Visions of Noise

A few years ago, I was invited to deliver a talk at a prominent state university. I was asked to speak about volunteerism and how I got started on my advocacies. Quite honestly, I was clueless on how I would go about making a simple slideshow and what I would put in it. It took me a few days to finally sit down and work on my presentation and what I ended up doing was an album of photographs dating back to the time when I first worked as a photographer, a college teacher and all the way up to my days in government service. Looking at the photos, I couldn’t help but be amazed at how far I have come as a professional, doing a variety of jobs and wearing so many hats over the span of three decades. I marveled at my own capabilities, having been able to do things I hadn’t even dreamed of or imagined. I’ve lived through many adventures, some of which can even be considered, “death-defying” or reckless or “bad ass”. As I sifted through my digital bag of memories, I tried to decipher the ...

In this business, you get thrown into all sorts of tragedies that can wear down the spirit. Last night's transport was one of the rare, uplifting exceptions. A few months back, we responded to an urgent call where a regular patient was de-saturating (SPO2 = 46%) and was clearly in bad shape. There was little that could be done except drive like a bat out of hell and administer high-flow oxygen via non-rebreather mask and hope that the patient doesn't go into cardiac arrest. The last I saw of the patient was when he was endorsed at the ER and we left with the sinking feeling that we would never hear of him again. This was why I got the surprise of my life when we were called to bring the patient home. I was assuming that if he lived, he would at best, be in a vegetative state and we were simply taking him home to be given pallative care. I was not prepared for what I saw when we entered the patient's room. The man was propped up on the bed with his eyes open and was respondi...