Joanna Sokol, A REAL EMERGENCY: Stories from the Ambulance
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[0:44]Joanna Soko is the author of a real emergency stories from the ambulance.
[0:50]Joanna has worked on a 9-1-1 ambulance for 10 years, along the beach and Santa Cruz
[0:55]and the desert of Reno and on the streets of San Francisco.
[0:58]For that, she spent time as a ski patroller, wilderness EMT, and medical standby for
[1:02]raves and music festivals.
[1:04]She holds a paramedic license, and a bachelor's degree in biological sciences from
[1:09]the University of California at Santa Cruz.
[1:11]During her time at the San Francisco Fire Department, she received an award for clinical
[1:15]excellence and served as a member of the street crisis response team.
[1:19]Her literary work has appeared in Reader's Digest, Paca, and Haslet, and she received a
[1:23]Sydney award in 2019, born and raised in Oakland, California.
[1:28]She currently lives in Santa Cruz with her boyfriend and a very stubborn dog.
[1:33]Welcome, Joanna.
[1:34]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Books with Zibi to talk about a real emergency
[1:38]and memoir.
[1:39]Congrats.
[1:40]Thank you so much.
[1:42]I'm really excited.
[1:43]Oh my gosh, your book was so good.
[1:46]I've learned so much.
[1:47]I had no idea about the real state of affairs of this whole industry, and I'm like sort
[1:55]of shocked still.
[1:56]But anyway, tell everybody what your book is about and we'll go for them.
[2:00]Yeah, okay.
[2:01]This is kind of the hardest question for me because I have to think of a good 30-second
[2:06]pitch.
[2:07]It's about ambulances and EMTs and paramedics.
[2:09]I spent 14 years as an EMT and then as a paramedic, about 10 of that in the 901 system
[2:16]full-time on an ambulance.
[2:18]And I've always taken notes and kept journals.
[2:21]It's just kind of how I interact with the world.
[2:23]And so very early on in the career, all this crazy stuff was happening.
[2:27]We see things that you've never seen before and I found myself just forced to write it
[2:31]down.
[2:32]To the point where I was in the back of the ambulance, looking for scraps of paper, just
[2:36]like, oh my god, I have to write that down that was crazy.
[2:39]And so over a decade and a half, I just started collecting stories and thoughts and
[2:45]quotes and images.
[2:47]And then once I started putting them together, I realized it was actually very important
[2:53]to me after doing this work for so long to include not just my voice, but the voices of
[2:57]some other EMTs and paramedics.
[2:59]And to actually do some research and find out more about how this industry works and
[3:04]why it got so crazy and how we got here.
[3:06]And so I ended up putting together an essay collection.
[3:11]The collection of voices, not just mine and stories and just like little paintings
[3:15]and snippets of what it actually feels like to do this work today, which as you seem to
[3:20]have noticed is not what people think it is like.
[3:23]Oh my gosh.
[3:24]Well, you start out by saying something which I also hadn't thought of, which is just how
[3:29]crazy it is.
[3:30]Let me see if I have this.
[3:32]You start out by talking about how, wait, isn't it crazy that you can just dial three
[3:38]numbers on your phone and anyone shows right up and that's just a service that we
[3:43]all take for granted and you don't think about it and you don't have to like put anything
[3:47]else with your call other than like, hey, please come.
[3:50]Like you don't have to define that you don't have to give any proof and someone shows
[3:54]up.
[3:55]And so what does that do to a community when so many people have no other option but to
[3:59]call 911 or are just lonely or dot dot dot.
[4:04]So talk a little bit about that.
[4:05]Oh yeah.
[4:06]Absolutely.
[4:07]Yeah, the fundamental sort of paradoxes and wonderful and frustrating things about 911 is
[4:14]that when you pick up the phone and call dispatch and say, I need an ambulance, they don't
[4:19]say, okay, what's your credit card number?
[4:21]They don't say, you know, where are you?
[4:24]How bad is your emergency?
[4:26]Does it really deserve an ambulance?
[4:28]Who are you?
[4:29]They just start sending one.
