As an old and retired paramedic myself, there are definitely parts of me, as a human being, that will never grow back. And I worked in a rural area where you work on neighbors, family, and friends mostly. It was never easy to explain to the family that might be present that not me or god could fix what was wrong. I also did a few suicides over the years. Never easy and they leave a mark that won’t grow back by morning.
The worst thing about any of it, was meeting a family member in a cafe or store in our small town. And they would invariably come up to me and give me a hug and tell me how grateful they were that I was there for them. Despite the fact I couldn’t do shit for the dead person beyond calling dispatch and telling them to send law enforcement to come and do their paperwork and secure the scene until the funeral home got there to haul the body away.
It ruined that scene in the The Princess Bride for me.
Do you hear that, Fezzik? That is the sound of ultimate suffering. My heart made that sound when Rugen slaughtered my father.
I’ve heard it to varying degrees, but the worst was the kid that shot themself by accident because dad got drunk and left his handgun out. Mom made it to the hospital and was obviously distraught … then she saw the body.
The noise she made is indescribable. An overcrowded, chaotic Emergency Department full of hardened nurses and doctors dropped into 5 seconds of complete silence and inactivity. Even other patients screaming in pain stopped.
It triggers some primal response in your brain you didn’t know exists until you hear it. It will stay with you for the rest of your life. The sound a mother makes she she sees her dead child is inarguably the worst sound in the world.
Yeah, only once have I heard the whole ER seemingly go silent. It was when we brought in a young trauma victim, (car accident). The pandemonium of a 6 people working all at once, the voices calm but tense and a bit louder, and the er Doc standing in the corner watching and directing the action. We worked the code for maybe 5 or 6 minutes before the Doctor called it. Everything just stopped. People froze from what they were doing. And the whole ER was dead silent for what seemed like hours, but was only a few seconds before everything came back to real time.
Only twice have I had to hear the agony of a mother. Once when I did a drowning. We were searching for the husband/father. I found him in about 6 feet of water. (my big toe went into his mouth-- a feeling I will never forget). My partner and I got him shallow water along the shore. And I did the math and estimated he’d been down 25 to 45 minutes. So we agreed to call it. So I started walking to the house, all soaking wet, to deliver the news. I can still hear her wail right now as I told her and her young son that daddy was never coming home again.
The other time was when we were paged out to a 4-wheeler accident. And an 11-year-old boy somehow drove too close to a drainage ditch and rolled in about 20 feet down. I went down with a rope and found him pinned under the 4-wheeler face down in about 3 or 4 inches of water. He had been dead long enough to be beyond anybodies help. I climbed back up the ditch and explained to the mother her 11-year old son was gone. To this day I pray to whatever gods there are that he was dead before he drowned pinned face down under that 4-wheeler.
The worst part of ALL of those moments was when you were done and driving away from the scene, and you still had that pager on, and you needed to get your shit back in a row and fast. The next call was going to happen at some point. You needed to be ready to 100% focus on that call with no time, or too much time, to process what had happened.
im not staying alive for their fucking feelings. if they cared that much they could have treated me like a human being when i was a kid. im staying alive for my cats. and yeah it means i love them more than my shitty parents.
Does everyone in this comment section have a horrible relationship with their father??
What the hell, am I the only one here NOT hating my parents??
Cherish that fact.
I don’t think I could handle being a paramedic for this reason. The memories just build and they get so many.
I’ve witnessed death myself upclose as family members died. Their final moments burned in forever.
Those memories never fade, you just distract yourself from it. But the memory is always waiting for when you recall a time together with them. There is that fucking final moment again, like a punctuation on a good thought.
To have that be part of a job, even if they are not related has to weigh heavily. They don’t get paid nearly enough for that burden.
I was homeless for a while.
… I know I couldn’t handle being a real paramedic.
Made my way as a make shift paramedic, treating various injuries and wounds that people would… appear with, at or near an encampment or something. Usually just field dressing a laceration, jerry rigging a makeshift splint.
Occasionally a gunshot wound.
I always begged people who needed more care than I could provide to go to a hospital.
Sometimss they did, sometimes they or their friends would refuse.
Fentanyl… zombies is actually pretty close to an accurate description.
I’ve seen more necrotic flesh, gray tissue and pus where either a stab wound or injection site once was… than I want to remember.
Your body can’t naturally heal when it’s … hooked on the blues. The stuff was all crushed blue tablets where I was, everybody just called em ‘blues’.
Successfully stabilized a few ODs … not all of them.
Also happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time: drive by shooting.
The streets are basically like a warzone, if you’re in them too long.
Fuck, I’m two years out of homelessness now, and I’m still doing PT to recover from my own injuries.
unfortunately this happens on a daily basis in places like Palestine
My heart drops to see others cheer or downplay other’s suffering. The only people that need to die are the ones who desire war.
