Strange Encounters of the 4th Kind

There is always a stabbing bolt of adrenaline when the EMS alarm goes off.  The “tone”, as we trauma junkies call it seems to excite and scare the shit out of you at the same time.  Day or night it has always done the same thing to me.  It brings me to some bizarre level of awareness long before my brain is awake.  I hear and remember things said by the dispatcher but can’t remember to put on my socks.  I’ve quit trying to figure it out and I suppose it doesn’t really matter.   I have to come learn over the years that doing this job isn’t really about any of that.  It isn’t about lights and sirens, big motor vehicle crashes, cardiac drugs, shocks, or blood.  It’s about people.  And it always has been.

The other day the “tones” went off on my radio and I was at my “tiny house”.  The same bolt of adrenaline hit me as it always does.  This one had a fairly large “pucker factor” involved.  No you won’t find those terms in the paramedic textbook but they seem to be universal.  A rollover with three victims and two laying in the road.  That road was a rutted dirt track about 30 miles away and no one was completely clear where it was.  Remember this is truly the last frontier in Texas.   Even a helicopter is an hour away if you can get one and they can find a place to land.  Oh, did I mention they only can take one patient?  or maybe that we only have one ambulance?  Luckily and strangely too what Terlingua loses in distance and equipment they make up in some first rate paramedic talent.  Fast forward to the scene.  A jeep upside down on the side of the road and yes on this rare occasion the information was correct.  Three people and two were laying in the road.  It looked bad.   Difficulty breathing, knocked unconscious, paralyzed  legs, back pain, all the things that you would expect from the “big one”.  With one exception....they were all alive. One was even uninjured. I will spare you the details of the medical side but make note.  No helicopter on this one.  One ambulance and two patients and 45 minutes on rutted road to pavement.  Then a short hour and half race to a hospital.  We were going to double load two very hurt people and make a mad dash to an emergency room.   Myself, my top notch colleague, and two people strapped, taped, glued and wedged on very hard uncomfortable boards were getting ready to be very very friendly with each other.  Again I will spare you the details but the back of the ambulance was completely covered with tubes, bags of saline, wires, blinking lights, gauze, clothes, and serious noise.   There was some screaming, thrashing, twisting and moaning on both sides of the isle for sure.  I’m certain that there are no long code three paramedic runs in Texas longer than this one.  So you have time to work and hope and second guess what you have done and what is going on along the way a couple of times over. 

In that hour and a half of terror I witnessed what I believed I had known for years.   Nothing is more important than human contact.  The physical touch of another human being in time of need is without equal in it’s power.  The same can be said for a kind and thoughtful word and genuine interest.   As we rattled down the road I came to understand the most important part of my treatment this evening is simply holding a hand.  Other things had to be done and were vital but none would be more powerful than my hand in hers.  Every time I had to do one of those, “important”, things, the first thing my patient did was start searching for my hand or my touch on her shoulder.  She couldn’t see me very well if at all but she could feel my touch even though my gloves.  My partner was doing the same thing with her piece of this chaos too with the same immeasurable results.  The best advice I got in my early days of doing this job was always call a person by their name.  It doesn’t matter if they are screaming, or trapped or nuts, (ah..I mean “altered”) as we say.  That will be the only thing that they hear among strangers and the madness of crisis.  It has never failed me and didn’t this afternoon.   We should all be humbled by the beauty and force of human contact.

I would ask that when you find that person in need some day...and you will.  Please remember to offer a hand or a kind word.  Call them by their names... if you don’t know it...ask!  And never forget what it means to be human and alive.  Young or old we all find strength and life those small interactions.  

Viva Terlingua

Old Corners

In 1976 I won a tennis tournament.   It wasn’t sanctioned as they say and few people outside the area even knew it was going on.  It was played in the old automobile building at Fairpark in Dallas on a cold December weekend.  The court surface alternated between polished concrete and a basketball floor with tennis court lines faintly outlined on a platform that was elevated 8 inches above the ground.  If you drew a “basketball floor” it would come complete with a basketball goal just about where you would normally line up to serve.  Truth is I loved playing in that building and my game, what little there was before this day, was kind of suited for the off centered oddities of the venue and surface.  