[4:31]And so what that means, it's really amazing.
[4:33]It's really beautiful, but we have really become the last resource for a lot of people
[4:38]who don't have anyone else to call.
[4:40]When you first get into the work and I have several different medics talking about this
[4:44]in the book, it's really shocking and surprising because we get trained to think that
[4:47]we're going to run on these like emergency life or death 911, you know, everyone's always
[4:52]going to be bleeding out or dying.
[4:54]The sirens are always going to be on.
[4:56]Every single call is going to be like life or death, you know, save the airway, shock the
[5:00]patient.
[5:01]And then once you get into the work, you find out that that's maybe four or five percent
[5:05]of the calls, 95 percent.
[5:07]And I've actually looked at the numbers, I kept my own notes and I researched this roughly.
[5:12]It's like 90 to 95 percent of calls are not code what we call code three returns.
[5:16]Those like lights and sirens, scary life or death emergencies.
[5:19]It's the elderly, it's the chronically sick, it's the homeless, it's addiction, mental
[5:24]illness, domestic violence, you know, it's these, not the domestic violence, domestic issues
[5:30]is kind of what I meant to say.
[5:32]It's people who have these long ongoing problems, they have a tough quality of life and
[5:37]they just don't have anyone else to call and they need help with their blood pressure
[5:42]or getting their meds checked or they need a ride to the hospital because they don't have
[5:46]another way to get there or their tummy hurts and they're sort of confused and like don't
[5:50]really know what that means.
[5:52]And so the vast majority of our calls are not these really scary emergencies and a lot
[5:56]of medics get into this work and they get really frustrated by that.
[6:00]They get really confused and they're like, I thought I was here for emergencies, you
[6:03]know, I don't want to run on this like boring, challenging stuff and a lot of it is really
[6:08]frustrating, you know, you're going to run on the same guy three, four times in a day sometimes
[6:12]because he's we and we we have callers who call us a few times every day because you
[6:17]know, they're lonely.
[6:18]They're addicted to meth.
[6:19]They're very addicted to alcohol.
[6:21]They like to drink a lot and then trip and fall and hit their head on the floor and
[6:25]get stuck in the bathroom and we go pick them up and then they drink more and they fall
[6:28]down again and we go pick them back up, you know.
[6:31]And so it's very common to get really frustrated with these calls, but it's I also try
[6:37]to find the honor in it and the virtue in it.
[6:40]That was one of the things that really kept me going because that's what it comes back
[6:44]around to is that the phone number is free and someone will show up every time no matter
[6:51]what, even if it's your fifth time calling us today and we're all super freaking mad
[6:56]at you and we're sick of dealing with you, we're still going to come, we're still going
[7:00]to get you off the floor, we're still going to be nice to you.
[7:03]And it can be so frustrating, but there's also something really beautiful in it.
[7:08]The fact that we do show up every time no matter who you are, no matter how frustrated
[7:13]we get with you.
[7:14]And so I really have tried to hold on to that to the beauty and the virtue in that and
[7:18]the fact that that's actually like a really cool, amazing thing that as you mentioned,
[7:22]we take for granted.
[7:23]So until your book, I hadn't worried about it going away, but now I'm worried about that.
[7:29]Yeah, it's not to say it will.
[7:31]I'm just saying like because I had taken it so for granted, I'm like, well, what if, what
[7:37]if we didn't have it?
[7:38]What if, you know, and people complain so much like, oh my gosh, it took 10 minutes for
[7:41]the ambulance to get there.
[7:42]And from an operational perspective, I'm like, I can't believe this works.
[7:46]I mean, think about how hard it is to get anything done in this country at all, right?
[7:50]To get a driver's license, like how complicated that is.
[7:52]And here you're just like, it's like, you just fly through the air.
[7:55]Yeah, we show up every time it's amazing.
[7:58]And it, it is getting harder as the book talks about our staffing is really rough these
[8:03]days.
[8:04]It's getting a lot harder to get ambulances there on time.
[8:06]And there's a lot of reasons for that, which I don't know if you want to get into it.
[8:09]Well, maybe just touch on a couple that we should all know about.
