the other on a twelve hour shift really tires me out. With the long commute into the city, and add on an overtime call at the end of the shift, a twelve hour shift turns into about fifteen or sixteen hours. I get home just in time to get enough sleep to do it all over again the next day.

It's hard to believe that we are on strike. We have not reduced any services to the public, but we are not coming in for overtime shifts on our days off. That part has been great for family time and commitments. I never realized how much of life I was missing by constantly working overtime on my days off until I stopped making myself available. Now I have time to spend with family (and a reduced income) but I can make myself available to do what really matters, and right now, with both my parents nearing the end of their lives, family matters the most.

Things are heating up with our strike, and I (and about three hundred other co-workers) just received a threatening letter from my employer telling me I must make myself available for overtime shifts on my days off, since I had done so in the past. Last time I checked, we were not quite a Communist country, and we have something called civil rights here in Canada that entitle us to take our scheduled days off and do anything we want with them. Historic practice is history. My new historic practice is to enjoy my days off and spend time with family. We are on strike to save lives. Who says you can't change history?

To Hell and Back

What was your New Year's Eve like? I was up all night; in fact I spent my night in downtown Vancouver among all the partygoers and revellers who were celebrating the New Year in "style." I wasn't participating in the celebrations, though. My job was to get them to the hospital after they had over-indulged in alcohol and drugs. It was a constant run to and from the hospital. As soon as we cleared, there was another one waiting for us. The emergency department of a downtown hospital can be like walking through the gates of hell. Will people ever learn? Possibly, but as soon as they do, unfortunately there is another one to take their place. It's a vicous cycle.

The bright light of the night came at 6:30 AM, at the end of my shift. I changed out of my uniform, and into the clothes I had brought for Mass. Then I made my way through unploughed streets to attend the Low Mass. I was the first one there. Correction, both priests were already there, kneeling and praying in the sanctuary. There is something about seeing a priest absorbed in prayer. A good priest radiates holiness, and prayer is the path to holiness.

This is something you don't often see in a Novus Ordo Church. In all the years I went to the New Mass, it was more common for the priest to walk in right at the start of Mass than it was to see him kneeling in prayer before the Mass. There was one exception to this. He was an old Franciscan priest, and he was the priest of my return to the Catholic faith. He would kneel on the hard floor in the chapel before every Mass, never taking a padded kneeler. He did hard penance, and would often give away the luscious food gifts that people brought him. He sat in the confessional before every Mass with the door open and the curtain pulled aside, praying his Rosary. It was an open invitation to the Sacrament of Penance. He set a good example of holiness, one that was very beneficial to me at that time. If only there were more priests like him. God rest his soul.

Suffering and sanctity

It always surprises me how many of my co-workers say, "Shoot me if I ever get like that," referring, of course, to being elderly, ill, incapacitated and in need of care. I always question them on their statement, asking if they really mean it. The invariable answer is, "Yes. I want my spouse to do me in if I ever get like that. If my quality of life ever gets so poor that I have to wear diapers and be in a care home then life would not be worth living."

This usually leads to a whole conversation about the sanctity of life and how God has the ultimate authority over when life ends. I remind them they will probably change their mind when they actually reach an advanced age where their days are numbered, and I often tell them to have lots of kids in the meantime so there will always be a family member to look after them. It is rare though, that I find agreement with my opinions; just about as rare as finding a pro-life paramedic to work or share a conversation with. So far I have stopped short of telling them about the spiritual value of suffering - I think a person needs to have faith to understand it.

Tomorrow, however, will be different. I will be attending a pro life seminar featuring Dr John M. Haas STL MDiv, and Fr Tadeusz Pacholczyk PhD, of the National Catholic Bioethics Center of Philadephia. This will be a rare opportunity for me to hear pro-life medical viewpoints about the sanctity of life, from life's conception to its natural end. I just may come away with some new ammunition to sway the opinions of those who think ending a life of suffering is a personal choice to be made by the individual who is doing the suffering.

It is often said that paramedics become jaded with time, being exposed as we are to so much trauma, suffering, psychosis, violence, drug abuse, etc.

I will never become jaded. How can I make such a bold statement when the burn-out rate is so high for people in my profession? The answer is faith. Illness and suffering take on a whole new perspective when one one looks at it as the will of God. If only people who were ill realized the value of this trial that God has sent them! I have been exposed to much pain, suffering, illness and sadness through the trials of other people, and I view this as a gift from God. It will strengthen me to face my own trials with faith. Being a paramedic is a position God has put me in to help me on the path to salvation. If, by chance or the grace of God, I can help others along the same path, I have done my job well.

All in a day's work

Sometimes I wonder what people are thinking when they dial 911. You would think that number is normally reserved for true emergencies like cardiac arrest, shortness of breath, uncontrolled bleeding or a dangerous fall, not for something as benign as knee pain, a toothache or a headache. When I lived in the rural area, almost all of our ambulance calls were for true emergencies. People only called if they really needed us, and sometimes they didn't call when they should have. There's something about living in the country that toughens folks, I think.

Being a city paramedic has taken some getting used to. First, I appreciate the way most drivers yield the right of way to our emergency vehicle. I do wonder about pedestrians though. When we arrive at a red- lighted intersection with our lights and sirens activated, the last thing we want to happen is to create an intersection accident. So we come to a brief stop, and proceed with caution. Drivers who have the green light have time to see us and yield that way. Some pedestrians however, appear to think we have stopped to allow them to dash out in front of us. It takes an astute driver to keep them from bouncing off the front bumper!

Another thing I notice is the high volume of calls we get for minor medical complaints that would normally be seen in a clinic during a routine doctor's appointment. You know that knee pain that you've had for four days running? Did you really need an ambulance at three in the morning when you have a doctor appointment tomorrow? What about that toothache that is keeping you and the rest of your household in a state? Could one of your family members drive you to the hospital for pain control? Or have you thought about calling for an emergency dental appointment? Now don't get me wrong - I don't mind going to your home and putting a bandage on your child's boo-boo, or telling a new mom how to bring a fever down. I'd just rather be out there saving lives.