This little tournament only had 16 players.  That’s it just 16.  There was no big BBQ party, no tournament desk, no real stadium court.  By all of the normal standards it was bush league.  I mean most of the time you played between inner city basketball games with screaming, yelling, moving, hollering people everywhere.  They never even noticed you or that silly game some people called tennis.  It was bizarre and bush league in every way....except for the players.   Every one of the 16 players were anything but “bush league”.  That little tournament had 8 of the top 10 players in the state and no one was ranked under 20.   There were sectional titles and national championships and a long list of storied tennis pedigrees in the draw.  No, it wasn’t bush league at all.  In those days I was “getting better” as some would say.  “Not quite there”, is another phrase used to describe my fairly out of control approach to the game.  Lot’s of lessons, money, racquet clubs and travel in that group.  Except for me and a couple of other mortals in the draw.    I’m sure every one and most likely me too, expected that I would provide some warm up for the big boys early and be heading back home by lunch on the first day.    I’m not going to bore you with major triumph or a blow by blow commentary of each match but let’s just say I had one of those couple of days.  I got better.  Each match I found some groove, gear, inspiration, genius whatever you want to call it.  I was “TREE’D” for those tennis oldies out there.  As the tournament went on I kept getting better.  Guys would just shake their heads when the match was over and grumble and walk off.  My win in the finals was witnessed by my mother and a host of  family members belonging to my opponent.  All with extreme tennis history.  It was an ugly ending as tense tennis matches can often be when the “David whacks a Goliath”.   I have to think my mother was the only happy one in the enormous Building that Sunday which was filled with hundreds of people and only two tennis players.    I was in another place completely different from happy.  Anyone who has had that sort of unlikely success knows what I’m talking about.   Heart racing, it’s hard to sit down, you are tunnel visioned, and relived most of all that you didn’t screw it up somehow...but happy...no way.  What was not even remotely clear to me 40 years ago is as clear as a desert sky today.   I had turned a corner.  I was no longer the outsider and my name would be playing first on that team.  I became a believer.  

Dab the tears from your eyes for a minute and then realize that the corner  I turned was not just a tennis one but the belief that drive, hard work and a dream can accomplish more that anyone would ever believe.   Sitting out on the Old Maverick Road this evening watching a beautiful Fall sunset in the cool crisp desert air reminded me that it’s never too late to “turn the corner” again.  

Miles

Viva Terlingua

The importance of being unimportant

If you really want to know how important you are in the world we live in please read on.  If not just stop reading and always wonder.  Simplicity...complication....material excess....minimalism, can all be measured in one fairly common but unnoticed means.  Keys!  It’s all in the number of keys you have in your purse or pocket.  When you were a little kid in school who was the most interesting person at the school?  No doubt about it...the Janitor.  He had that wad of keys hanging off his belt.  Every time someone had a crisis at school he was the Lone Ranger coming to the rescue by unlocking something.  Security guards, your dad, how about your mom rummaging through that abyss of a bag to find whatever key was necessary to get the job done.   

Granted things have changed on the technology side but the theme is still the same.  The more keys you have the more important and complicated you are.  There is also a flip side to that but “wait for it”.  So by definition, the fewer keys you have... the more simple and less complicated your life is, right?  Well, again yes and no.  

In my recent exodus from the complicated world, I have come to believe completely that the number of keys one has should be regulated by divine powers.  A couple of days ago I moved into a posh mother in laws digs here in Terlingua.  A real top shelf residence with running water and electricity.  Hot water may be an issue but I have a burner so problem solved.  For the  bulk of my last few years I have been besieged  with keys.  Keys for the ridiculous crap that I buy, rent, already own, etc...  The wad of keys in my pocket had gotten to a point where it was not going to go into my pocket....safely...men you know what I mean.   The most crazy fact about this problem is that I do key management all the time it seems...for personal safety mainly.  I get that wild hair and cull through this pile of keys and try to figure out what they are for.  Eventually, I have two or three that I have no idea what they go to.  None.  I labor in frustrated agony trying to get them off of the nail breaker contraptions they are on and then put them in a box.  Yes.... I don’t know what they are for and I keep them.  The fear of one day going to some obscure locked box deep in storage that potentially contains some long lost treasure and not having the key forces me to hedge my bets and keep the stupid keys.  Storage, trailer locks, door keys, box keys, truck cover keys, closet keys, fire safe keys,  vespa keys and the locks that are around it, over and over.  At one time or another they have been in my pocket and on my “ring”.   Sorry, back to the exodus.  Moving away from the metropolis of Canton and all the keys associated with ownership, I did formal key management last night.  The result was my “ring” was down to two keys.  Yep, two.  Can you imagine how it felt both physically, guys you know what I mean, and emotionally to be that simple or maybe in this case “unimportant”.  The last time I had two keys in my pocket I was wearing snug fitting Levi’s and owned nothing. Maybe that is the practical joke of life.... When you own nothing you can have two keys and wear good fitting jeans and when you have a ton of shit you have to wear baggies because all those keys won’t fit.  Just a thought.  

Ok, the promised flip side.  Have you ever seen that person who gets out of the luxury car at Starbucks with only one key?  BEEP, and that’s it.  Do not be fooled by that overt display of counterfeit simplicity.  It is not true.  While that person may have simplified on the outside, they no doubt have several draws located in the “writing” alcove filled with keys to doors, boxes, ignitions, devices, and secrets.  They are impostors.  If that’s you stop.  Go get a huge key ring and join the rest of us in our wretched excess.  

What do you really need and enjoy?  Think about it.  Downsizing is like a prostate exam but the result is like find out your internet company has not been charging you for a year by mistake.  Simply marvelous and worth the short term pain.  I’m still not completely there and yes there are keys in the drawer but fewer than there was and going down.  

Viva Terlingua