An individual’s life is valuable and there is no other feeling in life like having a stake in keeping a soul alive. Working in an emergency room puts you in conditions where this occurs frequently and sometimes without you even knowing. Every assistant, nurse and doctor remembers their first patient that was barely hanging on to life and the role they played in keeping them alive. My experience happened when I was twenty one, a time when most people my age were out drinking and hanging out with their friends. Here I was being put to the test with the skills I had learned and had to find a way to fight my nerves and focus on the task ahead. Part of being a medic is being able to step into the hot zone…show more content… I was thrilled to be actually doing my job and getting to walk around like a bad ass doctor or something. I remember the call coming in to the receptionists but I blanked and only caught that a patient was coming in fifteen minutes. At the time I could feel the presence of everyone around be change and it felt like the matrix where everything was moving fast but still in slow motion. My mind said get your shit on, this is it. I ran over to the cart by the first trauma room and grabbed a face shield, gown, hair net and boot covers. At this time our team was briefed by the lead Doc and he began by telling us the time of arrival and that the patient is arriving by air. The patient was a male who was shot in the chest with labored breathing but was maintaining vital signs well. We then crammed into this tiny room and assumed our positions. The room had to stay warm to prevent hypothermia for patients. Imagine yourself wrapped in plastic and then standing in sauna filled with others around you – that’s how hot it was. You start to feel the sweat on your forehead and smell that sweat rise into the
