Life in EMS

   

   For the duration of my EMS career, I have had almost every call imaginable.  From the most ludicrous to the most serious.  I’ve had a 66 year old woman call 911 for a stubbed toe, a woman who used Wed MD to self diagnose her cold and she was convinced she had a pulmonary embolism, to more serious calls like shootings, stabbings, and pediatric full arrests.  If you are one of the lucky ones, you have not yet had that one call that makes you question what you do for a living.  Everyone has bad calls.  The ones where after your shift you need to tell your loved ones you love them or hug and kiss them when you get home.  If you are not scared of what could come over that radio next, I don’t want you on my ambulance.  If you are scared, you will do what it takes to save a life.

     I remember my “questioning my career choice” call like it was yesterday.  It really wasn’t the call itself that messed with my head, it was the position we found our patient in.  My partner and I were dispatched to a 69 year old female, full arrest.  We were good.  We got this.  This is the reason we’ve had so many hours of training.  You can’t really mess up a full arrest call.  When we walked into the house loaded with equipment, the husband told us simply, “She’s in the bathroom”.  When I walked into that bathroom, I was not prepared for what I saw.  Our little old lady patient, had a heart attack while on the toilet and fell head first into the bathtub.  I’m not going to get into real specifics about anything else, it’s difficult to this day.  I walked out of the bathroom to meet a frantic husband, asking if he can help us, carry equipment, he just wanted to help his wife.  I had to tell this wonderful man, who thought we could save his wife, that she had passed.  He didn’t understand.  He thought she would be ok as soon as we got there.  That our equipment and knowledge would save her.  He was a broken man now.  Shocked about what we told him about his wife.

     Not a shift goes by, that I don’t think about that call.  I can remember every detail of that night.  I was reduced to tears when we finally cleared the scene.  My operations manager had to call me at about 0400 because I did not want to continue with my shift.  All I wanted was to go home and wake up my family, tell them I love them, and hold them in my arms.  The company I worked for back then, didn’t even have a policy for employees needing counseling from traumatic calls.  Because of me, a week later, they did.  Nobody had any idea what to do.  If anything good came from that call, that’s what it was.  Now they had a policy in place.  This kind of call will happen to everyone in EMS sooner or later.  I hope it’s later.

Comments

  1. It takes a special person to be a Paramedic, Beth. Anyone dialing 911 in an emergency would be blessed to have you show up to help

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