Customer Reviews

En Route: A Paramedic's Stories of Life, Death, and Everything in Between

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"En Route" is a series of vignettes that tell great stories with great feeling, often putting you right there with the author.

However, there is often a lack of connective material. He seems to change jobs and companies often with no comments or connections. He meets a nurse, asks her out, then is engaged, married, and divorced in little more than a few sentences. People are mentioned with little context- why do we need the full name of a person who pops up a single time without knowing anything else about them?

There is also an assumption that you are familiar with both rural Louisiana and basic paramedic skills- he often mentions locations as if you are already intimately familiar with them, where a brief commentary that this is a one-horse town, or this is a suburb of a better known town, etc. A little more context or background would have been nice.

I also missed any sort of a glossary or explanations of terms he used(although I MUCH prefer explanations in the text). For example, there is a running gag about 'spiking a bag of saline' that I am sure has paramedics in stitches, but becomes kind of annoying to the rest of us.

On the other hand, unlike so many of EMS stories, it does not devolve into an 'its all about me' tale, a morality tale, or anything like that. Instead, it is a good overview of the life of a paramedic- the ups and downs, and built on a nice outline in which each story moves us towards his thoughtful ending.

I am not a paramedic, nor am I in the medical field, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Kelly Grayson is a gifted writer and a deeply compassionate person with an ability to see the humor in difficult situations.

This was an entertaining set of anecdotes culled from a fairly lengthy career as a rural Paramedic in Louisiana.

As an ex-paramedic myself, I don't have the same negative comments regarding the medical terminology as many other reviewers have pointed out, but do have some observations.

Perhaps the most annoying thing about this book is its structure--it is divided into little scenes detailing a particular call or situation. This is all well and good, but the stitching together of these scenes leaves the tale disjointed, and the reader confused. Some connecting material wouldbe a great benefit to the book.

The author also relies on the same choice of words throughout the book...to the point it becomes tiresome. Every call from the dispatcher is a "rude interruption." They "pipe in sunlight" to several locales. It just seems unimaginative. The life of a paramedic is one filled with excitement (good and bad) and very colorful...the story would be better served with more imaginative word choices.

Ultimately, I think the author failed in the primary task of such a book (and I have read dozens!)...to immerse the reader in the emotional connections between paramedic and the Job, and the patients, and the coworkers.

Sadly, I expected much more of this book than was delivered.

This book is interesting in the way that looking at a wreck on the highway is interesting. You can't take your eyes away (or stop reading) but you feel slightly ashamed for doing so. Grayson is successful in creating visual images of the grit and gore a paramedic experiences in the field, allowing us to be voyeurs in people's homes, the inside of their mangled cars, and in the emergency rooms of hospitals as they struggle to survive. He is much less successful in his writing technique and in his ability to portray the human side of himself and his work.

The book is a series of vignettes strung together with no apparent rhyme or reason. The time line jumps around, there are no connections between stories, and there is no overall organization. Grayson works for different companies, lives in different towns, and has a variety of assistants but, as there is no chronological order to the story, it is difficult to follow characters and locations. Sometimes a previously introduced patient reappears and Grayson writes about the person as if we should remember who he or she is, but we don't. As a result, the book has a jumpy, hard-to-follow feel to it. Additionally, the mechanics of Grayson's writing style are distracting. Both his vocabulary and sentence structure suffer from excessive repetitiveness.

The most troubling aspect of this book is Grayson's condescending attitude toward everyone except himself: In his view, his patients are all overweight, stupid and/or drunk; nurses and MDs are, by-and-large, necessary evils who know far less than he does; and, his co-workers are merely supporting actors who, at best, haul the equipment he then uses in some heroic way. Clearly, Grayson is highly intelligent and able, but he spends far too much time reminding us of it. Perhaps most offensive is what appears to be an underlying current of bigotry in his pejorative descriptions of his mostly black, mostly uneducated, mostly inarticulate, often elderly, rural clients.

Grayson had ample material for a good book. The stories about patients are compelling, if repetitive. The story of how a paramedic relates to other health professionals would be interesting, if the tensions, envies, superior knowledge and experience (on both sides) could be handled in a less flippant way. The story of providing medical services in an impoverished, rural, culturally complex community (the setting is rural Louisiana) could be both interesting and illuminating, if there were some compassion and perspective about the culture. And Grayson's personal story, of becoming a paramedic because he really didn't have the drive, resources or opportunity to go to medical school, might be fascinating if attached to some insight and honest emotions.

In summary, if you are interested in reading about the technical aspects of paramedic work, you might like this book. If you are looking for a book on the subject that is well-written and more revelatory in nature, you might want to pass on this one.

This is not so much a single narrative as a bunch of short stories and vignettes. Instead of getting a long flowing tale you get snips and peeks into Kelly's world.

But don't let that stop you from reading. This is a treasure trove of stories that will make you laugh and make you cry. You will feel the frustrations of bad medical people, crazy patients and silly management practices. You will laugh at the seemingly impossible things that happen, the inner workings of Kelly's mind, and the day to day insanities. You will cry for the people he couldn't save, or the ones he did, only to have something happen anyway.

I have tiny nits with this book. There are occasionally medical terms that pop up without explanation. History seems to jump around a bit, it's sometimes not clear which company he's working for when. But it's not enough to mar the stories.

There are two more things that make it a highly rated book for me: I will want to re-read it, and I will recommend it to all I know.

I also highly recommend the author's website, for more tales of the Paramedic world: [...]

Kelly Grayson has an amazing voice, a keen eye, a healthy ego and generous, embracing heart wrapped in thick skin to deal with things that are not at all glamorous. His storytelling is penetrating, touching and often tart and funny. He's a welcome addition to my library. Read this to learn about the grossly underestimated world of EMS in a part of the country that is often maligned. Read this to weep. Read this to laugh. Read this to understand just a little more.

"En Route" should be required reading for those entering the field of emergency health care. Varying from the slightly slapstick (the defibrillated chihuahua story alone is worth the purchase price) to the outright comedic (if you are a paramedic, your boss will be deeply concerned when biohazard bags in your rig move of their own accord) to the tragic ("Grief Sponge" will have all but the most hardened teary-eyed) to the body-humor-esque (without body humor, it wouldn't be a medical memoir), Grayson takes his readers on a tour of what it is like to be a paramedic in rural Louisiana. A paramedic faces life, death, and everything in between, and Grayson invites you for a ride-along with "En Route." Strongly recommended for those in the emergency medical field, and also recommended for anyone who enjoys a good story.

Having grown up around EMS most of my life, I spent many evenings sitting around and listening to my dad and his co-workers drink beer and tell stories on each other and about the community they served. This book was that all over again in written form. Kelly Grayson is one of the great traditions of story tellers that can make you laugh or cry (or both at the same time). I highly recommend this book to anyone with a connection to the fire/EMS lifestyle.

I'm a computer geek. This book makes me want to be a Paramedic. Steve "Kelly" Grayson will bring you to tears on both ends of the spectrum, laughing and crying. Besides being a good first-responder, Kelly is a very talented writer. He manages to capture the (sometimes black) humor of the profession as well as the pathos. If you can get through the final chapter without a tear in your eye, you're not fully human. And he manages to end with a ray of hope. Very well done!

but if you are an EMT I doubt you will find a better read. This book had me shaking my head in agreement and laughing out loud within minutes. Kelly has written the best book about EMS since Peter Canning's 'Paramedic'. I hope he writes another one soon.