labor day, part 2

so two hours after i got home i was called in for a transport on the fixed wing jet.

getting loaded up was an ordeal, because our patient was critically ill. in a coma. induced because he wouldn't stop having seizures. and on a ventilator. as you can imagine we had a lot of equipment with us. i tried picking up and moving the bags into the plane. i picked up one particularly plump bag and attempted to hand it to the pilot. "golly, that weighs more than you do!" he said. it probably did. i couldn't lift it over my head; i was simply incapable. that was a bad feeling. i stopped trying to help at that point, realizing that i am too small.

while on the plane the nurse spent the entire 45 minute trip getting everything ready for the patient, while i sat and daydreamed. i sort of felt bad but there was really nothing else for me to do but think about what i was going to do for the patient. it was then that i realized my role on the team. it is my job to say "do this," and it is the nurse's and the medic's job to make it so. i've always tried to be helpful, as helpful as possible. but in this circumstance i wasn't supposed to busy myself with the little things. that was a weird feeling.

then as we rolled back to the jet with the patient, i was hand bag-ventilating the patient. i was doing all the breathing for this kid because he couldn't do it himself. i had to do it for him, and i had to do it right. and at any moment something with the breathing tube, its placement, or the bag, or the oxygen, or whatever could go wrong. and i knew i'd have to do this for at least an hour. even though i've done it before, that was a scary feeling.

it's just doesn't seem right for these responsibilties to be in my hands: to abstain from the manual labor of a task, to cerebrate upon mysterious medical things and declare orders for others to perform, to breathe for someone. but you know, it's all in a day's work. a labor day's work.