Greetings!

At the outset, I would like to share with you this touching story which I happened to
see in my newsfeed one sunny morning as I sip a cup of coffee in my favorite place in
my pad. This story is titled, 'We Won’t Let Him Die in Our Ambulance.' A Day With a
Paramedic Facing the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Alanna Badgley wakes up with a sense of doom. Her alarm goes off at 4:45 a.m., but
she lies there breathing until 5:15: in through her nose, out through her mouth. Then
she throws off the covers, splashes some water on her face, brushes her teeth and
puts on her uniform.

Before all this, the Westchester County, N.Y., paramedic religiously ate an Eggo waffle
with peanut butter and nutella for breakfast. But lately her stomach’s been in knots,
and she’s too nervous to eat in the mornings. Her boyfriend, Rudy Green, has made
her lunch—a jar of cut fruit and a Ziploc baggie of veggies and hummus, which is
pretty much all she can stomach these days. Badgley stuffs it into her multicolored
Jansport backpack and walks to the Empress Emergency Medical Services base in
Yonkers, N.Y., clocking in just before 6 a.m. on April 1.

She checks her gear: intubation kits, an oxygen pressure mask, an alternative airway
device to help get air into ailing lungs. Someone squawks over the loudspeaker, calling
for “Medic 61.”

“That’s me,” she says.

Badgley, 28, is small and sharp, with the quick, sure movements of a paramedic who
knows exactly what she’s doing. She responds to 911 calls with emergency medical
technicians (EMTs), but typically gets the cases that require more advanced medical
help. Lately, that means patients with COVID-19. She can do much of what ER
doctors do, often in less optimal conditions. She’s dug through hoarders’ homes to
reach her patients, responded to car accidents and sudden births, and once intubated
a man while lying on her belly on his bedbug-infested carpet.

These days, paramedics like Badgley are the first line of defense. On March 3, there
was one coronavirus case in Westchester County. By April 6, there were nearly
14,000, including 197 deaths, according to the New York Times. Even though her
department is not yet out of personal protective equipment (PPE), Badgley has been
wearing the same N95 mask for two weeks, protecting it with a surgical mask during
the day and disinfecting it at night.
In this global pandemic, with doctors overwhelmed and hospitals forbidding visitors,
paramedics like Badgley also take on another role: they are often the first medical
professional seen by the patient in distress, and the last one seen in person by their
family. The moment she arrives can be, for some patients, the last time they see the
people they love.

It’s often up to her to tell patients’ families that they can’t ride in the ambulance and
can’t come to the hospital, and to stand there as they slowly realize that her arrival
could mean a permanent goodbye. “Whoever would normally be there with you isn’t
going to be there,” she says. Badgley tries to make up for it in the ambulance by
holding the patient’s hand, rubbing their back, and providing the one-on-one comfort
she knows they’re unlikely to get once they get to crowded hospitals. “I’m there to talk
to them,” she says, “and to provide some level of empathy and humanity in the
moment in which they are truly terrified.”
In one horrible situation, Badgley inside the ambulance was trying to rescue a woman,
who happened to be at any point might have been in danger. Until Badgley just held
the patients hand and instructed her to take a deep breath to calm her.
Breathing, Badgley thinks, is the beginning of it all. The very first thing any of us ever
did in our lives was breathe: every life starts with a breath. The woman has calmed
down, and the patient is already downstairs at the ambulance with the EMTs. Badgley
grabs her bag, heads to the elevator, and presses the button to go down. The elevator
doors close, and Badgley stands there in silence, wearing her two-week old mask after
her 9th coronavirus patient of the day. She has two hours left on her shift. Tomorrow,
she will come back to work, clock in, put on the same mask, and lose two patients
before they even make it to the ambulance. But she doesn’t know that yet. For now,
she’s just focused on breathing: in through her nose, and out through her mouth.

We are all Badgley one way or another, since 2020, we’ve been fighting our battles. We
have gone so far but the passion, the determination and the love for our profession
remains the same. As I stand before you, I dreamt that someday, we will totally win
this battle. Let our patients be our undying inspiration that we shall not let anyone
lost their lives in our parameter. Like Badgley who does not allow anyone to die inside
her ambulance, we can do it.