Kids say the cutest things...

For those of you who don't know, I'm a paramedic. I see and hear a lot of things that most of you wouldn't even imagine happen. My job is kinda like the medical version of "Cops." Every once in a while we get a sick kid and if they aren't feeling too bad, they usually come up with something to make us laugh.

Last shift, around 1am we got a call for a 6 year old boy with trouble breathing. We got to his house and there he was sitting on the couch with an oxygen mask on from the first ambulance that arrived. He obviously was having some trouble breathing, but nothing life-threatening. So while my partner was talking to his mom, I did a little bit of an assessment. He was quiet; soft spoken. I listened to his lungs and he was wheezy so we decided to give him a nebulizer treatment. (A "mist" of medicine thats delivered through a face mask.) I put the medicine in the mask, which looks like a dinosaur--just for kids, and told him I was going to put the mask on him and he'd have to breath the medicine down deep in his lungs. He said okay but was still real quiet. I plugged the mask into the oxygen tubing, which then created the mist. He went nuts. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with him being he just sat there for almost 5 minutes with the regular oxygen mask on. He started screaming, climbing up the couch telling us to get away, we were trying to poison him and he wasn't going to let us touch him.

With kids, we try to mimic what we're about to do on us or their parent so I quickly took the mask and put it by my face and took a deep breath. He looked at me and said, "You aren't poisoned?" I said no. He said, "you're still awake." I said yes. He said, seriously, "Ok, I'll take it. I thought you were trying to put me asleep for surgery," grabbed the mask, put it on himself and wanted to know why weren't walking him out to the ambulance. We all just stood there, looked at each other, I'm sure dumbfounded, and laughed. A nice change from the normal 1am calls.

Although, I don't think that beats last year when Brian and I took the kids to Hershey Park for Candy Lane. We were leaving the park and serious as can be, Brandon (talking about the walking Hershey bar mascot)...."does he poop out Hershey kisses?" This year when we reminded him of it, he got all embarrassed and denied it. I thought it was cute.