This week, I’m helping two wonderful EMS professionals write their business plan. This is the first step to put the pieces in place to get an EMS training initiative launched. 

These first responders want to create an organization to help train the next generation of EMS staff in Berkshire County. Our goal is to have a draft of the plan ready within several weeks. It’s a tall order, but this one is important to me on a personal level. 

You see, 15 years ago I got a pretty tough cancer diagnosis. I was being treated at Mass General for cancer that had spread to my brain, spinal cord, and heart. Between chemo, I’d come out here and my wonderful dad would take care of me, along with my awesome sister, who spent a week or two a month traveling out here to help me from her home in Los Angeles. The doctors told me if they didn’t get it all, I’d be dead in six months, that I should get my affairs in order. Lucky for me they did!

Chemo is fraught with peril, as you become susceptible to infections due to impacts on your immune system. Sure enough, I was out here recuperating and I caught something. I woke up, if you can call it that, with a 104° fever. My family rushed me to the emergency room, and in consultation with the doctors at Mass. General, the decision was made to transport me back in Boston. One of the local ambulance services strapped me in and drove me to Boston. I even helped them with directions on Storrow Drive to Mass. General while staring at the top of the ambulance! 

I lived to write another day.

For me, it’s a pay-it-forward thing. Helping these folks with their business plan is the least I can do, after what they and folks like them did for me 15 years ago: maybe they helped saved my life. Like our first responders do for countless others day after day, year after year. Thank you for your service. We’re all relying on you.