Patio Garden Therapy

Late last summer, the garden and I moved…to a bigger patio about 8 miles down the road. There’s no space for an actual garden bed here and the management is really particular about what is on your patio. So I’m making do with a few more pots. I also had to get a storage bench to hold my gardening stuff. Not that there’s anything wrong with more pots, beautiful flowers, or a nice reading spot in the middle of them…

Rocking chair and patio tomatoes...and the lovely Fiona with her frisbee.

Back in March, my “black cloud” showed up again, and I ran a series of tough calls. It didn’t seem to matter if I was riding backwards in the bucket seat on the engine, covering as the Region A medic, helping a friend with driver training in preparation for EVOC or having another insanely busy day working at the ambulance transport company. It all began with a code that went out a couple miles from the station Wednesday night.

Every new medic needs at least one confidence-building critical call, where given all the variables everything goes pretty much like clockwork. I’d come down to the station to take one of the new members out in the second out (unstaffed) ambulance for pre-EVOC driver training. Just as we were about to head out, the station tones dropped for a cardiac arrest and an EMT/driver walked in and asked if I wanted to take the call. A quick check showed that we were much closer to the scene than either of the two medics initially dispatched and the first out unit wasn’t at the station. So I grabbed my drug keys, we squirreled it and arrived on scene just after the engine and before all the other EMS units. I grabbed the drug bag, walked in and handed out work assignments to the crew to facilitate the “pit crew method” I heard about at the EMS Today Conference earlier this year. From there it went like clockwork. The patient started in asystole and when we reached the ED 10mg of Epi and 50mEQ Sodium Bicarb later the patient was still in asystole and the doc called the code. Unfortunately, asystole (aka flatline or no heart rhythm at all) is the stablest rhythm of them all.

The next day I was at work, and it was one of those really busy days. One of my patients that shift was a tiny premature baby who had developed necrotizing enterocolitis. Necrotizing enterocolitis is the death of tissue in the intestine and occurs most often in premature or sick babies with a 25% mortality rate according to the National Institute of Health.[i] I checked with the doc in the Peds ED the next week and he confirmed that thankfully this little one was treated in time and survived.

A dressed up patio storage bench turns this corner of the patio into an inviting place to relax outside.
Mama ducky is admiring that orange Gerbera daisy too. 

The next night, after a busy day acquiring the patio storage bench, I had fire duty. Riding backwards on the engine can be fun and a nice break from bossing a medic unit... until you get dispatched on that 2:50am stabbing three doors down from the firehouse, are the only medic on the engine and are first on scene after the police. We did everything we could. This patient's wounds were too severe and he practically bled out in front of us and in the end did not survive. The calls where a patient starts out talking to you and ends up dead are the worst. This one was particularly difficult due to the circumstances.

Needing some version of therapy after those calls, and now that spring had arrived, I started working on the garden again. I still have a few pots I haven’t planted yet. Between turning an old bookshelf into a potting bench and acquiring a storage bench/seat per request from the management company, the patio has become a lovely place to read and work.

New job for an old bookshelf: potting shelf.

The rest of the garden is still in the works, but I have squash, beans, cucumbers and a variety of herbs and flowers growing.

Planter of Basil varieties and the lonely Zucchini plant.

When you spend a significant portion of your time caring for ill, injured and dying people, it's nice to be able to come home and care for something healthy and alive.

Green Beans.

Cucumbers and trellis.

I like to daydream about God being the supreme gardener. He has more plant varieties than I could ever dream of...and He's got the whole universe to grow them in. But you can also think of gardening as an analogy for life. Any gardener knows that caring for a garden requires weeding, thinning, pruning and re-potting. God does the same for our lives. We may not know the master plan for the garden, but He does. And in the end, He works everything together for our good and His glory-- even though we may not see it at the time. In the end, God is the one who gives and takes life. I've gotten to see a decent share of both recently. It's a good reminder that it is a privilege to be alive. Use your time wisely and don't take it for granted. We never know when our time on earth is up. Don't waste your life.

Citronella, Violas and Oxalis (shamrocks) decorating a corner of the patio.

For me, that means doing my job at work or as a volunteer to the best of my ability and then coming home and taking care of my garden... and spending time playing with and training my dog Fiona.

Fiona at 9 months

Besides, who knew Border Collies loved to swim?

Yep...she's out there swimming after a stick.

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[i] http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001148.htm