[8:15]Yeah.
[8:17]Our staffing is really challenging these days.
[8:19]Ambulances, depending where you are, are run by a whole bunch of different services.
[8:24]Some, most of them are private, some of them are run by the fire department or sometimes
[8:28]the police or hospitals that the most common one in the US is either private or fire departments.
[8:34]And it's really tough to keep staffing up.
[8:37]The ambulance sort of famously in healthcare does not make money.
[8:41]It does not create a profit.
[8:43]It actually loses a lot of money because of what I mentioned.
[8:45]A lot of the people that call us are elderly or poor or homeless or aren't going to pay
[8:50]their bill for whatever reason.
[8:52]And so it's very hard to collect bills and to keep an ambulance service alive.
[8:57]And so medics get paid really, really poorly.
[9:00]The median wage for a paramedic in the US is $25 an hour.
[9:03]I think it's $25, $74 as of May.
[9:07]It's really hard to get people to go do this incredibly challenging work with really long
[9:11]hours for that much money.
[9:13]And so it's really hard to keep staff up and they get and we get treated really poorly
[9:18]at most of the places we work.
[9:20]And so it's hard to keep ambulances.
[9:22]Another big problem is that the ambulance gets stuck at the hospitals at something that
[9:26]a lot of people find really surprising about EMS.
[9:29]But when we show up to a hospital, if our patients really critical, if they're dying,
[9:33]we'll usually get brought straight into a room.
[9:35]But if we're not, we'll get, it's called wall time.
[9:38]We'll go in, we'll greet the nurse and she'll say grab a wall and then we'll hold up
[9:41]on the wall and we'll wait sometimes for hours for a bed to open up.
[9:45]And so you've got 911 calls going off in the city.
[9:48]There's no ambulances available because our staffing's already low.
[9:51]And then you've got half the ambulances in your system stuck on the wall of a hospital
[9:55]waiting for a bed.
[9:56]And so there's numbers and so someone who's trying to call an ambulance.
[10:00]You know, hopefully we'll get one in it.
[10:02]And it's funny that you said 10 minutes,
[10:04]that's such a New Yorker thing to say.
[10:06]Sorry, because, no, I love it.
[10:09]Because in a big city, yeah, the expectation is eight
[10:11]or 10 minutes, but in rural ambulances,
[10:12]you might be waiting half an hour or an hour for an ambulance
[10:15]because the closest one is coming really far away.
[10:17]You know, and that's a reality that a lot of Americans
[10:20]live with, so.
[10:21]It's tough.
[10:22]My spoiled New York existence here
[10:24]where everything is immediate
[10:25]and you're on the way that it's like five minutes long,
[10:27]but yeah, the ambulance, postmates,
[10:31]where is everything gone?
[10:32]Let's go.
[10:33]I don't want my delivery typhoon.
[10:35]I want that.
[10:36]Exactly, oh my gosh, that sounds terrible.
[10:38]I loved the scene where you had this incredibly long day
[10:42]and it was so terrible and you wander around
[10:46]in this parking lot and come across a mirage,
[10:48]but actually it was true of an icy station
[10:52]and you give it to your colleague
[10:53]and you're sitting like basically tailgating
[10:55]on your ambulance, drinking these,
[10:58]or eating these ices and scorching hot weather in Reno.
[11:02]Talk a little bit about the payoff right in how little it is
[11:05]and how these tiny little things can sometimes
[11:08]make the day worthwhile.
[11:10]Oh, I love that.
[11:11]I really love that story.
[11:12]I put it right up at the front of the book
[11:14]because I wanted to sort of hint at one of the big themes
[11:18]the book is, which is this job, it's so tough.
[11:21]It's so soul-sucking.
[11:23]It's so exhausting.
[11:24]And the thing that gets you through it is the camaraderie.
[11:26]The partners and the people that you work with,
[11:28]there is a real, real brotherhood
[11:32]and I'm a girl, whatever sisterhood,
[11:34]brotherhood among the EMTs and medics,
[11:37]the field crews that do this work
[11:39]that I've never experienced anywhere else in my life.
