DId you know that no medical degree is required to be an EMT? Neither did I, until I read Ambulance Girl. In this memoir, Jane Stern tells of her experiences becoming a certified EMT at the age of fifty-two. The beginning half of the book details her training, while the second half is comprised of tales from “the field”. Additionally, Stern discusses her struggles with anxiety and depression. In the beginning of the memoir, Stern had a horrible anxiety attack on an airplane. The airport was having traffic control issues, and as a result, her flight was stuck on the runway for over 6 hours. The only moment that Stern was able to relax was when she helped a boy with low blood sugar by giving him a candy bar. On that airplane, she realized that helping others distracted her from her own problems. A few months later, Stern made the decision to become a volunteer EMT for her small town’s fire station. She went through intensive, boot-camp like training. Her teachers were tough, experienced, male paramedics, and she initially felt out of place. However, she began to enjoy going to class, and studying for the …show more content…
Due to the small size of her town’s volunteer fire department, she was required to be on-call at all times and to always remain in earshot of her police radio. Stern struggles with constantly encountering death and sickness; she is psychosomatic and suffers from frequent panic attacks. While the second half of the book contains some vignettes about people she helped save, it is mainly an account of the many visits to her psychiatrist. At the end of the book, Stern fell into a depressive state because a close family friend was left in a vegetative state after being saved by EMTs. She felt that the EMTs should have let her friend die, instead of allowing him to live in such a horrible condition. Because of this event, her passion for EMT quickly disappeared, and she stopped going out on