Monday, January 11, 2010

What does saving lives and winning races have in common

Last night we watched Blood letting and Miraculous Cures. It's a pretty good show, also it's Canadian, so way to go us. Watching these kind of shows sometimes bring a a smile to my face. If you remember, I'm still a Nurse and have licence to prove it. Anyways the show takes place in an ER, similar to the one I used to work in...and there is a small part of me that misses the saving lives part. If you've never held a pair of defibrillator paddles in your hand and gave 36o joules of electricity through someones chest to literally kick start their heart, you've never lived.
The way the body jumps off the table, it's pretty intense. Or given thrombolitics to stop a stroke, reversed congestive heart failure( that one is actually my favorite for some reason, 10 minutes from gurgling fluid in your lungs to breathing normally) that stuff used to be my bread and butter. It's crazy cause the more I think about it the more episodes I can remember of really making a difference in someones life. Most of the time, they would never even say thanks, nor did we ask, cause we were the first line and people were in such a state when they saw us that we would never really remember us.

I remember when I first started racing, I would think while I was racing "I bet no one here saved a life yesterday". Then as racing took over a larger part of my life I remember thinking while I was working "I bet no one here knows that I won a bike race yesterday".

SO by now you're thinking what the hell is Derrick trying to say today...well just hold on.

Well the point is in order to do both those things, there's so much more that goes into having those moments, so much that you take for granted once your there. Yah sure there were alot great moments I had when I worked, but there were lots of times of stress chaos and 11 hours into a night shift where I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown...I would have given a million dollars just to finish some of those "nights from hell".

It's kind of like this part of the year. IT's just training, there's no glory, there's no money, just training. But the point is no matter what you do, there's always gonna be things that you love to do and some not so much. SO you just grind your teeth and stick it out.

Yesterdays training came onto the back of one of the biggest weeks we've had to date and yesterday didn't go quite as planned, it hurt more than it should have, but we did it.

I think alot of the experiences you have in something other that your sport or your work can help you deal with obstacles you face in your other parts of your life. I know we are not doing anything as"precious" as saving lives while we ride our bikes and lets face it, it is not the same.
But I hope that we inspire people to have the confidence and desire to be great in whatever they pursue in life. That's what I've learned, I've worked hard in different ways and often never received recognition for it, but it's never really mattered that much for me. For me it's been about just giving 100%, suffering, working hard to every now and then have moments that can never be matched. But I also remember the wise words of my friend DR Bishop, while we were working one time in the ER I asked him about how he made it through medical school and he said "enjoying the journey". Ok that's my Jack Handy "deeeeeep thought of the day"


Hard man training for the day.....
Monday.....So today is slap yourself in the face day, just do it, slap your left cheek...now slap the right one just a bit harder, repeat alternating sides until either you can not tolerate it anymore. Hurts eh?
Ok by now you are either laughing or crying either way, thanks for reading have a good one and I hope your work/training wasn't as bad as that.
This is proof that training as much as me will make you crazy!
DSJ

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