Product Description

Five years ago Jane Stern was a walking encyclopedia of panic attacks, depression, and hypochondria. Her marriage of more than thirty years was suffering, and she was virtually immobilized by fear and anxiety. As the daughter of parents who both died before she was thirty, Stern was terrified of illness and death, and despite the fact that her acclaimed career as a food and travel writer required her to spend a great deal of time on airplanes, she suffered from a persistent fear of flying and severe claustrophobia. But a strange thing happened one day on a plane that was grounded at the Minneapolis airport for six horrible, foodless, airless hours. A young man on a trip with his classmates suddenly became dizzy and pale because he hadn’t eaten in many hours, and there was no food left on the plane. Without thinking about it, Jane gave him the candy bar that she had in her purse. A short time later the color had returned to his cheeks, the boy was laughing again with his friends, and Jane realized that this one small act of kindness—helping another person who was suffering—had provided her with comfort and a sense of well-being.

It was shortly thereafter that this fifty-two-year-old writer decided to become an emergency medical technician, eventually coming to be known as Ambulance Girl. Stern tells her story with great humor and poignancy, creating a wonderful portrait of a middle-aged, Woody Allen–ish woman who was “deeply and neurotically terrified of sick and dead people,” but who went out into the world to save other people’s lives as a way of saving her own. Her story begins with the boot camp of EMT training: 140 hours at the hands of a dour ex-marine who took delight in presenting a veritable parade of amputations, hideous deformities, and gross disasters. Jane—overweight and badly out of shape—had to surmount physical challenges like carrying a 250-pound man seated in a chair down a dark flight of stairs. After class she did rounds in the emergency room of a local hospital, where she attended to a schizophrenic kickboxer who had tried to kill his mother that morning and a stockbroker who was taken off the commuter train to Manhattan with delirium tremens so bad it killed him.

Each call Stern describes is a vignette of human nature, often with a life in the balance. From an AIDS hospice to town drunks, yuppie wife beaters to psychopaths, Jane comes to see the true nature and underlying mysteries of a town she had called home for twenty years. Throughout the book we follow her as she gets her sea legs and finally bonds with the burly, handsome firefighters who become her colleagues. At the end, she is named the first woman officer of the department—a triumph we joyously share with her.

Ambulance Girl is an inspiring story by a woman who found, somewhat late in life, that “in helping others I learned to help myself.” It is a book to be treasured and shared.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #129042 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-27
• Released on: 2004-04-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781400048694
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
At 52, Stern, a well-known foodie-she and her husband, Michael, have coauthored some 20 books on American culture and food, including Roadfood-found herself profoundly depressed. Holed up in the couple's Connecticut home, she'd lost interest in doing much of anything. Phobias (bus riding, air travel, claustrophobia, etc.) made her isolation worse. One day, on a whim, she responded to the "volunteers wanted" notice at the local firehouse and signed up for EMT training. No one teaching "boot camp"-style classes would have tolerated a queasy (much less depressed or phobic) recruit, so she had to tough it out. Humor definitely helped. As Stern remarks, after a few classes covering major trauma, "I am no longer clinically depressed but instead am dying of everything simultaneously." Some of her class notes are funny, like her list of EMT no-nos: don't replace organs hanging from bodies, don't give CPR to a severed head, don't attempt to revive someone in a "state of advanced decomposition" and if "you have a patient whose leg or arm is partially amputated, do not pull it off to make things `neat.' " After training and certification, the real work started, and while initially it did the trick-"in helping others I learned to help myself"-the ultimate truth, that she couldn't save everyone, brought back her depression. Stern's memoir is a quirky mix of humor, self-doubt and courage.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In broad terms, this is a familiar story: a woman is dissatisfied with her lot, embarks upon a life-altering, seemingly ill-advised adventure that fills her with hope and happiness. But fill in the details, and you find a very unusual story, indeed. Stern wasn't just any workaday person; she was a writer, a popular author of more than 20 books, a magazine editor, and a radio commentator. Her dissatisfaction wasn't your typical midlife angst, but a deep and paralyzing depression that, by the time she was in her early 50s, had rendered her unable to travel or appear in public. And her life-altering adventure was, of all things, becoming an emergency medical technician, a volunteer job that literally put other people's lives in her hands. Making the switch from author of such books as The Encyclopedia of Pop Culture to EMT put a bit of a strain on both Stern and her husband, but it enriched her in ways that readers will find both touching and surprising. A remarkable variation on a time-honored theme. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap
Five years ago Jane Stern was a walking encyclopedia of panic attacks, depression, and hypochondria. Her marriage of more than thirty years was suffering, and she was virtually immobilized by fear and anxiety. As the daughter of parents who both died before she was thirty, Stern was terrified of illness and death, and despite the fact that her acclaimed career as a food and travel writer required her to spend a great deal of time on airplanes, she suffered from a persistent fear of flying and severe claustrophobia. But a strange thing happened one day on a plane that was grounded at the Minneapolis airport for six horrible, foodless, airless hours. A young man on a trip with his classmates suddenly became dizzy and pale because he hadn?t eaten in many hours, and there was no food left on the plane. Without thinking about it, Jane gave him the candy bar that she had in her purse. A short time later the color had returned to his cheeks, the boy was laughing again with his friends, and Jane realized that this one small act of kindness?helping another person who was suffering?had provided her with comfort and a sense of well-being.

