Life is so fragile

I think that sometimes we have the belief that because we are young nothing is going to happen to us and we can do anything. I was sadly reminded of how precious life is and that it truly does not matter at what age we are, but when God deems it our time to go there is absolutely nothing that can be done to stop it. A couple weeks ago Eric and I ran a call for a 16 year old that was killed in an unexpected accident. The medical personnel did all they could, but still our patient did not make it. I thought to myself, "What is the purpose of this?" It makes me realize that my skills are a gift that God allows me to use and if He wants to bless them or not it is His choice. I was watching a play recently and in a scene there was a man laying in a hospital bed and though the Doctors were doing everything they could the man was dying. In the play, Jesus came in to the room as the Doctors were working. Jesus touched him and the flat line on the heart monitor jumped back to normal. It made me think how many times this happens. I know it has happened to me personally many times as I have been working on my patient and when nothing seems to help I start praying for them and their condition turns around. "Live everyday as it is your last," is one of my favorite sayings because no matter how old you are you never know how many more days God is going to bless you with and you should treasure the time you have. 

The effects of alcohol.

Wow I haven't posted in so long and I have so much to say, but one subject weighs more heavily on my heart than any other right now. I want to talk about the effects of alcohol. Now, whatever your beliefs may be on the subject this is a very serious matter that people take very lightly. Over the past month or so we have had several EMS calls that have really made me think. Whether or not you believe in drinking is not the issue, but how people handle themselves when they do is. In only a short time my crew and I have run 3 extremely serious and life threatening calls that would never have happened without the use of alcohol. 

Our first call was for a 17 year old boy that drank so much that when we got on scene he was unconscious and not responding. When we got him to the hospital we came to find that he had such a severe case of alcohol poisoning that some of his organs had started to shut down. It was heart wrenching to see his family have to go through that ordeal. It was SO senseless!

Our second call was for a 48 year old man that was in a constant state of drunkenness. This poor man had come to the point that he no longer liked the taste of anything except for alcohol and would vomit anything else that he tried to consume. His loved ones begged him to stop, but he couldn't bring himself to break his addiction and will no doubt shorten his life drastically because of it.

And the third call we recently ran involving the effects of alcohol was one of the hardest and saddest yet...Two young women that had drank over four times the legal limit were driving home after a party when then swerved over into the median going airborne and lading on a minivan carrying a mother and three small children. Thankfully, the mother and children were not critically injured, but the two ladies in the car were both critically wounded and had to be flown to the nearest hospital. I do not know if either of them survived.