Ok, I enjoy a good novel like anyone, but in all seriousness @RedBlanketRunner what are your credentials?
As Jerry Garcia said, long strange trip. Nutshell, glossing over a lot.
Engineering student, did ambulance red blanket runs to help student expenses. No qualifications were required then, just an hour or two basic instructions. Grab and run. ALL medical procedures required physician instructions/authorization. Radios were Motorola tube type.
Burned out on school and ambulance I worked So Cal brush fires, seasonal on call. Worked manufacturing industry then ramrod running a pack station. A couple of friends, US Marshall and an S.O. talked me into applying for S&R. Politics ran and ruled all in that county. On the job training, a combination of LEO and advanced rescue. Around a year in I had a major confrontation with a misogynist max good old boy group crapping on a couple of would be female fire fighters. Quit or get fired I quit.
Marshall and a friend of his put in the word for me and I ended up an S.O. Bottom of the pecking order, errand runner, S&R in rolling wreck vehicles with, literally, a quarter ton of rescue gear. Chains, cables, jacks, extrication gear and assisting HPs the majority of the work.
Volunteered at various VFDs throughout the above time and always, my name in the hat for brush fires.
Got out of the SO gig after about a year or two? and went back to school. Electronic engineering and whatever EMT like courses that were available. Grabbed EMT cert and Bio-med tech.
Around five years of a blur here. Marriage, wildland fires, erosion control work for LA County Flood control. Grabbed heavy equipment cert in there somewhere. Then So Cal. Ambulance on call extra for maybe 2 years? City started to get to me. Marriage went south.
Became a transient. Took odd jobs. One stint in the golden triangle, migrant pot farm worker for a summer. Fist full of money but way too much hard core crazy. Went into construction. Built 3 houses with a friend in So Cal. Grabbed my money and went up state, transient again. Future wife took me in. Cleaned up my act. VFD and started an electronics repair. Friend of friend stuff, got a job on a local ambulance and B-MET at local hospital. Took courses. EMT II. More courses, 12 hour ambulance shifts, 8 hour a day B-met. and college. Certified Bio-Med Engineer and grabbed ACLS. Did lots and lots of CPR classes during those 15 years. Then N.A. Was really enjoying things at that time. I work best under maximum pressure.
Then my debility hit. Tossed back and forth in a divorce, law suit with former employer and Soc Sec trying to hand me the shaft. (Sitting on the steps of the county court house, 08:00, watching the private company jet fly in the attyorneys to give me yet another reaming, ex had cleaned out the bank accounts. Representing myself. Sleeping on the floor in a friends trailer.) Court determination, permanently disabled. Transient again. Felt sorry for myself for a couple of years then contacted some NGOs and headed to the third world.
Would make a good novel if it wasn't so implausible.
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