April seems to be a time of winter winding down and preparation for whatever the upcoming summer has in store for us in the EMS & rescue communities. It also seems to be a time of stress and frayed nerves for much of the public we serve.

From the stress of the raging Red River in North Dakota to the many incidents of mass murder, including the recent incidents involving multiple law enforcement officers in Oakland, California and Pittsburgh, PA... I don't know whether it is the ready accessibility of assault weapons (an AK 47 was used in both the Oakland and Pittsburgh incidents) the stress of these challenging economic times, the influence of First Person shooter games or what, but the frequency and lethality of incidents seems to be on the rise.

So, to quote fictional Chicago PD Sgt. Phil Esterhaus from that venerable 80's NBC TV classic, HILL STREET BLUES, "Let's be careful out there."

Speaking of violence and "the job," first up is Craig Hartpence's novel ADRENALINE JUNKIES: A Paramedic Nightmare. To begin with, Paramedic Hartpence is an EMS veteran of a California county EMS system that had a contract with a private ambulance service or services.

Secondly, he writes well. The problem with writing an EMS novel is that there has to be an underlying plot to string together the various tales/war stories. Craig does so in such an engaging and realistic way that I found myself remembering back to the mid 80's when I worked for 10 months for the Northern California Division of Medevac who had the contract for the southern half of the City of San Jose and Santa Clara County. While the names and faces were different, many of the incidents he shares were similar to ones that happened to me and my coworkers.

The bullet, literally, a long time EMS system veteran, Jason Holt has risen to Director of the county EMS service. He is shot by one of his employees after uncovering an actually quite plausible scam involving some of his employees and hundreds of deaths.

ADRENALINE JUNKIES is medic Holt's career told through a series of flashbacks as he lays wounded and is being treated by his own system - beginning with how he became an EMT working for a transfer service and having the EMS bug bite hard and deep, to the grind of putting himself through paramedic school while still working the streets, to rising up through the ranks. And it tells of many calls and adventures along the way.

Medic Holt is no straight arrow. He has more than his share of adventures, misadventures and judgment calls that go in both directions. However he lived and learned from his journey leading up to the point of his attempted murder.

To tell more is to give the plot away and this is one nicely written work about our craft that is worth tracking down and reading. Craig also included a rather extensive glossary of terms for the non EMS reader so they can equally enjoy this tale. This is a self published novel but you wouldn't know it by the quality of the writing and superior editing that shows throughout. I devoured this book in two nights.

ADRENALINE JUNKIES: A Paramedic Nightmare
Craig Alan Hartpence
authorHouse, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4343-7014-3
$20.50 (hard cover), $15.00 (paperback)

Moving on is an interestingly titled book called WAR IS BEAUTIFUL: An American Ambulance Driver in The Spanish Civil War. This particular conflict was the prelude to World War 2 and the phrase "War is Beautiful" was actually a Fascist propaganda slogan the author observed scrawled on a recently captured city wall.

There have been a number accounts over the past several years of American health care volunteers for the Republican cause in this nearly forgotten conflict. And the truth is that most of those who survived were ostracized by the American Government as being Communists or at the least Socialists.

These veterans, on their return and wanting to join US Forces after Pearl Harbor were usually limited to enlisted positions only.

WAR IS BEAUTIFUL is the memoir of James Neugass. Like many individuals of that time, America was just beginning to climb out of the Great Depression. James is a highly educated young man who attended Yale, Harvard and Oxford and who worked a wide variety of jobs ranging from book reviewer, to shoe salesman, social worker and even a fencing coach while searching for his life's meaning.

It appears he found it in helping to fight the Franco's Fascist forces, or rather by helping take care of those who did the actual fighting. WAR IS BEAUTIFUL is one of the best written accounts of medical support during this conflict that I have come across. All aspects of the fighting are very well written about, from shortages and the actual conflicts, to going out and harvesting horse steaks from a repelled Fascist calvary charge.

Nicely supported with photos and the author's own journal pages, WAR IS BEAUTIFUL is a very insightful look at this conflict from a combat EMS perspective and worth reading for both a good look at this time in history and how our EMS forefathers & mothers did it to the best of their abilities under less than ideal circumstances.

WAR IS BEAUTIFUL: An American Ambulance Driver in The Spanish Civil War
James Neugass; edited by Peter Carroll & Peter Glazer
The new Press, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59558-427-4
$26.95

Still on the topic of bullets and EMS is Charles M. Kinney's BORROWED TIME: A Medic's View of the Vietnam War. Then Sgt. Kinney was a career Army medical specialist who had joined the Air Force straight out of high school in 1957 and after 4 years returned to the civilian world only to find it not to his liking. He joined the US Army in 1962 and became a combat medic.

