djdigdoug

What is up with all of the racism in this country? It is just as rampant as it has ever been, and we say that we are making progress as a society. Melting Pot my ass!!! From what I see on the streets everyday as a paramedic, it's worse than ever!

I interact on a daily basis with cops, firemen, criminals, and people from all walks of life. To me they are all patients. I don't see race, creed, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or mostly even gender for that matter. I treat everyone the same and do everything in my power for the best of my patients.

I'm seeing a lot of negative shit from a racism perspective lately that I guess I was blind to before.

The other day a cop took one of my patients into custody (granted the patient was being an asshole) and said "Now you're going to Jail, El Stupido Fucko!" The patient only spoke spanish.

Now I'm not bagging on Cops, most of them are doing the best they can to just do their jobs, and like me they usually only see people when they are at their worst, but this kind of shit happens all the time. Above was just one example. And in all fairness Firefighters, and even a lot of other paramedics do the same things.

But one thing that happened last night really pissed me off! We got a call for a "poisonous ingestion," and upon our arrival, we found a house full of people screaming and crying and carrying on. When we got inside we found the patient lying on the ground, foaming at the mouth, and convulsing, and then he started vomiting. The bystanders told us that the patient was very drunk and started eating a box of rat poison that was on the ground. When he stopped vomiting he started to become more alert and oriented. We got him to walk to the stretcher and initiated transport to the nearest hospital.

I started talking to him while I was starting an IV and putting him on the cardiac monitor. I asked him why he was eating rat poison and he said "because I want to die." I said "well, that sure is an ugly way to die." To which he immediately called me a racist. He said I had no right to call him ugly, just because I'm white. He then said that he wanted to kill himself because "white people are the devil and they made me crazy." To which I responded that "I'm neither white, nor the devil, and I'm not going to let you die!"

I'm half Native American (Indian) and Half Irish, so I'm a drunk that can't hold my liquor. But that's a story for another time.

Anyfuck, as I was pulling him out of the back of the ambulance I asked where he was from he said he was born in Haiti, but he's and American citizen. To which I said "Great! then we are all Americans here, and we need to help each other out!" Then he said, "No, I am not an American, I am a Haitian-American."

To which I responded by getting on my soapbox and giving him my perfunctory speech about how we are all Americans, and what America is all about, and how many people have died protecting our way of life and his right to become an American. And of course he disagreed, citing the fact that the Judge told him he was a Haitian-American when he was granted his citizenship. Then to top it all off, when I was registering this idiot (not a racist statement, he ate RAT POISON!!!) I found out that not only was he unemployed, but he is on welfare, and MassHealth (our State-Funded Medicaid program).

There's something fundamentally wrong with our society, and I wish I knew how to fix it.

-El Stupido Fucko