EMT work on Indian Reservation

Brrrrinng, brrrrinng, brrrrinng. The incessant ringing of the phone jarred me out of my sleep. Three in the morning is not my favorite time for the phone to ring, but that is normal here at work. Not that I like it. Dispatch tells us there is an assault victim at a house on Hwy 18 East that needs to be checked out. Assault. I don’t like the sound of that. But it’s quite common here on the reservation. So far most of the time the victims are just a little bruised, but you never know. So off we go, with lights and sirens going strong. We find the right driveway, just a dirt trail that reminds of roads in Papua New Guinea. Partway up the drive, it branches into three trails. We take the middle one. We arrive at a house, but it is completely dark inside. My partner goes to the door only to find out that we are at the wrong house. So now where to? We don’t see any other houses anywhere nearby. We call dispatch again and they tell us that there is a light blinking to the west of where we are. That is where we need to go. I can barely see the light they are referring to, but it is there. We go back out to where the road branched. This time we take the branch to the left.
But now we are really confused. There really isn’t a house out in these parts. We pass a shack, but it’s completely dark. We continue down the road, but a fence not too much farther on blocks it off. So the shack must be it. It doesn’t look like much. It’s pretty small, maybe 15’ by 8’. There is a semblance of windows, but no glass; just old rags covering the holes. Again my partner goes up to the door and this time, we are in the right place. I join my partner and enter the hovel. There is a single bed on the far end of the shack that barely fits width wise. A propane bottle in the corner feeds the little one burner stove used for cooking. The inside of the shack is just as cold as outside, which in mid-March is none to warm in South Dakota. A man is lying on the bed, wrapped in blankets. He says he got beat up a bit. We check him over and find only minor bruising. He doesn’t want to go in to the hospital. His wife wants him to, but we can’t force him. So we ask him to sign a refusal of services form, and then we leave. I wonder how long it will be before we are again called out to this residence.
Many of the people we transport are well known by the ambulance staff. We transport them almost every week. Mostly their complaints are for minor issues, or ones that completely made up. They just want attention, and this is the best way to get it. So many are living with no happiness or joy. They just subsist from day to day. They don’t know any different. They don’t know that life could be different. I only hope and pray that in the short time that I spend with them in the back of the ambulance, they will see something different. I pray that God will give me opportunities to tell of His love for these people.

snowboarding :) what fun!

Lots of people say that snowboarding is more fun than skiing, so today I decided to give it a try. I have always been a skier, and I'm pretty good at it. Good enough not to fall much at least. And I usually make it down the hill in pretty good time. I don't like moguls, but they are doable. Snowboarding on the other hand, has made me pretty sore. I immagine tomorrow my rear and my knee caps are going to be quite colorful :) I definitely took my share of the spills. I haven't fallen that much in all my time skiing put together!!! But wow, it sure was a blast!!! Yeah, the bunny hill got a bit boring, but there was a solution to that. Don't do the bunny hill! Do a bigger one! Get on the chair lift, never mind that you don't really know how you are going to get off without making a scene, and then have some fun falling! But I must say, towards the end of the day, I was starting to catch the idea and have some fun rides down the mountain, WITHOUT falling. And getting off the ski lift? No problem. Just stand up and slide.

Anyhow, that was the fun of the day. Of course, there is always that nagging thought that I should have been studying, but . . . I'm not sorry!

God's Hand

Wow, so it has been awhile since I updated everyone as to what has been going on in my life. I do finally have a job and I have now done two 48 hour shifts, with a combined total of 16 calls and over 1000 miles of riding in the ambulance!! Such an adventure! I was really nervous at first, especially when the first call came in for chest pain. My partner was telling me that if it was a real heart attack, I could be needing to do CPR before reaching the hospital 40 miles away. But it turned out to be someone faking the chest pain with good vitals and none of the body signs of heart attack. Whew! But now I'm getting more confident and learning to ask the right questions and make the right calls. Of course, so far nothing has been very emergent.

It was so amazing to me too, how God worked it out for me to work on the reservation. At first, I thought I would be working for a man named Marvis in the town of Wanblee (110 miles from where I live) where one of the ambulances is stationed. But then he said that Lori, from Kyle (80 miles away), was supposed to hire me on to her ambulance crew stationed there. But she never contacted me. I kept bugging the ambulance service, and finally they passed my application to Dennis, stationed in Lone Man (only 65 miles away), and he was the one who finally hired me on to his crew. I found out this last Thursday that Marvis, who was the originally going to hire me, had been arrested for not paying fines from several years back, and was going to court for trying to sexually assault one of his employees. Praise God I didn't end up working for him! Where I'm at I can trust the men I work with. Neither of them smoke or drink, and one is an ex-cop. So I count my blessings.

AND!!! to make life even more exciting!!!! God has opened the door for me to take the massage therapy course here at Black Hills as a self-study course so I can continue working and volunteering. I just have to do all the book work in my *free* time. So within six months I will be able to sit for my national exam to become a certified massage therapist. I'm soooo excited to see God leading! Its amazing what happens when we seek His kingdom first. Everything else just falls into place :)

So thats whats going on with me :) I would love to hear from you how God is leading in your life as well. If you like adventure, let God take control of your life, 'cause you never know where He will lead!

God bless you all!
Corrie