Some thoughts on overdose and narcan for people not immersed in the opioid so called epidemic because I just passed a billboard advertising narcan at your local pharmacy. The slogan said “Overdose does not mean it’s over.” Addiction is no picnic, I’ve been clean and sober for 19 years next month, and I understand the […]

By Michael Morse

 It didn’t take long for the first call of the day. The tones went off 10 minutes after we relieved the night crew. “Rescue 1 and Engine 13, Respond to New York Avenue for a report of a man not breathing.” “Rescue 1 on the way.” We turned the corner and approached a single-family home. […]

By Michael Morse You did your duty, so it’s time to get on with the rest of your life. Funny thing is, for the rest of your life, you will look back at the years you spent responding to other people’s emergencies with a touch of sadness. Letting go of the greatest job in the […]

Yup. I said that; “It’s a good thing I blew my back out or the job would have killed me.” My truck was running 5000 plus calls a year, I was working every overtime shift I could, my brain had stopped functioning properly and my outside life was in tatters. My inside life wasn’t much […]

“But the further away I get from that life the more I realize there is always somebody waiting to take our place. What I did mattered, but only for the time I was doing it. Now, somebody else has filled the shoes I once thought only I could wear.”   One hundred years from now […]

Life is short. When we are kids our days seem endless, and days and weeks crawl by. As we age, and count our time on earth in years, then decades, we begin to see just how quickly it all passes. In our youth, we are fascinated with possibilities; anything is possible, and the world is […]

It’s ugly, I have to close my eyes. It’s cool, yet beads of sweat form on my forehead. Nausea fills me. starting at my center, flows through my body and ends as a giant burst of pain in my head. I’m paralyzed, can barely breathe. Flashing lights appear, blind me, then go away. Somebody is […]

We had bunks, and if we were lucky used them between the hours of 2300 and 0600. They were there for an unsanctioned rest as well, and I used mine every chance I could after a typical night on Rescue 1. Six after was not unusual, four the norm and every now and then just […]

EMS Week . . . There is something sacred inside the cab of the world’s ambulances; that small space that we inhabit after the smoke has cleared, the battles for life won or lost, babies delivered, lives changed forever and things we will never experience in the outside world. The ambulance cab holds more secrets […]