Time sure went by fast

Well it's been a hot minute hasn't it.  8 years have gone by since I last looked at this thing.  So last time we left off things weren't so great.  I believe it was summer in 2010.  My mother had just died.  She was so young, 53 years old.  Missesmedic came home.  She had spent the last months caring for my Mom.  I'm still a Medic, but have switched employers a couple times since I last wrote.  I'm now working for a fire department in a major city.  I like it very much with good pay and benefits.  But it's the guys I work with that make it so great.  I'm hoping to get a promotion soon.  At 42 years old with nearly 18 years of EMS under my belt I'm hoping experience is on my side with that one.  But mostly I'm just being me.  Things at home got better, sometimes they're great and sometimes they aren't.  I spend a lot of time building my models now.  It seems to distract me well from the things that haunt me.  Sometimes it seems nothing will make those old ghosts go rest though.  In all these years my hands have touched so much trauma, hurt, suffering, and death that I wonder how I'm not completely broken.  I think it's because I know that these same hands have brought relief, fixed wounds, relieved pain, and held babies before anyone else on the planet could hold them.  I've seen a frown turn to smile and watched tears be dried away.  I still don't do vomit though.  Zofran is my friend.  I started this bloggy thing is August of 2005 as a way to document my medic school adventure.  14 years later the world has changed so much.  I went from paramedic fetus to baby medic to plain medic to the old medic watching the new EMT's hatch.  I teach EMT and Paramedic courses now.  I think my old instructors from my EMT class in 2001 would be proud.  I think I'm on the back end of it all now to be honest.  My fire department job will get the very best of what I have left, which is now mostly wisdom and learned experiences.  I'll share what I have in my noggin to make others better than I was at the point in my career.  Providers come to me with questions, I was taken back by it a bit at first.  It's now a role I play.  My fire buddies have taken to calling me "Doc" a sobriquet I'm so proud to have been bestowed.  My life has been quite the story.  I'm still doing the history reenacting, although the hobby has lost many old faces, and fewer younger ones coming in to fill the spaces.  My family and I go on vacations now.  Seems like now that the kids are older, aged 22, 17, and 15, that we have more time and money to do stuff.  Kammy hasn't had a trip yet, hope to change that this year.  I don't see anyone really writing these much or reading them much since video blogs have taken their place.  But having someone's words, the art of conveying thought on paper, that calls out to me still.  At any rate, just some thoughts from this old Riverfront Medic.