Ambulance Corps | Teen Ink

Ambulance Corps MAG

By Anonymous

     It was midnight on Friday and I was at home. Just as I started to watch my favorite movie, I was startled by a noise only a volunteer can appreciate, the sound of my pager at an obnoxious volume. I immediately grabbed my keys and ran out the door. I turned on my flashing blue light and drove to the garage for an emergency call. Within minutes, we arrived at the house where a patient was having difficulty breathing and stabilized him enough to transport him to the hospital he chose - naturally the farthest one with the most traffic lights.

By the time we arrived, his condition had worsened and doctors realized he was a priority patient. Wow, I thought, what if we hadn’t been there when he dialed 911? On the long ride back to the garage, I pondered our impact on the community. As we pulled in and documented the call, I looked at the clock; it was 2:30 a.m. I quietly left to return home, my eyes beginning to close and my body exhausted.

It’s interesting how a community expects an ambulance full of volunteers when they dial 911, at any hour of the night. They expect that when they take a walk in the park, it will be clean. They expect that their community will be perfect, like out of a storybook. But a community would be in trouble if there weren’t caring people willing to sacrifice their time.

When I first joined the ambulance corps, it was for the adrenaline rush that I knew would be even better than the greatest moment in sports. And when I began riding with my town’s finest, I realized that being relied on in a person’s most desperate time of need was more than just a rush. Knowing that one person, and one crew, could change the fate of total strangers is something no softball game can compare to.

Besides the satisfaction of helping others, there is a feeling of camaraderie every time I step foot in headquarters. The respect that each ambulance corps member gives is something rarely experienced by high-school students. As a crew, we must overcome many challenges, which is much easier if we appreciate each another.

People say that volunteering provides one of the most amazing feelings but it is clearer with each shift that there is no better feeling, it is in fact the best feeling in the world.



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This article has 2 comments.


i love this so much!

bdt21192 said...
on Jun. 2 2009 at 1:58 am
Hey Allyson. I read your article and i cant relate to it so much. I just started volunteering in my town for the ambulance and we had a call a few months ago that was exactly like yours. We were called out at about midnight and the person was hyperventilating. So we drove him to the hospital and I think he's fine now, but it really impacts me the same exact way that it has impacted you and I'm just so glad I'm doing it just as i feel you are. Also, I'm applying to college in the fall and i was definitely going to write my essay about the ambulance corps. and how its affected me, and I look at your article and I realized this is something that I want really want to write about in my essay and that I had the exact same experience that you had. I feel like if I write what happened to me in my essay, it would just be copying you that's how similar they are. I hope you enjoy volunteering as much as I do and hope to hear from you soon.