<![CDATA[Ambulance Girl: How I Saved Myself By Becoming an EMT]]>

false <![CDATA[Ambulance Girl: How I Saved Myself By Becoming an EMT]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173563397m/304594.jpg 304594 2 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. From the Hardcover edition. 1498893 2003 Ambulance Girl: How I Saved Myself By Becoming an EMT total:125|5:16|4:46|3:49|2:11|1:3| 125 436 188 23 5 0 false false Sat Jul 25 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 09 20:57:08 -0700 2008 Sat Jul 25 20:09:29 -0700 2009
Each chapter reads like a...more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon May 26 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon May 26 19:18:11 -0700 2008 Mon May 26 19:28:43 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Mar 03 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sat Feb 28 18:40:03 -0800 2009 Tue Mar 03 07:31:31 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Jan 24 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 26 09:54:59 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 26 09:56:30 -0800 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Jun 27 08:30:06 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 27 08:30:47 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Dec 19 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Sun Feb 08 21:55:38 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 08 21:57:08 -0800 2009 2 0 false false Sat Jun 27 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 21 07:05:09 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 21 07:08:15 -0700 2009 1
The writing style was average.]]> 4 1 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Mar 03 13:38:45 -0800 2009 Tue Mar 03 13:55:18 -0800 2009 1 0 false false Wed Nov 18 23:37:55 -0800 2009 Wed Nov 18 23:37:55 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Mon Jun 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 17 05:29:48 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 17 05:31:02 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Thu Apr 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004 Fri May 29 14:02:10 -0700 2009 Fri May 29 14:02:33 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 22 21:39:19 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 22 21:45:39 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Jul 20 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Jul 20 15:18:19 -0700 2008 Mon Jul 21 03:18:28 -0700 2008 She has courage to do what many of us would shrink at - dealing with dead...more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Apr 28 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Apr 02 19:28:47 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 28 11:43:52 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Jul 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 04 13:24:07 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 22 14:41:44 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Aug 07 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 20 22:29:33 -0700 2008 Mon Aug 10 19:24:13 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 30 13:00:57 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 30 13:02:05 -0800 2008 5 0 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Wed Jan 09 08:41:02 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 09 08:44:02 -0800 2008 3 0 false false Fri Jun 06 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 06 17:50:34 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 06 17:55:04 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue Apr 01 09:49:32 -0700 2008 Tue Apr 01 09:55:03 -0700 2008 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=304594