[11:41]There's a sense of family and have taken care of each other
[11:44]because we're really in the trenches together.
[11:46]And sometimes they are literal trenches, you know?
[11:49]We're like in the dirt up to our knees,
[11:51]pulling stuff out and it's four in the morning,
[11:53]it's five in the morning.
[11:55]And so that scene that I wrote,
[11:58]I actually wrote that like a year or two.
[12:01]It was much, much later.
[12:03]And I wasn't at work that day.
[12:04]It was on my day off and I just kind of had that memory
[12:07]like eating away at me.
[12:08]And we had Ron, as you said, really tough calls.
[12:12]It's hot, it's sweaty, we're exhausted.
[12:14]And one thing about being around so much death
[12:17]and so much dying and so much illness
[12:20]is that it really forces you to cherish the small moments.
[12:25]And I know how cheesy that sounds,
[12:27]but I get it, I get it.
[12:29]You know, you get there.
[12:30]And so we're sitting in the back of this parking lot
[12:33]and I have to write my chart and it's busy
[12:35]and we're exhausted.
[12:36]But we have like five minutes
[12:38]before we have to go run another call.
[12:40]There's no calls on the board for a couple minutes.
[12:42]And yeah, I heard the sound of this guy selling ICs
[12:46]and we sat there on the back
[12:49]and my partner I really cared for
[12:51]and he'd been working really hard and I bought us too
[12:54]and we sat on the back in the hot, hot sun
[12:57]eating this like cold, sticky ice for five minutes.
[12:59]And it was just such a beauty and it was like,
[13:01]these are the moments that this job forces you to take.
[13:04]And that sense of connection to the partners
[13:06]that you work with, you know, the men and women I've worked with
[13:09]on the rig are just a real family to me
[13:12]in a way that I think is really incredible.
[13:15]And they really have each other's backs
[13:16]and you have to take those moments.
[13:18]And so it's like, even though I didn't want the book
[13:21]to just be like trauma on awful, on depression,
[13:24]on frustration, on cynicism,
[13:26]even though that is sometimes what the job can feel like
[13:29]because right in those worst moments
[13:31]when you're just exhausted in your cynical
[13:32]and your full of trauma, then one of your buddies
[13:35]will come by and be like,
[13:37]do not got ice cream, you know?
[13:40]And then you'll just be laughing.
[13:41]You'll be laughing or freaking faces off at four in the morning.
[13:44]And so that scene, it was about trying to cherish
[13:47]the sweet moments, but it was really about the partnership
[13:50]and the camaraderie, you know?
[13:51]And having a buddy that you're going through this with.
[13:54]And so we're sitting there on the tailgate,
[13:55]kicking our feet and kind of elbling each other.
[13:57]And it's about that, it's about the teamwork
[13:59]and the camaraderie and, you know, I'm glad you liked that scene.
[14:02]I really love that scene.
[14:04]I loved it so much.
[14:05]I feel like now I need to go out and get an I.C.
[14:07]But that's okay.
[14:08]I'll wait, see.
[14:09]You talked about how logically this does not sound
[14:14]like a job that you talked about how it's a tough sell, right?
[14:18]The lack of the low payment, which is, you know,
[14:22]just like teachers, right?
[14:23]It's like not commensurate with their value to society.
[14:26]It's demanding an every sense of the word emotionally,
[14:31]physically.
[14:32]What is it about you that made you want to do it,
[14:36]drawn to it, continue to do it.
[14:39]Why, why you and who else?
[14:42]It's really interesting.
[14:44]That was, that was a part of the book.
[14:46]I initially didn't want to put too much of myself in the book
[14:50]because I was kind of embarrassed, you know?
[14:52]I was like, I want to write about this work.
[14:54]No one cares about me.
[14:55]I'm like a random white girl with a job, who cares?
[14:58]My editor, who I deeply love, she's incredibly talented.
[15:03]Kind of forced me to put more of me
[15:05]and of the people that I work with in the book.
[15:07]She was like readers want to know who does this for a living, you know?
[15:10]Who would choose to do this?
