My EMS career is inspired by the medics that tried to save my niece

By Reba Campbell

I am no superhero. I am only in school to be a paramedic.

I finally took this step after two medics I know went to a pedi code of a 6-month-old baby that winded up being my niece. To me they will forever be heros in my heart, because they pushed me to finish my goal in my life, a career path that I have always wanted, and they don’t even know what they did.

Now, as I start another semester Monday I sit next to the basic who was on that code. I sit in class proud and tall knowing who I sit next to. I simply believe they are my undercover heros and they still don’t know because in the code my niece did not make it, but I feel relieved that it was them that were there in my niece’s calling home; that her journey to the lord above was not started alone, and she had two great heros/angels standing over her. If only they knew how much they mean to me!

I know if that were me, I wouldn’t have had the strength to carry on as they did so gracefully. I thank them all the time when they come to the ER that I work in, but they just continue on with their daily grind and dismiss me.

Then one day I had a 10-month-old come in with croup so bad that her airway was so thin we could barely see it on the X-ray. As her mother checked her daughter in, she coughed then turned blue; I screamed for help and carried her to the doctor myself. I could see the child’s tears just rolling down her cheek, and how scared she was by clenching my hand and looking at me with such big scared eyes.

As we loaded her into the helicopter to be airlifted out to children’s, right at that moment I realized why they always dismissed my thankfulness - because to them they are no heroes, they are simply doing their job! And that’s the exact point I realized my true calling: to be a hero in someone else’s eyes, but just a normal everyday person through mine!

Thank you to all the heroes seen in other eyes! For soon at the end of June that will be me!