Lenses and Lookingglasses: EMS Academy

Thursday, March 7, 2013

EMS Academy

Checking off goals,
crossing off the bucket list,
whatever you wanna call it,
I have the feeling that 2013 is going to be filled with it.

Since my early highschool days, I've been interested in emergency care- working with a outdoors girls program, keeping up my CPR certification religiously, hanging out with paramedic/emt/firefighter/lifegaurd friends- and have always wanted to pursue taking an EMT course. The timing never seemed to work out. Not until this spring.

For the past 8 weeks I've had the great privilege of studying emergency care with Saint Paul Fire Department's EMS Academy. We're about half way through the program, with 8 more weeks to go, but I'm loving it so far. Loving the people, loving the culture, loving the concepts. It's weird but I think I love emergencies. And people.

I've been blown away by the human body. Things I once thought were 'simple' -respiration, circulation, sleep, the fact that I have bones holding me together- have now become some of the most complex ideas to me- miracles, really.(Respiration is currently one of my favorite things to talk about. Why? Because it's crazy, that's why.) The human body is a masterpiece.

There have been a few moments, over the past months, where I'd lean back from my anotomical perch over my 1283 page text book, breathless.
"Is this even real?" I'd ask, after studying anatomy and physiology. I'd look down at my hand, take a deep breath, check the pulse at my wrist, just to make sure that I wasn't kidding myself.
I'm alive.
I can't believe I get to have a body and to be alive.
It's breathtaking, God's design of the body. Our bodies are perfused with His name and it is beautiful.

God is beautiful.

And he's really, really real. He's not real as an idea is real, he's really real. Like my hand is real. Except even more so, and in a different, better way. And he's making me real.

Below are a smattering of photos from class and beyond.
Keep it real.