[15:11]And then who would keep doing it?
[15:13]So I was, I was young, I was in my 20s.
[15:16]I was full of adrenaline and angst and energy.
[15:19]I wanted to do something exciting and bad at us and cool.
[15:22]I had tried to go into science at school
[15:25]and I just couldn't sit still long enough.
[15:27]And I found this world where you got to use science,
[15:31]think quickly on your feet, help real people with your hands
[15:34]in a very immediate way.
[15:37]And I just totally fell in love with it.
[15:41]I went in thinking like most EMTs and medics,
[15:44]young EMTs and medics that it was gonna be all emergencies
[15:46]all the time.
[15:47]And then I found out that it wasn't at all.
[15:49]And it was really the people.
[15:51]It was the people that I worked with.
[15:53]I felt like I fit in somewhere, you know?
[15:56]A lot of us, we joke all the time.
[15:58]We call ourselves the, you know, the value of the broken toys
[16:01]and like a deep of angry misfits.
[16:03]And the people were just hilarious.
[16:06]They were so hard working, they were so dedicated.
[16:09]They were so funny to be around.
[16:11]And I just felt, I felt like I had found my people.
[16:15]And like I said, that's really what kept me in it.
[16:16]And the work is exhausting, but it can be really rewarding.
[16:20]And the whole time I was doing it,
[16:23]even as burned out as I got.
[16:25]And as bad as my physical injuries got.
[16:27]And, you know, the emotional trauma I was piling on,
[16:29]I still felt like the work that I was doing is worthwhile.
[16:32]You know, I still felt like I was helping people.
[16:34]I still felt like it was a worthy thing to do
[16:36]in the morning.
[16:37]And I found that was a really common theme
[16:40]with all of the medics that I talked to.
[16:42]They were all of us at face some level of exhaustion
[16:45]and burnout and frustration.
[16:46]But they were all like, yeah, but, you know, we love it.
[16:49]What else are we gonna do?
[16:50]It's an amazing work.
[16:52]And on a more negative note,
[16:54]a lot of medics do not have college educations.
[16:57]And a lot of them do not have a plan B.
[16:59]You get a two year certification.
[17:03]There's one of my favorite muses in the piece.
[17:05]An old park in your mind, Mikey.
[17:06]He says, I was a high school dropout.
[17:08]I had a certification that allowed me to do one job.
[17:12]And I didn't, and a lot of us we get in,
[17:14]we build up all this trauma and this exhaustion.
[17:16]Then we don't really have anything else to do.
[17:17]Most medics will either go in a nursing or fire at some point
[17:20]once they get, you know, physically broken by the system.
[17:23]But there's really not, in some senses,
[17:25]you kind of get stuck in it.
[17:27]And so that can be really tough.
[17:28]And that's one of the things that I really want to talk about
[17:31]and want more people to know about
[17:32]because I want there to be options.
[17:34]I want medics to have more options
[17:35]to move up to specialize to do things
[17:38]once they reach that point where they physically
[17:40]aren't able to work in the field anymore.
[17:42]And so it's, there's, I don't want to end on the bad note.
[17:45]You know what I mean?
[17:46]I want to end on the joy and the camaraderie.
[17:47]But those are both, those are both definitely parts of it,
[17:50]of why people do this work for so long.
[17:52]Is there something that people who will one day be
[17:56]in an ambulance or be a partner of someone
[17:59]who is in an ambulance?
[18:01]What is there some insider knowledge
[18:03]that we all should have?
[18:05]I mean, now I see what it's like
[18:06]from your point of view.
[18:07]So that's like value.
[18:09]That's like priceless information
[18:11]to put myself in your shoes.
[18:13]But for everyone else, before they've read it,
[18:15]what should we know?
[18:16]What should everybody know?
[18:19]About medics?
[18:20]Yeah, or just like, what should we be prepared for?
[18:23]What should we say?
[18:25]Like how should we interact?
[18:26]Like what expectations are there that should be met?
[18:29]Like everyone's in that moment at their most vulnerable, right?
[18:33]And we're depending on the people in the ambulance,
[18:35]a lay are our biggest fears in the world.
