This post is a little different than what you usually see on our website because it doesn’t provide details about a response to an incident and what our department did on scene. Instead, this post is about the sign.
After yesterday’s car accident on Route 9, Highland Ambulance personnel needed to be in the back of the rig attending to two patients with serious injuries. They asked for help from us to drive the ambulance down to the hospital. This isn’t something we do every day but when there’s a need, our role is to do what we can to make things happen. Done.
When we arrived at Cooley Dickenson Hospital in Northampton, we took the first patient from the ambulance and rolled her into the Emergency Room. My focus was at first was to provide her with the smoothest ride into the facility so, while I saw the sign, I didn’t pay too much attention to it initially.
On the way back out to get the second patient, we ran into a crew from the Northampton Fire department ambulance service who was also dropping off a patient. One of the paramedics recognized me and called out my name. At first, I didn’t know who it was because they were covered head to toe in protective equipment. But I recognized the voice and returned the greeting.
I took a closer look at the sign when we were bringing in the second patient. The large letters read “We Love you! Hero Entrance EMS”. My initial reaction was that someone had taken the time to recognize the efforts of the Paramedics and Emergency Medical Technicians from all the various ambulance services that walk through those sliding doors on a daily basis. In this business, a thank you sometimes goes a long way.
After cleaning up the stretcher and refitting it with linens for the next call, I stopped and read the fine print on the sign. It contained words of encouragement like “On the front line, lookin’ fine” and “Heroes wear PPE” and “Front line friends”.
The acronym EMS normally stands for Emergency Medical Services. In this case, the meaning had been modified to read “Excellent Magnificent Superstars” and was signed “Love, the Cooley ED”.
As first responders on medical calls, our role these days is to provide support to ambulance personnel when needed. We have head-to-toe protective equipment on our trucks if needed but haven’t had to don it yet in our community. The sign reminded me that local Paramedics and EMT’s are doing this day in and day out and have been since the pandemic broke out last March.
Not lost on me was the fact that emergency room personnel, people who are working through this pandemic fueled nightmare we now find ourselves in, took the time to recognize their co-workers in the field.
The sign was a humbling reminder to me that we live in a very special place with very special people at a very unique time.
