Night in the ER

After a weary last week of May, this weekend I survived my first (since 1988) shift in New Mexico's largest Level One Trauma Center at the University of New Mexico. There is nothing like spending six hours in the ER to let you know how lucky and bright your own life is despite the everyday losses, disappointments, aches and pains of one's own daily grindage. No patients in the ER are having even less than good days.

The new much-improved Emergency Department at UNM is geometrically changed from when I volunteered at BCMC (the 'old' ER was then referred to as the Bernalillo County Medical Center). There are many more individual treatment rooms now glass-door-encased as well as improved Trauma and Resuscitation bays. Several times during the shift I felt like I had 'lost my shopping cart' on a Wal-Mart aisle; took a bit of learning the navigations down halls and up corridors. Is that cart full of blankets, pillows and nightgowns yours? Ah, yes.

What has not changed in two decades is the fact that the ER continues, in my opinion, to be one of the most 'real' sections of the hospital. Reality and Being Here Now are key. Pain and attempts to alleviate pain, not to mention 'life saving' put all concerned into the present moment quite effectively. Most important, the staff working in ER's both here and across the country, seem to me to be some of the most hard-working, committed, and truly fine folks found in the broad ranging spectrum of "health practitioners".

Being an ER Volunteer affords me the opportunity to hover between patient and staff; to listen, comfort, aid both the patient (broad-ranging in needs and attitudes) as well as to be able to strip beds and carry out tasks freeing up certified staff for more important jobs. Also in an odd way as a young kid I was it seems often in need of stitches/bandages and hospital visits. I was treated well by hospital staff as a child and that stuck with me somewhere deep in the folds of my psyche.

As I am no longer in the classroom as a teacher receiving daily notice of students being sure to point out my many 'blemishes', and the fact that my self-employment as business owner often leaving me completing tasks unnoticed by others, the six hours I spent this weekend offered me an opportunity to immediately help out and to immediately see results...I feel good about what I was able to accomplish and look forward to next weekend.

This new gig offers more to this voluntarily sort of partially employed dude, than does an hourly stipend of cash-oh-la. And I suppose too, I can now play one of my favorite Jefferson Airplane tunes even louder now...Volunteers!

Glad to come on board again at UNM Hospital.

Viva all of the  Volunteers of America ! 

(including the once so-named garbage collectors of San Francisco)

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