It's a long one....

Here is a not so quick update on my life, this is really the only means I have of communication with many of you, so here is a shot in the dark hoping to reach a few of you. If anyone still reads this, I apologize for the length now.

            So this past year I was in a Primary Care Paramedic program. The course I took was a one year condensed program, 8 months of school and 4 months of “preceptorship” (where I am assigned to a service and a crew to teach me how to do the job).  It was a hard year, but there was nothing I would rather be doing. The group of people we had was phenomenal, and I made some very close friends throughout the year, friends who kept pushing towards the end goal. Each one inspiring me in different ways during our journey together:

             Sarah, who battled cancer for the entire year and was on chemotherapy for the last half while also providing foster care for her friends son.

Leigha a single mother of 2 beautiful little boys trying to make a better life for them

Connor a 22 year old with a wife and 2 lovely children who has a better understanding of what it means to be a father and a husband than men twice his age

Anita who was laid off from her job and took a chance to chase a dream she was always too scared to do

James a father and husband who wanted to start making a difference in the world

Paul a jack of all trades and the oldest in our class at 50 trying to tackle another career (former pro hockey player in Sweden, English as a second langue teacher, IT support worker, Pharmaceutical drug rep)

These people became like my family over the year, and meant so much to me. I am grateful to call them my friends.

Our instructors for the most part were amazing. Our head skills instructor, a man named Rick was in the Navy for 30 years before becoming a medic. He is a brilliant man, but a little bit of a cowboy. Nothing made me study harder than knowing Rick was coming at me with his rapid fire of questions at the start of every skills day. The man put so much pressure on me he inadvertently helped me diagnose a heart condition I had (more on that later).  My education would not have been the same without that crazy man pushing me and demanding me to be the best. Our other instructors where not as harsh as Rick was, and I am thankful to them and grateful for everything they taught me. Each had different perspectives on my questions and gave me different sides to consider and I learnt much from all of them. The ones that had the most impact on me were Jeff a ACP in Toronto made 12 leads make sense (learning those is like learning another language), Sean a PCP in Simcoe who really helped me understand how to delegate in complex situations, Kerri-Jo a PCP on the rapid response unit in York who was one of the best instructors I’ve ever had in terms of simplifying things, Colin a PCP in Durham who is just all around brilliant and has a passion for knowledge that is contagious and Dan a PCP in Simcoe who prepared us as much as he could for all the weird little twists that come when you are out in the real world.

However as grateful as I am to all of them, the ones I am most thankful for and did the bulk of my learning from were my preceptors Ryan and Josh. They were in the trenches with me, doing the dirty work my school instructors couldn’t do, they were by my side in the real world, helping to prepare me to be my very own medic, taking me through many of my “first” experiences as a baby medic. I, to this day, refer to them as my “papa medics”. Ryan was my main preceptor and he was a man of few words, but when he spoke to me I almost always learnt something. I knew how I preformed on a call just from the look on his face, and he was always ready to provide me with feedback on the calls from a very intellectual level. He put me through the ringer making sure I knew my patho of disease and drugs. Josh my second preceptor was more of the “feelings” one, there for me if it was a rough call, or if I needed to talk about the aspects of the call that couldn’t be explained by a textbook or science. Each had different ways to teach me and I learnt so much from them, to those two men I am most thankful for in my schooling. I will be lucky if I can be half the medic they are.

Having gone through all of that and had all those people pour so much time into me; I managed to land 2 jobs, one with Simcoe County Paramedic Service and the other with Rama EMS. I feel unbelievably lucky to have done this and to get the privilege and responsibility of being able to help the sick. If these people had not invested in me I would not have been able to do this and I am very grateful to them. I was also lucky enough to have been offered a Teaching Assistant position at my school and a job (which Connor got me right after school) as a Event Medic, the boss Kevin took a chance on me by giving me a job, gave me an excellent reference for Simcoe and has asked me to stay on as he continues to grow his company (check out Odyssey Medical if you get a chance). Once again for all these opportunities and people I am thankful for.

So an up date on some other things.

