THE BREAK OF MOURNING CAN BE CRUEL AND UNFORGIVING TO PUPILS ACCUSTOMED TO THE SOFT GLOW OF STREET LAMPS...
Working two 12 hour night shifts every weekend in tandem with full-time school gets to be a little exhausting. Needless to say my sleep schedule gets screwy for a few days.
With work we can get a call at anytime within those twelve hours, whether we are on another call or not. At times the calls stack up back to back, and sometimes back to back to back to back; All the while our van just gets fuller by the call. At anytime in the middle of the night I have to be ready to look good; With my suit on, my hair and makeup nicely done...and body prepared to lift a lot of weight and possibly maneuver stairs! Awkward manoeuvers, required by situations involving stairs, hills, and obsticles (walls, furniture) are the worst part of doing removals.
It is almost humerous to think of what I look like while stepping backwards, blindly and timidly guessing my footing, while carrying human remains of 250 to 300lbs on a back board down 2ft narrow stairs that bend sharply. Most of the time the family is watching.
The other not so fun, but at times hilarious part of my work is seeing the reactions of people when they stumble over us in the middle of a removal or wheeling the cot out of a building.
Just the other day we had to position the cot so that it was verticle in an elevator, as the elevator was not wide enough to accomodate the cot positioned horizontally. At 4:00AM we were on the 8th floor heading down to the bottom floor, and the elevator stopped on the 6th floor. The doors opened and waiting, the contents of the elevator coming down to them unbeknownst, were seven teenagers with beers in their hands. The girl with the princess crown on looked like a deer in headlights...actually they all did. We starred at them, they starred at us, and finally we broke the moment with, "do you mind waiting just a few minutes?"
They all responded simultaneously, in a flurry of nervousness, "ya," "no problem," "it's cool." I couldn't help but giggle once the elevator doors shut. A strong dose of reality hit those kids that night, when all they expected to encounter that evening were a few hops and Jim Beam.
By the end of my work nights I get home in the early morning and for the remainder of the day I am stuck in-between the fuzzy lines of consciousness and sleep. I continuously nod off, wake up a couple hours later, and nod off again. What a viscous cycle it is. I'm not the type of person that can justify sleeping in the middle of the day. Despite how tired my body is.
Working two 12 hour night shifts every weekend in tandem with full-time school gets to be a little exhausting. Needless to say my sleep schedule gets screwy for a few days.
With work we can get a call at anytime within those twelve hours, whether we are on another call or not. At times the calls stack up back to back, and sometimes back to back to back to back; All the while our van just gets fuller by the call. At anytime in the middle of the night I have to be ready to look good; With my suit on, my hair and makeup nicely done...and body prepared to lift a lot of weight and possibly maneuver stairs! Awkward manoeuvers, required by situations involving stairs, hills, and obsticles (walls, furniture) are the worst part of doing removals.
It is almost humerous to think of what I look like while stepping backwards, blindly and timidly guessing my footing, while carrying human remains of 250 to 300lbs on a back board down 2ft narrow stairs that bend sharply. Most of the time the family is watching.
The other not so fun, but at times hilarious part of my work is seeing the reactions of people when they stumble over us in the middle of a removal or wheeling the cot out of a building.
Just the other day we had to position the cot so that it was verticle in an elevator, as the elevator was not wide enough to accomodate the cot positioned horizontally. At 4:00AM we were on the 8th floor heading down to the bottom floor, and the elevator stopped on the 6th floor. The doors opened and waiting, the contents of the elevator coming down to them unbeknownst, were seven teenagers with beers in their hands. The girl with the princess crown on looked like a deer in headlights...actually they all did. We starred at them, they starred at us, and finally we broke the moment with, "do you mind waiting just a few minutes?"
They all responded simultaneously, in a flurry of nervousness, "ya," "no problem," "it's cool." I couldn't help but giggle once the elevator doors shut. A strong dose of reality hit those kids that night, when all they expected to encounter that evening were a few hops and Jim Beam.
By the end of my work nights I get home in the early morning and for the remainder of the day I am stuck in-between the fuzzy lines of consciousness and sleep. I continuously nod off, wake up a couple hours later, and nod off again. What a viscous cycle it is. I'm not the type of person that can justify sleeping in the middle of the day. Despite how tired my body is.
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lacadence:
commonman:
A friend whose husband works the ambulance told me that his department had to buy a new oversized ambulance to carry all the extra-large people they've been dealing with lately. In fact, last week they had to remove someone through the double-wide windows in the front of a house because their 500 pound bulk couldn't fit through the door. Crazy.