"Hi, I'm A Paramedic" follows the career of a sheepish kid who grew up determined to be a paramedic. From the first exposure to real-life drama in EMS through to the confidence and capability to serve in times of crisis, this book explores our own human responses to tragedy, despair, anxiety, apprehension, and above all, triumph and success in our profession's service to humanity.
From scared kid to infatuation with EMS. From confident provider to burnout and then new life. This is one story of a paramedic’s career arc. We need more EMS stories out there, and I encourage you to write yours. This is mine. Come ride along. You’ll see yourself, too.
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An EMS Memoir
Jeffrey talks about the book with Medic2Medic Podcast host Steve Cohen.
Evansville, Indiana
I grew up through the 1970s with a house full of brothers and sisters on Rotherwood Avenue, and later Norman Avenue, a half-block south of Bellemeade Avenue.
We went to Washington Elementary (K-8) long before it was called a middle school. I was a freshman at Bosse when our hearts were broken as our basketball team lost at the buzzer in the opening round of the state finals at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis - then lost to Princeton the next year in quadruple overtime in the Regionals.
We rode bikes down Division Street or Bellemeade Avenue past Welborn Hospital to ride around Dress Plaza, and sometimes into the river. We rode bikes up Highway 41 to watch Eastern, Delta, and Allegheny airliners from just a few feet away. Then we pedaled down Oak Hill Road to Weinbach and back home. I don’t know how we made it.
We went to movies at the Ross, later including Rocky Horror. We played in the band Stop The Car at the Ross. Yes, played in.
We screamed over our Mug-O-Malts as the Triplets won the pennant at Bosse Field. We went to rock concerts and Aces games at Roberts Stadium. We knew every player, number, and position on the basketball team. We rode bikes through UE campus and played urchins in A Christmas Carol at Shanklin Theater. It was in rehearsal one night that we learned the most devastating news a community could ever expect. The loss of the Evansville Aces in the 1977 plane crash carries its weight on our hearts decades later.
We heard the Huey helicopters come and go from the Armory for weeks during the coal miner strikes. But we heard those Hueys our entire childhood on the regular flight path from Ft. Campbell, which took them slow and low directly over Washington Elementary and our Rotherwood home.
We played in the sand and walked in the manmade creek at Riverfront Park, and we watched fireworks reflect on the Ohio River’s dark, shiny surface. We never missed Thunder On The Ohio, and on practice days, we could hear the WWII engines powering the unlimited hydroplanes all the way from our Rotherwood home. We rode down the double-dip near Reitz after visiting grandma on West Michigan Street. We walked the trails at Audubon and Wessleman’s, then trounced on the playground equipment and got scalded on the giant wedge-slide with its burning chrome surface that seemed to be aimed at the sun like a solar panel.
We got new school shoes and an Orange Julius at Washington Square Mall and saw Santa hanging out in the little shed in the Lawndale parking lot. We skated at USA just up Green River Road.
We watched Mayor Russell Lloyd on the news long before the “The Lloyd” expressway replaced most of Division Street. We sat on the curb of Franklin Street to watch parades, and the hardware store at Franklin and 10th was our meeting spot if we got lost at the Fall Festival, long before the Gerst Haus hung its sign.
We knew the smells, like second nature, inside the Mesker Zoo building, on the banks of the river, and driving past the vinegar plant on Walnut.
We took school field trips, with the little yellow permission slip, to The Donut Bank and to Fire Station 16 on Washington Avenue. We listened to the Evansville Police on the scanner and heard each dispatch end with “KSA-niiiiiiiiiiiiiine, three-one.” We watched Vanderburgh Sheriff’s “green bears” enforce traffic in the city.
But of all these things, what guided my future more directly than anything, were the ambulances that wailed by me time after time. Sometimes racing out Bellemeade toward St. Mary’s Hospital where I was born. Sometimes flying by on Washington as I worked “Mids” on School Safety Patrol. Sometimes pulling out of the giant fire station at Division Street and First Avenue or responding from Alexander Funeral Home on Lincoln Avenue.
The easily frightened kid in me saw assurance in those ambulances as they raced to bring care, comfort, and control to someone’s emergency. I always needed reassurance, and I wanted to become that assurance for others one day.
Those Alexander and Evansville Fire Department ambulances coupled with the stories I watched on the TV show EMERGENCY! translated into a 35-year career at Wake County EMS in Raleigh, North Carolina. Though my family moved there in the mid-1980s, everything about me was built in Evansville. “Hi, I’m A Paramedic” tells that story.
Jeffrey S. Hammerstein
“Hi, I’m A Paramedic: How A Timid Soul Found Purpose”
Available where you buy books online.