It was shortly thereafter that this fifty-two-year-old writer decided to become an emergency medical technician, eventually coming to be known as Ambulance Girl. Stern tells her story with great humor and poignancy, creating a wonderful portrait of a middle-aged, Woody Allen?ish woman who was ?deeply and neurotically terrified of sick and dead people,? but who went out into the world to save other people?s lives as a way of saving her own. Her story begins with the boot camp of EMT training: 140 hours at the hands of a dour ex-marine who took delight in presenting a veritable parade of amputations, hideous deformities, and gross disasters. Jane?overweight and badly out of shape?had to surmount physical challenges like carrying a 250-pound man seated in a chair down a dark flight of stairs. After class she did rounds in the emergency room of a local hospital, where she attended to a schizophrenic kickboxer who had tried to kill his mother that morning and a stockbroker who was taken off the commuter train to Manhattan with delirium tremens so bad it killed him.

Each call Stern describes is a vignette of human nature, often with a life in the balance. From an AIDS hospice to town drunks, yuppie wife beaters to psychopaths, Jane comes to see the true nature and underlying mysteries of a town she had called home for twenty years. Throughout the book we follow her as she gets her sea legs and finally bonds with the burly, handsome firefighters who become her colleagues. At the end, she is named the first woman officer of the department?a triumph we joyously share with her.

Ambulance Girl is an inspiring story by a woman who found, somewhat late in life, that ?in helping others I learned to help myself.? It is a book to be treasured and shared.


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

How to save lives while you save yourself.
I first heard Jane Stern on NPR. Her story intrigued me and I bought her book. Jane has been in the food reviewing business with her husband for awhile- radio and Gourmet magazine. She found herself sitting in front of her TV, a real couch potato, afraid to move or go anywhere. Eventually Jane realized that she needed some expertise and assistance to help her through this period of anxiety and depression. Through a great deal of work and some pharmaceutical assitance Jane has learned to live through her depression. One outlet was to become an EMT- by helping others she is helping herself- she is less drawn to angst about her own issues. As a health care provider I can understand how you can become engrossed in other people's medical and emergency issues by helping them through this critical time, and how rewarding it is to know you were responsible for a litle piece of this person's care. Jane has also learned that she has to leave the dark, difficult emergency situations at the office, so to speak. She cannot dwell on those she cannot save or those stories too bleak to think about. This book conveys a story of depression that will be helpful to many- a method for surviving while helping others- that's what it is all about.

pr

Powerful blend of pathos, humor, and honesty.
"Ambulance Girl" is the absorbing true story of how and why Jane Stern, a depressed and anxious borderline agoraphobic, decides to become an Emergency Medical Technician. Jane was a 52-year-old writer for a food magazine when she realized that she was sinking fast emotionally. Her marriage was beginning to fray, she spent an inordinate amount of time loitering around the house in her bathrobe, and she suffered from panic attacks. Sessions with therapists were not helping.

Stern started to turn her life around with a new therapist, and she decided that in order to help herself, she would have to help others. She studied to become, of all things, an Emergency Medical Technician with the volunteer fire department in Georgetown, Connecticut. This was a strange choice for a woman who was emotionally shaky and chronically terrified.

"Ambulance Girl" is both hilarious and poignant. Stern recalls how she had to overcome her claustrophobia and fear of moving vehicles before she could ride in an ambulance. She also writes with wit and disarming candor about her many shortcomings. When she first started out, she made so many mistakes that she felt sorry for the victims who were stuck with her as their EMT! On various occasions, she found herself babbling incoherently into her two-way radio, forgetting her eyeglasses and watch when she went out on a call, and accidentally kicking the broken hip of an elderly lady who was lying helplessly on the floor. In spite of her initial ineptitude, Stern became a competent EMT, and she was gratified to discover that her work invigorated her and imbued her with a new sense of purpose.

Stern deserves a great deal of credit for lifting herself out of a deep depression and gaining the acceptance of the Georgetown firemen and her fellow EMT's. "Ambulance Girl" is an entertaining and unusual account of a brave woman's determination to face her fears and bring out the best in herself against all odds.

Funny, Moving, Inspirational. A book to read and re-read
First, this book is a joy to read. Stern's self-effacing humor ingratiates her from page one, and her adventures becoming "Ambulance Girl" are absolutely hilarious. But like the best comedy, this story isn't just laughs. It is underlaid with a poignancy that makes it a powerful example of someone who learns to overcome adversity, especially that kind of adversity that bedevils us from the inside. Ultimately, I found this book truly inspirational. If you like to laugh, and if you want to be uplifted by the power of the human spirit to find meaning in life, get on board and go for a ride with Ambulance Girl!