[18:38]But you know what it's like on the other side.
[18:40]So what is it that we should carry with us?
[18:44]That's such a compassionate question.
[18:47]I really like that.
[18:49]I mean, the first thing that comes to mind
[18:50]is another one of the medics that I interviewed.
[18:53]Long time paramedic, amazing clinician.
[18:56]I asked her what she would wanna tell the world
[18:59]about being a paramedic.
[19:00]And she said, I want them to see us as people.
[19:03]You know, I want them to understand
[19:05]that we have good days and bad days.
[19:06]You know, we occasionally need to eat
[19:08]and use the bathroom and sleep.
[19:10]And we are out there, we're trying as hard as we can.
[19:14]I promise, but we are actually humans.
[19:17]We cannot be perfect heroes all the time.
[19:20]And if you are partners with a paramedic,
[19:23]understand that we will be tired and hungry a lot
[19:25]because our sleep is really messed up.
[19:29]So having lots of snacks around is really helpful.
[19:32]But yeah, I think the biggest thing
[19:33]that the members of the public,
[19:34]if you're scared, that's okay.
[19:36]That's our job.
[19:36]We're very good at dealing with people
[19:38]that are scared and upset.
[19:39]That's kind of our wheelhouse.
[19:41]And whatever you're feeling, it's okay.
[19:43]We have seen it all.
[19:44]We will not be shocked.
[19:45]It is very, very challenging to shock a paramedic.
[19:50]Don't be embarrassed about whatever's going on.
[19:52]We've seen it before.
[19:53]We're happy to help.
[19:54]And yeah, just try to,
[19:57]there was this theme almost all of the medics.
[20:00]So I spoke with said something along the lines of to just be nice to us to just understand
[20:04]that we are human, you know, we see a lot of people in their most challenging moments
[20:09]and sometimes they take out their grief on us.
[20:11]And that's okay.
[20:12]We get it.
[20:13]It's part of it.
[20:14]But try to understand that we are people too, I think, so sad that you have to even say
[20:21]this.
[20:22]I mean, it's, you know, it's the only thing I can think of.
[20:29]It's a good point.
[20:31]I know I think that people are just so accustomed to the fast service and getting what
[20:38]they want and, you know, when a flight doesn't take off, like yelling at the people behind
[20:43]the desk, like people just don't know how to interact sometimes.
[20:45]They don't imagine like the person behind the desk getting up and waking up and getting
[20:50]out and going to work and turning on their computer and like, what are they going
[20:53]to do?
[20:54]Turn a plane around?
[20:55]So anyway.
[20:56]Sometimes when people get mad at us for being late or for taking so long to show up,
[21:00]it's like, I'm sorry, I was doing CPR on a baby, you know, it took them in.
[21:04]Like, we got here as soon as we could, I promise.
[21:08]But, you know, as much as I come, I don't want to sound like I'm complaining.
[21:12]Most of the people that we deal don't are really are very nice to us.
[21:16]The people, honestly, a lot of our, a lot of our interactions are cool, you know, a
[21:21]lot of people understand that we're there and we're trying to help.
[21:23]Well, if I have the presence of mind, should I be in an ambulance or should someone I
[21:28]love being an ambulance?
[21:29]I hope not.
[21:30]I am going to grab a bunch of snacks to, like, throwing around and say it's because it's
[21:35]a book, a real emergency, yeah, we don't, we don't get breaks.
[21:39]We don't, so we love snacks.
[21:43]So how in the midst of this totally pressure-filled job, why write a book in addition?
[21:51]Oh, yeah.
[21:52]Well, I did actually take time off of work to write the job, sorry, off of work to write
[21:57]the book, which is something that not a lot of paramedics are able to do.
[22:01]This is something I've actually thought about a lot because I've read a ton of Dr.
[22:06]Memoirs, and don't be wrong, I love Dr. Memoirs, they're really fun to read.
[22:10]I've read a lot of Memoirs by doctors, by professors, by scientists, by people who have,
[22:16]unfortunately, who have the financial resources to take time off to write a memoir.
