Senior year to now

I forgot to mention something important. Near the end of my junior year and right before I joined the SAR team my mom went to rehab for a month. My step-dad finally persuaded her to go under her own will. Within 30 minutes of her release, as my mom and step-dad walked in the door at home, my step-dad started complaining of severe chest pain. My mom drove him to the nearby hospital where it was confirmed he was having a heart attack. Soon, he was in cardiac arrest. My mom recounted hearing "code blue" being paged over the intercom and a flurry of doctors and nurses and techs rush into his room. They successfully resucitated him and he has returned almost completely to the state of health he was in prior to the heart attack.

In my senior year I continued my involvement in SAR and on the newspaper. I also started taking a "med prep" class which was pretty intensive... about half of my credit hours. It covered basics in health care like ethics, medical terminology, standard precautions, professional standards, sterile technique, etc. The teachers were two nurses, and unfortunately they sucked at running a class. The medical terminology and the sterile technique stuff was the only worthwhile part of the program for me.

I also took college anatomy and physiology. It was more difficult than I expected, but I loved the class. My professor was crazy: he was a single dad of 3, a neurosurgery resident, played in an orchestra, and taught at 2 different colleges. I don't think he slept, and he made the neurology unit really hard.

My relationship with Chris was on shaky ground. He found it difficult to deal with the fact that I was devoting so much time my own endeavors, and that one of those endeavors, SAR, involved me spending great amounts of time around men. I found it difficult to deal with his career as a music marketing rep and DJ - which required him to spend much of his time in bars and clubs all night. He felt like I was growing away from him and although at the time I denied it, it was true.

I started working at a drop-in nursery at a rec center about 1-2 times a week. The pay was awful, but the nursery was often empty so I just did homework.

I started my EMT-B class my second semester of senior year. It was every Saturday from 8 am - 5 pm for 6 months. I loved it. It was my one respite from the drudgery and inaneness of secondary education. I blazed through it too, having already passed my SAR team's emergency care class with flying colors. I fell in love with everyone in my class. They were truly great people and it makes me happy to know that they will be among the new crop of EMSers taking care of sick people.

I didn't attend any high school proms or homecoming dances. Simply put, I didn't see the allure in paying a decent sum to be in a dark room overcrowded with people I generally did not like dry-humping each other to obnoxious music. I was anti-social... but honestly only when it came to high school.

I was happy to see graduation come, but didn't romanticise it. I was still working hard in my EMT class and other endeavors well after my graduation, anyways. My mom didn't show up to my graduation. After I walked I checked my voicemail. She left me a message but it was so slurred I couldn't understand it. So I basically came to understand she was too high to come to my graduation. That pissed me off.

I broke up with Chris shortly after graduation. It was really hard to do, but I never thought about turning back. It just kind of happened. I felt like I had to experience the world more, date a few people, and live independently while I was young. Him and I are still struggling to keep this friendly relationship.

I passed my NREMT stuff with flying colors. I finally got my driver's licence in June, right before my SAR team's annual trainings. In my first month of having a driver's license I drove well over 500 miles, many of those miles were in the mountains. I hadn't been interested in driving until my senior year because I was happy walking everywhere or taking public transportation. I didn't see the need to spend all my money on gas. I had no real need for a car until that point.

Around this time I had a fling with a gorgeous firefighter who was the son of a high roller on the SAR team. I'll never get him. He came on to me really strong. He was the one who started it. I hadn't even really talked to him prior to his initiation of contact. We went on a date that ended pretty hot and heavy... and then another date that went similarily. However, I said no to sex at the time because of the politics that might erupt if the affair came to light (his dad was my superior at the time). A few weeks later when I felt that the situation was safe... no dice. "I don't know what I want out of a relationship right now," and this was his response to me saying that I wanted to keep things completely casual and avoid a serious relationship or commitment of any kind. Oh well. It still bothers me to this day for some stupid reason.

I also took my IV approval course in July with 2 friends. I completed the course, but didn't get enough sticks in my clinical rotation to get the approval. I could have scheduled another clinical, but got lazy. I have no real need for IV approval anyways.

My best friend A and I went on my first road trip ever to Cheyenne shortly after. I had been seeing someone stationed at Warren Air Force Base, so we stayed up there during Frontier Days. We managed to have a great time, despite the fact that the guy I was seeing was exhaustingly clingy and touchy-feely. We would be sitting on the couch and I would try to get up to go pee and he would be grabbing at me. That didn't last too long after we left Wyoming.

I started school as a pre-nursing major at a state university in the heart of downtown in August. Many of my friends from the SAR team attend school on the same campus, so I spend a lot of time with them. And as you may have noted, I'm completely enamored with one of them.

I snagged a student employment gig as a medical assistant at an ob gyn clinic operated by the university's hospital and med school. It's a perfect learning environment, and there's no nurses so I do a lot of nursing-ish work.

I go to school 2 days a week, work 2 days a week, and help teach my SAR team's emergency care class 2 days a week.

It's a lot easier to write about your life in a few years of retrospect. Writing all this stuff down has made me realize how young I am. I've only been alive a few years, really.