I often get the question, "Is working in the emergency room anything like the TV show?" I usually just explain to people that no, no it's not...there are no cute doctors. However, sometimes I go into the fact that the television version is overly dramatic, I mean, who jumps up onto a gurney to do CPR?

Last week, I had to jump up on to a gurney to do CPR.

It was exhilarating, I'm not going to lie, but it was also terrifying. CPR is a brutal sort of process and when you pump on someone's chest and their ribs crack underneath your hands, it's scary. So there I was, doing compressions on this old woman while the stretcher is rolling down the hallway and I've got myself convinced that I've broken her rib cage. It's not like this is the first time I've done CPR. I'd just never done it on someone as tiny as her. After two compressions, I was pumping with one hand.

She made it, I'm happy to say, no broken ribs to date. There was a certain sort of satisfaction that I felt along with that, though I didn't feel it until hours later when my heart stopped pounding. We had another patient start to crash while the old woman's code was still running, so my head was spinning even when my shift ended. When the shit hits the fan, you don't follow a normal thought process. A normal person would run away. Instead, something else takes over and it feels like your true self comes out. Your world changes because you are changing someone's world.

Even in the middle of all of that, even during the time when I thought I was going to tear my hair out from all the madness, I knew that it is what I love. It's what I live for. There are times at my work where I feel horizontal to the ground I'm being pulled in so many different directions. It's during those times of chaos that I feel most in control. God made me like this for a reason and I'm going to pursue that to the fullest.