An Ambulance Call

And the First Responders Who Came: A Sweet Story About Good Men

A circle of sweet uniformed men stood around in my living room, a few of them traipsing out the door, firetruck parked in front.

In other contexts I might be scared of so many men in uniform in my home, no one else in the room with me. I am a tiny woman and I didn’t need all those men to lift me on a stretcher had I had needed one. But as it turned out they were a lovely group of human beings and considering that it under the context of a medical emergency, the vibes were all really good.

I have pension for fluky medical things, and in this case it was a burn gone wrong. I remembered my husband describing the protocol for how to care for a burn, that the burn care people always say to do for patients, involving scrubbing it so it doesn’t get infected, and it had been going pretty well, though not healing especially fast and intermittently seeming to get infected in spite of my intentions to prevent it from doing so.

I’d burned it whilst trying to add one more potato to an oven safe glass dish. My left middle finger apparently somehow managed to touch glowing heat coil and the burn through several layers of skin happen so fast I didn’t even really worry that much about it. Oh well. Burn. Pain. Hope it doesn’t get bad. I kind of forgot about it. Except that two nights in a row I woke up with pain that was getting worse and it was looking really angry and it kept getting re-infected.

Well I can get salty, although I try, in general to keep my salt well balanced. In this case I watched the salt dissolving the infected parts of my wound just like a de-icer (yes, we’re going to be using those soon enough - try to use an eco-friendly one, or just plain salt,) and it started happening….the infected parts turned into little holes in the wound and from those holes, read began piling out down into my hand…I could see it spreading on the top part of my hand toward my wrist, and then and my wrist started hurting and feeling very odd indeed and then my arm and then I started going numb and weak on the same side of y body. My heart was also going quite fast - tachycardia they call it - and it’s something I wanted to be sure wasn’t sepsis or a clot or something - though I’ve had my heart race from dehydration, this came on suddenly. I also am sensitive and sometimes have had that experience simply for energetic reasons - sometimes it happens to me right before a mass event, for example, other times there’s just an energy floating through that seems to get caught in my system momentarily and once it’s on its way, I’m fine.

Although I know that if I seek medical attention, I’m more than likely to end up not making use of what is offered, I still see an important place for ruling out something serious, and when suddenly infected blood is visibly released into other parts of one’s body and one starts to feel profoundly week, numb and tachycardic, I thought it was worth calling an ambulance. Hubby was working at urgent care, ironically.

I am grateful we have excellent first responders and they actually arrived before we could settle the dogs. I was already starting to feel a little better, and I guess the fact I was able to then get up and help my son lug the passionately barking, teeth bearing, more than half my weight bigger dog to the basement showed I was probably gonna be okay.

I was really surprised how MANY of them there were. I live relatively near the firehouse, so I must have caught them on a good day. They took my vitals and nothing looked awful except my heart rate was sky high. They asked if I was on drugs. I told me no, and then amended that I do take the legal in all states TCH-8, which has been a godsend for sleep thought it doesn’t make me high. Joy is my natural state when I am not actively dealing with difficult things emotionally or physically that interfere with that natural state. It had occurred to me that isolating compounds (aka drugs, whether legal or not,) often causes more imbalance and side effects compared to using a whole extract, but I didn’t think too much of it.

Surprising, one of the fellows, said, ‘Oh that stuff’s terrible for you. If you’re gonna do weed, do the real stuff. All of our calls with people having side effects have been from people who are using the delta.’

I asked, “Why would they make something that harms you legal and not legalize something that is good for you?”

He replied, ‘Cause big money. Cause big pharma.’

“I hear that.”

I nodded. I thought about pushing my luck and talking about the vax, but decided I wasn’t feeling that much better yet and it wasn’t quite aligned inwardly. I was feeling better enough to ask a question like that, and my intuition was that I didn’t need to go to the hospital, so I told them I thought I’d be okay, and that I didn’t think I needed to come with them. My heart was still racing but I felt easily able to move all my limbs, the sensation of numbness and weakness was almost gone. Considered as they did that my other vitals were acceptable, they agreed with my plan to not go to the Hospital. And the same one who lovingly burst my bubble about the delta TCH-8 asked, “Is there anything else we can do for you?”

I still felt weak overall, but I smiled and said, ‘Keep busting up big Pharma the best you can from the inside.’

I saw nods and smiles all around. Difference races. Unique men. The consensus was in. And it didn’t negate how grateful I was that they came, that there is a place for allopathic medicine. It just has been in the wrong place for so long!

The other day I was talking with someone about the need for more conversations on positive masculinity. Well, here it was in action:

They showed up fast. They were kind and respectful. They trusted my own judgment when I said I thought they could go and I would be alright. They erred on the side of not assuming I was crazy even though my explanation of what happened may have been atypical. They supported me by being available to help but palso listening to my voice. The were of genuine service to someone who needed them (just knowing that I wasn’t going into septic shock probably helped my heart rate calm down faster, whatever the original cause of its racing,) And they were all good men. They left with smiles, hopefully feeling empowered as they went on to their next call to save someone else’s life, or at least help them know they are not alone, help is always available, and there are heroes everyday.

There are heroes everyday. I hope I can be reminded of this without having fluky medical things happen to me. But if you are also reminded of this- if my story encourages you even a little, that the world is waking up in its own way, and that that there are good men in it, then my fluky infected burn is worthy it.

But hey universe, maybe we can learn and grow without trauma starting now?