I stare down at the ground below me, closing my eyes tight, trying to hold back the tears. “Push it down. Deep breath in. Breathe it out … slowly … again …” The mantra I say in my head whenever it suddenly becomes too much.
I open my eyes to the view of the ground, unwillingly taking a snapshot of the view that surrounds me. Like the slow click of a …
Bearing witness to the gun violence epidemic
I became a respiratory therapist at 28, after years of trying to get into nursing school. It wasn’t until a friend, an RT at my city’s only level one trauma center, said, “You don’t want to be a nurse. You want to be an RT,” that something clicked. He let me shadow for a shift in the medical cardiac ICU, and I fell in love with the work instantly.
Watching him …
Why I left health care after 11 years as a respiratory therapist
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