In 1965 he volunteered for service in the newly expanding conflict of Vietnam and arrived in country shortly after the Ia Drang Valley battle made famous in the book and movie WE WERE SOLDIERS.

Needless to say, walking past a long row of duffle bags stacked waist high that turned out to be the personal affects of the wounded and killed from that battle on his way to being processed in was a sobering reminder that this was real and not the stuff of movies or comic books. He was assigned to C-company. Out of the 110 men of his new company who participated in the Battle of Ia Drang Valley, only 9 came out of it uninjured and all of the company's combat medics had been killed.

What follows is an account of the first of his two 13 and half month deployments in Vietnam. Because his unit was "Airmobile" the medics could only bring along those medical supplies they could carry with them. Thus they did not have the litters, portable oxygen, IV solutions or even the telescopic leg splints that more traditional infantry medics had available to them.

Instead their mission was pretty straight forward: "Rescue casualties, treat their wounds, stop the bleeding with good pressure dressings, maintain patent airways for breathing, relieve pain when necessary and warranted with morphine sulfate given IM, and then move casualties to an area where they could be evacuated." By helicopter. Always by helicopter.

Medic Kinney, with the editing assistance of Pamela Watson, presents a very detailed look at his part of the war in 65/66. Richly supported with numerous personal photos, BORROWED TIME is one of the better Vietnam era combat EMS memoirs I've had the pleasure to read. Well worth tracking down for purchase or from your local library.

BORROWED TIME: A Medic's View of the Vietnam War
Charles M. Kinney
Trafford Publishing, 2005
ISBN: 141200304-0
$18.00 from Amazon.com

Last up is Dr. Richard Deichmann's book CODE BLUE: A Katrina Physician's Memoir. To begin with, I was one of almost 6,000 EMTs & paramedics in New Orleans attending the EMS EXPO who were chased out by Hurricane Katrina.

Most of us felt guilty running away from something that normally we would be responding toward. But none of us had the equipment or linkage with the area infrastructure to be of any worthwhile help rather than an additional burden.

There were many lessons learned from that particular disaster that struck more than just the City of New Orleans. Over the past couple of years, accounts and books about various aspects of that event are starting to hit the market. None of them are from an EMS perspective - at least not yet. I am looking forward to reading accounts from the local rescuers who stayed behind and did their best or from the ambulance strike teams that responded in the days that followed or from the USAR and other rescue teams that responded to Mississippi and Louisiana.

With that said, Dr. Deichmann was chairman of the Medicine Department at Baptist Hospital in New Orleans. As Hurricane Katrina approached, he reported to the hospital and brought along his wife and two daughters. Together they treated the patients and rode out the storm. By the following morning it looked like they had gotten away with it.

At that point the hospital generator was still running, powering the elevators, limited lab & support services and the cooking facilities. The staff, patients and their respective families who had sheltered in the hospital to ride out the storm were guardedly optimistic. And then the levees began to give way.

What follows is Dr. Deichmann's account of attempting to provide medical care with diminishing resources, a break down in support systems, and battling through the apparent disorganization of rescue and evacuation.

CODE BLUE is not a nail biting cliff hanger. Rather it is a gritty look at conditions, frustrations and perseverance that ultimately did not have the happiest of endings. But none the less is well worth reading.

It examines how the patients and their families were evacuated, in many cases in spite of rather than with the help of some of the area emergency services personnel. And it covers the attempts to maintain organization as one by one several dozen patients passed away from their medical conditions in the fetid heat and humidity of the post Katrina flooding.

Dr. Deichmann and his fellow caregivers did the best that they could under challenging conditions from which most folks ran away. Ultimately he was one of the last to leave and through luck and effort was able to reunite with his family, who had made a dash for escape after the levees gave way but before the waters had risen so high that they were trapped.

All in all CODE BLUE is a well written account of one aspect of this natural disaster. If you have ever participated in the evacuation of a hospital or nursing home complex in your career under normal circumstances, then you will definitely appreciate the hard work of Dr. Deichmann and his coworkers.

CODE BLUE: A Katrina Physician's Memoir
Richard E. Deichmann, MD
IUniverse Star, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4401-1033-7
$26.95

That's it for this Book Corner. Take care & be safe everyone.

Norm Rooker has been involved in EMS & Rescue since 1973. His career has covered numerous venues from the City of St. Louis to the streets of San Francisco and has ranged from standard EMS and supervision to Special Operations including structural collapse rescue, SWAT/Tactical EMS, surf rescue swimmer and rope rescue geek, among others. Currently he is the Chief of Ouray County EMS in southwestern Colorado. He is also a founding member of the International Assoc. of EMS Chiefs and serves as the Rural EMS Chiefs section head.