10/09/2026
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and this weekend there will be approximately 47 million pictures taken of the foliage, every one of them captioned with some version of “peak color” and sent to a relative who lives somewhere with palm trees.
But in EMS, sometimes we have to do the opposite. We have to take what we are seeing, hearing, smelling, measuring and figuring out in the back of an ambulance, then turn it into enough words that the hospital can clearly picture exactly what is coming through their doors. That is an art form.
So today, as the Berkshires show off every shade of red, orange, yellow and gold, we give a shoutout to one of Southern Berkshire Ambulance’s own verbal Picassos. The man himself may be seriously lacking in pigmentation, somewhere between “winter white” and “printer paper,” but when it comes to painting a picture with words, apparently he has the entire 64-count Crayola box at his disposal.
His reports do not simply say, “Patient doesn’t look good.” By the time he is finished, the hospital knows what the patient looks like, what happened, what we found, what we did, what changed, what did not change, and probably what the patient had for breakfast three Tuesdays ago.
So while everyone else is out admiring the fall colors this weekend, remember that some of our finest artwork is being created under fluorescent lights, at 60 miles an hour, with a laptop balanced on somebody’s knee. No easel, no paintbrush, just a radio, a report, and enough descriptive language to make Bob Ross say, “Maybe dial it back a little.”
Ready to Serve. Proud to Care.
