Rescue 471: A Paramedic's Stories [Paperback]

TRUE LIFE-AND-DEATH DRAMA

In taut, thrilling prose, Peter Canning has written a book that captures the rarely seen real world of emergency medicine. A seasoned paramedic who fights under enormous pressure to save lives, Canning trains new paramedics for the rigors of a nonstop, action-packed battle. From a four-month-old baby who has stopped breathing to a sixty-seven-year-old woman with a strange abdominal mass that threatens to explode--these are gripping true stories from the "ER on the streets." An exciting, often moving account, Canning tells a powerful story of camaraderie, selflessness, and courage as paramedics try to stand tall and human through both defeat and victory."THE STREET IS THE TOUGHEST PLACE TO WORK. . . . IT IS TRULY MEDICINE IN THE RAW--STABILIZE, LOAD, AND GO!"
--ECHO HERON
   Bestselling author of Intensive CarePeter Canning is a full-time paramedic in Hartford, Connecticut. A former speechwriter to Governor Lowell Weicker of Connecticut and top health aide whose duties included overseeing the emergency medical services system, Canning left his desk job in 1991 to become a paramedic on the city streets, a story chronicled in his first book--Paramedic: On the Front Lines of Medicine. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop.Introduction
 
My name is Peter Canning. In Paramedic: On the Front Lines of Medicine I told how I left my job as an aide to the governor of Connecticut to become a paramedic on the city’s streets and how I struggled in my first year to prove myself worthy of the job. This book Rescue 471: A Paramedic’s Stories continues my story over the next three years as I battle with life and death, and mature into a seasoned medic, confident of my skills and abilities but smart enough to know there is always more to learn and overcome. I have just turned forty; my partner for much of the time period of the book, Arthur Gasparrini, is in his early fifties. While thel๓,