About book Ambulance Girl: How I Saved Myself By Becoming An EMT (2004)
Five years ago Jane Stern was a walking encyclopedia of panic attacks, depression, and hypochondria. Her marriage of more than thirty years was suffering, and she was virtually immobilized by fear and anxiety. As the daughter of parents who both died before she was thirty, Stern was terrified of illness and death, and despite the fact that her acclaimed career as a food and travel writer required her to spend a great deal of time on airplanes, she suffered from a persistent fear of flying and severe claustrophobia. But a strange thing happened one day on a plane that was grounded at the Minneapolis airport for six horrible, foodless, airless hours. A young man on a trip with his classmates suddenly became dizzy and pale because he hadn’t eaten in many hours, and there was no food left on the plane. Without thinking about it, Jane gave him the candy bar that she had in her purse. A short time later the color had returned to his cheeks, the boy was laughing again with his friends, and Jane realized that this one small act of kindness—helping another person who was suffering—had provided her with comfort and a sense of well-being.It was shortly thereafter that this fifty-two-year-old writer decided to become an emergency medical technician, eventually coming to be known as Ambulance Girl. Stern tells her story with great humor and poignancy, creating a wonderful portrait of a middle-aged, Woody Allen–ish woman who was “deeply and neurotically terrified of sick and dead people,” but who went out into the world to save other people’s lives as a way of saving her own. Her story begins with the boot camp of EMT training: 140 hours at the hands of a dour ex-marine who took delight in presenting a veritable parade of amputations, hideous deformities, and gross disasters. Jane—overweight and badly out of shape—had to surmount physical challenges like carrying a 250-pound man seated in a chair down a dark flight of stairs. After class she did rounds in the emergency room of a local hospital, where she attended to a schizophrenic kickboxer who had tried to kill his mother that morning and a stockbroker who was taken off the commuter train to Manhattan with delirium tremens so bad it killed him.Each call Stern describes is a vignette of human nature, often with a life in the balance. From an AIDS hospice to town drunks, yuppie wife beaters to psychopaths, Jane comes to see the true nature and underlying mysteries of a town she had called home for twenty years. Throughout the book we follow her as she gets her sea legs and finally bonds with the burly, handsome firefighters who become her colleagues. At the end, she is named the first woman officer of the department—a triumph we joyously share with her.Ambulance Girl is an inspiring story by a woman who found, somewhat late in life, that “in helping others I learned to help myself.” It is a book to be treasured and shared.*****Rate this 5/5. I happen to 'know' Ms. Stern through my Perfume of Life forum and always wanted a little background into her life. I decided to read a book she wrote that she said 'saved her life' after a bout with depression. I loved getting to know her through this book, an interesting read. Being a registered nurse, I can identify with her fears in the medical world.
I loved Ambulance Girl, it was funny and interesting to look into the authors' life of depression and satisfaction with a job that is taxing and demanding. I was an EMT before I went to nursing school and I could sympathize with the author 100%. I laughed and cried and could not stop turning the pages of this EMT!Some of my favorite lines in the book:"I am at this point determined to specialize in shitless EMT events. I am also placing vomit on the no-can-do list, Frank tells us that a great many 911 calls will have us finding taken a swan dive from the toilet. Sorry. But I wont do toilets...... calls that only involve fully dressed people and dry of ass""EMT's do not diagnose" "How can I not diagnose, some one has crushing chest pain and a sense of impending doom, nausea and a pocket full of nitroglycerin pills....is it a dislocated kneecap? Doubtful. If someone is telling me they can hear the aliens talking through his tooth fillings so I think he has appendicitis? Nope!""Using a defibrillator to shock a person's heart rhythm back to normal, involves shaving hair off a patient's chest - hopefully men patients, not women or relatives of Bigfoot..."Jane Stern's writing is so crisp, effortless and funny you will want to keep reading. I enjoyed this book a great deal! Good read for a weekend when the snow comes out or sitting at the beach!
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Ambulance Girl is an amusing book about a woman who overcomes some of her fears in the process of becoming an EMT. She is anxious and depressed at times and has a tendency towards hypochondria which presents various obstacles along her journey as an EMT. She discovers she enjoys the camaraderie involved in being part of the firehouse, though she sometimes becomes discouraged by the many interruptions inherent in being continually on call. I don't generally laugh out loud when reading books, but this one had me laughing a couple of times. :)
—Sheri Struk
I liked the concept of this book and I liked the challenge she set up for herself. Her descriptions of smalltown life were interesting and the writing was casual and funny, but sometimes a bit jagged, such as memories of her childhood thrown in at weird moments. Even though it was a short book, it started to drag at the end.Here is a quote I liked:p. 129"I am so used to being fearful that when I have to do something brave it seems almost unreal. I find that I have the capacity to worry things into the ground, to talk to Tom Knox about them until we are both beyond bored, to go into intricate detail with Michael, and then - boom - just out of the blue, all the fear just falls away and I am doing the undoable. I now think I am the type of person who would faint at the sight of a spider but could run into a burning building to save a baby. Fear is like a hologram. It seems filled with substance and when you go beyond it you realize it was just an illusion."
—Davida
I was charmed and entertained by this book, sometimes to the point of laughing out loud. I'm only giving three stars, though, because I realize I'm biased - I'm a medical interpreter and could see myself becoming an EMT if all Japanese suddenly fell out of my brain. The best part of this book is probably Stern's voice - never self-pitying, never wallowing, often humorous, and a joy to read. Recommended if you're a medicine nut like myself or curious what a rural EMT goes through day in and day out.
—Kazen
