One of the first books that I read this year was the sensational and bestselling Fighting for your Life by Lysa Walder. I was absolutely blown away at how amazing it was to read but also everything that a paramedic goes through on a regular basis. Upon writing my review I knew I had to contact Lysa to see if she would be interested in doing a interview with little old me and I am not ashamed to say that I genuinely squealed when she agreed.

Lysa kindly took time out of her schedule to answer my questions. If you haven’t done so already then I urge you to pick up a copy of Fighting for your Life

Because we chatted for so long, I am dividing this interview , and part 2 will be published on Wednesday.

What prompted you to write a book ?

I wrote the book in 2008 primarily because I wanted my family and children to understand my work as a paramedic, which has been such an important part of my life for many years. Over the years I usually worked alone and I wanted to be able to ‘bring them along’ with me for the ride and for them to be able to visualise what it felt like to be me in those situations. They already know me as a mother, child, sister and I hoped that they would read my stories and get to know my professional personality as well. My unintended audience however, has been young people and students who are planning to study Paramedic Science at university – in particular young women. I imagine they Google the term ‘Paramedic’ and devour everything they find to satisfy the need to know as much as they possibly can before they commit. I am currently working on another collection of stories and I sincerely hope that this book will also be published.

How long did it take you to complete ?

When I wrote the book I used to get up extra early in the mornings and lay the bones of the story out and then I would usually put in the details during the evenings. I would hazard a guess that it took about 300 hours of typing time.

What do your family and friends think of your book ? Did they realise the extent of what a paramedic endures ?

My close family probably already had a fair idea of what types of calls we go to working in the ambulance service but some people did express surprise that our job entails, for example, witnessing the aftermath of brutal murder, dead or severely ill babies, delivering babies, major incidents and mental health crisis for example. I was very surprised that they were surprised by this as I didn’t think it was a revelation! We are usually called upon when someone is having a pretty awful day and we see the best and very worst of humanity. If you think about most of the nightmare scenarios that can happen in a person’s day it will normally result in contact with the emergency services.

What was the most difficult part of writing your book?

The most difficult part of writing my book was deciding how much of myself to put in there. Writing a biographical account means laying yourself bare and open to criticism and it scared me. For that reason, I held back a fair bit as an act of self protection. The other difficulty was that I found some of the stories were so incredible, so filled with coincidence, twists and turns that I felt people wouldn’t believe them, I had to leave a couple out for fear of undermining the credibility of the book. One other issue is that there’s a fine line when trying to introduce or include humour in to these types stories (not forgetting that humour is a necessary evil that gets us through some of the most dreadful situations) Patients say and do the most hysterical things and take my word for it, that’s a whole bookshelf in itself. However, describing these moments are really tough for me as I realise that they can easily descend in to ridicule or belittling of the patient which I would never intentionally do, so again these are the stories that I often avoided.

We will resume our fascinating chat on Wednesday.

Fighting for your Life by Lysa Walder is available here.

 

 

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