I grew a little

I attribute it to two very different things that happened in the last three weeks.

Each in their own way taught me not to ride on habits.  Habits stagnate your mind.

As some may know, this is my second year at a First Responder at my local Rescue Squad.  So far, none of the patients have died under my care, nor did they have serious conditions or injuries. Maybe I had assumed what I needed was to provide the care required at the moment, and then get them to the hospital as quickly as possible.  Then everything would be alright.  That had worked up until three weeks ago when I had a patient coughing up blood when I got there, and then she coughed up some lung tissue en route.  I got her to the hospital in record time, and felt that I had done all the right things in taking care of her.

She had had lung cancer and had been in remission until that sunny spring day.  I probably knew it all along, but a day later, I finally realized that she is not alright, and when I was taking care of her, she would have had this realization.  This hemoptysis meant the cancer was back.  I now feel that I could have done better, that in a certain way I was not present for her at a critical time. 

The second experience was very different but no less revealing.  I played paint ball for the first time two weeks ago.  It is a fast paced, light hearted sport that we played in the woods.  Two teams face off against each other, and one has to eliminate the other within a set time.  Simple enough.

I got "killed" in almost all the games which is not surprising, most of us did.  But towards the end of the day, I decided to play the game as if it were real: "I could die if I got shot".  I got so into it that when the shots were fired at me, I really felt my life was threatened. What rattled me, was that I could not see where the shots were coming from, and there was no way I could retaliate.  All I knew was there were two guys shooting at me and I HAD to get out.  And I could not see how.  Fortunately, my teammates took them out.

Still in the game, I moved on, but for the life of me, I could not spot anybody.  Everything looked lifeless in the shadows.  What if this were real, I thought to myself, "If I have to do this everyday, for sure would go crazy".

In my hyper alert state, I turned at the sound of a twig, and opened fire.  The white band on his arm told me I had taken out one of my own.

I realized what soldiers live with and what they have to give of themselves.

Birds eye view

The feeling of soaring in the air with silence around you and the world beneath is something I cannot express. One has to go through the emotion to understand what I mean. No offense to sky divers, but apart from the rush you get at the moment you jump head first, the feeling was not the same throughout.

It was a cool October morning when I took off. The moment you take off in itself is a feeling to savour. You can literally see, hear and feel the ground being left behind. We were towed to 2500 ft by a ultralight aircraft and let go. The aircraft dives back for the next tow as soon as the line is cut so you go from noisy to silent ambiance in a moment. As far as the flight goes, you are constantly gliding back down and mostly what you can do is turn left, right or dive, unless, and this happened to us, you catch a thermal, which took us up to 4000 ft very quickly. It felt like the wind was telling me, let me take you up there, the view is much better.

If you liked what you just read, believe me it only gets better.

 

  

P.S:  The camera is attached to the wing and is controlled by a lever near the pilot. Comments on my head gear are welcome.