This year I was diagnosed with a heart condition called Wolff-Parkinson’s White. It is a condition that basically means I have some extra tissue in my heart that can cause it at times to beat at an accelerated rate. This can cause a variety of problems and one of the “symptoms” is sudden death (fortunately for me my EP informs me this is vary unlikely for me). For me the things to worry about is my heart rate getting to fast that my blood pressure drops and I loose consciousness. It explains a few “almost” fainting spells I have had over the past 5 years that my Dr could not figure out, I was tested for a variety of things, diabetes being one of them, but the results were all negative. The dizzy spells stopped for a while and the entire thing was forgotten for the most part. When I would have heart palpitations (pounding, fluttering, rapid rate, ext…) I often chalked it up to my anxiety, a common symptom with WPW. But low in behold in class one day on a Rick’s Rapid Fire question session, my heart rate got up to 130 just sitting there. My friend did 12 lead on me and clear as day I was staring at all the markers for WPW. I immediately called my Dr who then put me on a halter monitor for 3 weeks to tract the activity of my heart. After that I was sent to an electrophysiology (EP) he did some tests and then attempted what is called an ablation, where they go into the heart and try to find the extra conduction pathway to burn it off to make it normal again. He was unable to burn my pathway off as my extra one lays right on top of the normal conduction path of the heart and if he had of burnt off my extra he would have burnt the normal one and I would then need to be placed on a pacemaker. However he did find that my heart seems to have a little pace maker of its own, when I reach a certain rate on the accessory pathway, say around 170-180, my heart realizes something is wrong and will normalize itself.  So right now I live with it, control the rapid rate when it does happen with breathing and some other little tricks. If it gets bad they will put me on some meds to keep my heart rate low. So little by little I’ve learned to live with it and take pride in educating people about it.

I also met a guy. Yes that’s right, this kid has met a guy. Try to contain your excitement as this is a very messed up, or perhaps complicated is a better word for this story/relationship or whatever it is, one in which I will just give the clipped version of. I met him last summer and knew pretty immediately that he was something special. Interaction was minimum until about November of last year when I reached out for his help on some stuff; he’s a paramedic, a professional relationship developed from there. It wasn’t until this past summer when I ran into him that we started talking more and about fewer job related things. I started to learn more about him as a person and the more I learned the more I liked. He is a very stubborn man, head strong, logical, difficult, and inflexible, he often comes across as arrogant, cold and almost unapproachable. I would be lying if I said he didn’t intimidate me, he is one of the smartest men I have ever met and the confidence he has in himself is frightening.  As we got to know each other we started to talk about exploring the option moving forward, both of us knowing that meant it was with intentions of a relationship. The plan was to take it slowly, to see what we had in common. I got to know him a more over time there was a side of him that I was able to see, a side that is warm, kind, generous, sweet, caring, and strong. A side that when combined with the traits that intrigued me in the first place made me want to know him more. It made me want to open up to him a little more, and it was good in a sense because he saw things in me that I had forgotten where there and needed to be reminded about. There are a lot of things he is currently working through at this time, and he was honest with me when they came up. A situation that make starting a new relationship next to impossible, so after a talk we decided to remain friends, which seemed like a good idea until I realized I am incapable of being that with him. It was after a few weeks of talking regularly and I realized I needed to distance myself from him because, even though we were on the cusp of starting something it was hard to be just friends. So I stopped talking to him. Interactions with him are harder now, knowing things about him and trying to maintain appropriate boundaries is difficult for me. I am grateful at this point that he has made it easier by withdrawing from me and setting boundaries, but I don’t think our friendship can be salvaged. It is hard to go back to a friendship when you know you both intended it to become something more. I have a huge amount of respect for him and I admire him greatly, he is certainly something special and something I have never experienced before, he really is an amazing man. I often have moments where I wish I hadn’t met him because not knowing him was easier than to have had known him. I struggle with how I feel about him still and am often confused. Even as I write this I find myself wishing I didn’t know he existed. Dramatic, I know. Very out of my character.

So my friends those are the updates on some areas of my life. And this is where I asked for prayer. I have not been on “speaking” terms with God as of the past few years. But if there is one thing my job has shown me, it is that there is a higher being and I need guidance from the Creator to properly do my job. So before you I bring these prayer requests.

-Thankfulness for the friendships I have made over the past year and a half and all

those who have come along side me during the time of learning

-Thankfulness helping me through school and for blessing me with jobs in

a province that is notoriously hard to get a job in

-For guidance, protection and sound clinical judgments for myself and my partner when we treat patients

- Clarity for this amazing man that I have met, and that I find how he is to fit into my life or what he is supposed to mean to me

- Guidance, clarity and protection for him as he works through the things he needs to do and on his job

Sorry for the length friends. I am not sure how many of you will read this…if any at all. I hope you are all well.

Much love.