10.16.22
As I sit here in my easy chair typing away at a little after four o’clock on this Sunday morning, I truly feel at peace with the world – as chaotic as it may be at times. This past fortnight has been one of great reflection for me. After making the decision to start pulling some irons out of the fire, the process of thinning down our pig herd began. Instead of keeping all of Hermione’s piglets to raise up to butcher size, I decided to just keep four and quickly found homes for the rest. Miss Hermione herself was loaded in a trailer on Friday and is now happily settled in her new home where in a few months she will farrow another fine litter of piglets for her new owner. Darrell and I dispatched three of the pigs in the butcher pen who were more than ready to take up residence in the cooler, so our swine herd is truly diminishing. Oh, we will still raise a few pigs a year for the freezer for how could we ever resort to store bought pork? Yet one iron is slowly out the fire and cooling. Of course, I still have plenty of irons keeping toasty warm in the coals.
One of the remaining irons has been keeping warm for a lot of years, 24 to be exact. The other day I started checking my training record book as next year is a recertification year for my EMT license both here in the State of Oregon and Nationally. After becoming certified as a National Registry Emergency Medical Technician at the Basic level in 1998, along with several other folks here in Monument, I have retained my NREMT certification for the past 24 years. In November 1999, just a month after undergoing surgery for cancer, I undertook driving two nights a week into John Day to attend training to become an EMT Intermediate, the level just below a Paramedic, and became certified 6 months later. A year after this, with much encouragement and support from dear friend and now retired paramedic Donna Wilson, I started teaching EMT classes to others who wanted to volunteer and help people in their communities.
Over the years, our little communities of Monument and Kimberly have seen numerous people come and go in their service on the Monument Volunteer Ambulance. At one point, we had 13 responders, a number at that time greater than all the other ambulance agencies in Grant County combined! Slowly, slowly our numbers dwindled. Some folks moved out of the area, others were torn between juggling family and work which made it hard to find time to commit to volunteering on the ambulance – a decision that was excruciatingly hard for them to make! Others retired due to health issues. Some, when an unfortunate circumstance caused our little ambulance group and many others in the county to be on the brink of collapse, made the difficult decision not to return when the smoke cleared, and the status quo reestablished. Our numbers over the years have ebbed and flowed. Carrie Jewell and I are the remaining ones who took that class 24 years ago and are still volunteering, but the Monument Volunteer Ambulance crew is once again on the rise!
Sometimes I think about all the irons I have in the fire, from my little home business of making soap, lotion and other odds and ends, having milk cows and making cheese and butter, our raising of cows and pigs to stock the freezer and doing all the butchering ourselves, the list goes on and on. Yet each and every one of them I love to do and being a volunteer EMT is one of those things on that list. I always say, the day I get up and think, “Oh, drat! I have to make soap today,” or “Blast it! I need to go milk those cows!” will be the day I give that chore up. Same thing when it comes to being an EMT. If a day comes when that pager goes off in the wee hours of the morning and I do not willingly jump out of bed to go and try to help someone in need, that should be the day I turn it off for the final time. Will that day ever come? Who can say. Certainly not yet.
In towns large and small, all-over Oregon and elsewhere in this country, volunteer EMT’s are doing just what I am doing. Checking to make sure they have enough continuing education hours to keep up their certifications and licenses in order to continue serving their communities. Of course, EMT’s who work full time for an agency and are paid must do the same thing – and I should add, many of them still volunteer too. For those of us who are not career EMT’s but just volunteers, training is one more commitment made to help those in their time of need. However, it is not just those who choose to serve who make commitments and sacrifices. We must always remember that our family members make a sacrifice too. They put up with being woken in the wee hours of the morning when that pager goes off, they understand when we jump up from Thanksgiving dinner to answer a call, they encourage us and most important of all, they support us.
So, as I sit here waiting for the kettle to boil for my next cup of tea, I pull my EMT record book towards me. Glancing through the pages I see the many entries of classes I have taught and taken over the past years. I check to see how many additional hours of continuing education I may need to acquire to reach the required number for recertifying this cycle with the National Registry and the state. I am almost there. It is a good feeling.