[22:19]And most nurses and medics just don't have the option.
[22:23]I spent probably about a year and a half doing research, interviews, going to the library,
[22:29]looking up old newspaper clips, writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.
[22:36]And I was really, really lucky to be able to afford to take that time off.
[22:41]And so that's part of the responsibility that I feel to try to represent this in an authentic
[22:46]way and hopefully in a way that will help people.
[22:48]But yeah, like I said, over time, I just collected all of these stories.
[22:52]I had hundreds and hundreds of pages of stories, journal entries, notes, quotes, descriptions
[22:59]of things, my own feelings.
[23:01]And I was incredibly lucky.
[23:02]I just really got this sort of lightning bolt series of circumstances.
[23:05]I had the financial bandwidth to do it.
[23:08]One of my very oldest closest friends works in publishing and helped me put together.
[23:13]And she was actually the one who became my editor on this.
[23:15]I have to embarrass her a little bit, be wildly talented, Haley calling him, if anybody
[23:19]is listening, who knows her.
[23:21]And so we were able to work together on this thing.
[23:24]And when the book deal finally came through, I was at a stage where I was really, really
[23:30]physically damaged.
[23:32]I have injuries to my back, shoulder and wrist are the big ones.
[23:37]And so I just, I'd still like to the work, but I couldn't really physically do it anymore.
[23:42]And so I was kind of making choices about, okay, am I going to rock a desk for the next
[23:46]20 years?
[23:47]Or am I going to try to take the time to write this book and move in a different direction?
[23:52]And so for me, it worked out that I was able to take the time off.
[23:55]And as for why I wrote the book at a certain point, I felt like I was carrying it around
[24:01]inside of me, and it was becoming really heavy.
[24:04]Haley told me something that I think might is common in writer circle.
[24:08]She said they say you write your first book when you can't not anymore.
[24:12]And I got to this point where it honestly felt like hearing this book around inside me
[24:15]was really heavy and it was getting in the way.
[24:17]And I like had to get it out of me.
[24:19]And so, and like I said, I got to a point where I physically couldn't work in a field
[24:23]anymore.
[24:24]And so it was time.
[24:25]And again, I got really, really just dumb lucky to have to know the right people and get
[24:30]the book deal.
[24:31]And so that's kind of how I came together.
[24:34]And so what's your plan now?
[24:36]Oh, I hate this question.
[24:39]That's a great question.
[24:42]I am teaching, I'm teaching EMTs and paramedics at a couple of community colleges in
[24:47]the Bay Area.
[24:48]I really love that work.
[24:49]I find it really fun and really rewarding.
[24:51]And I have, I'm picking away a pre-rex to potentially go to nursing or PA school or move
[24:56]forward in the medical field.
[24:58]But right now between the book and the teaching and, you know, just breathing a little
[25:02]bit.
[25:03]I would like to get back into the field and do patient care again at some point.
[25:07]But yeah, turns out writing a book is hard and it takes a lot to work.
[25:13]When I first left, it was like, alright, I'm going to bang up this book and then go back
[25:16]to school and it turns out that was not realistic.
[25:19]So yeah, I'm writing the book I'm teaching right now and I have no idea what's coming
[25:23]next.
[25:24]I really don't.
[25:25]Okay.
[25:26]Well, I will be reading for you.
[25:27]You do.
[25:28]I'm so glad you wrote it.
[25:29]I really, as I said, have a new understanding of the whole thing and every time I hear
[25:33]a siren going by my window, which happens, I feel like every two minutes, I'll think
[25:38]that that's actually only 5% of the time and it could be going non-stop.
[25:43]And just imagining who's inside and what you all are going through.
[25:46]So anyway, thank you for all the work you do to help so many people.
[25:49]Thank you so much.
[25:50]I really appreciate it and I love the podcast.
[25:53]So.
[25:54]Oh, thank you.
[25:55]For listening to totally booked with Zibi, formerly Momstone, I have time to read books.
[26:00]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[26:06]and spread the word.
[26:07]Thanks so much.
[26:08]Oh, and bye the books.