Stories From the Streets: A Friend Saved and Dream Fulfilled

Last Friday I realized a dream—a dream that God would allow me to save someone’s life. I mean from start to finish—not just as part of a medical process but to actually save them with my own two hands.

I have been a paramedic for the past 20 years and participated in countless CPR cases. Some of them have been successful, others were not. I have participated in saving lives many times—as part of a team that did its job and passed on a live patient who survived their ordeal with the help of doctors in hospitals as well as first responders who arrived before and after me. But over my many years, I have never yet been the person who arrived first at a scene where a person was dead. I had yet to be the person who connected my defibrillator to them and became the messenger of God primarily responsible for bringing that person back.

For years I have dreamed of doing this, and every time an EMT or paramedic wrote a story in our social media group that they responded to an emergency, brought a patient’s pulse back, and a few days later that person was released from the hospital without any neurological damage, I felt happy for them. But in my heart I desired that one day I would be able to be that person who wrote this story. Last Friday that day came.