I’ve always sort of had twin passions: medicine and comedy. That’s why I trained to become a paramedic at the same time I started taking improv and stand-up classes at my local comedy club. I realized that one passion would never outweigh the other, and so I decided that I would combine them and become the first-ever paramedicomedian. So now, when I’m out there trying to restart hearts and administer Narcan, I know that I’m standing on the shoulders of giants like Amy Poehler and Paul F. Tompkins.
Now let me be frank. Some of the other paramedics I’ve worked with, who take a more no-nonsense approach to the job don’t care for my methods. They say that I’m “careless,” “sloppy” and “dangerous to be around.” And while yes, it is true that I don’t have the highest track record for getting my patients to the hospital while they’re still alive, almost everyone I treat (who still has a pulse) would have to admit that I treated them to the best medicine of all, laughter.
Granted, there have been a few drivers who have told me on no uncertain terms to “sit down and shut up,” when I try and do my tight five on my crazy ex-girlfriend and my father’s love of the Rolling Stones. But in those instances, I put on “The Dead Authors Podcast” or “Comedy Bang Bang” and we “bing a bong a bong Burbank” all the way to the Kaiser Permanente. I even once managed to get a guy we’d saved from an overdose to tell us the complete list of drugs he was on by using simple “yes and” methods.
And while I do love stand-up and improv (I’ve even tried to organize a hospital-wide improv troupe), I also do phenomenal character work. Everybody from burn victims to people with rectal hemorrhaging loves “Dr. Joseph P. Handsypants,” the old blind physician. He’s a real rascal.
Am I perfect? No. My object work needs some practice and I am currently being sued by multiple families who didn’t find “knock-knock/who’s there/not your grandma anymore” to be a funny joke. But I’m glad to know that when I gurney people through those hospital doors, they’re in tears, screaming: “Oh God, stop! Oh God, it hurts!” from all the laughter. They’re quite literally in stitches.