I Visited with a Classmate Today

During your initial education, throughout clinicals, and for the remainder of your career… you’re never educated on exactly how to handle the calls that are close to home.

There are times where I care too much and then there are others where I feel that I don’t care enough. Part of the job is seperating your emotion from your job in order to do your job adequately and at times, even robotically. “You can lose your shit when you get back to the station” “Handle the call and lose your shit later…” is the advice I’ve been given so far. 

I’d like to say I haven’t had many calls that have affected me in traumatic ways, or maybe they’re in there somewhere but haven’t bubbled to the surface yet. Truthfully, the worse the call, the better the story. Not saying I want bad things to happen to people but I’m here for when they do. I’m not here to tell the bad stories, but to see some of the things that were allowed to see amazes me. I’ll stop there before I freak the weak hearts out, but if you get it, you get it. 

In my career I haven’t really found my “weak” spot, I haven’t found the call that truly shakes me to my core but I’m pretty sure it will definitely be the “child calls” because they get everybody. I don’t do well with vomit but I knew that going in. 

I’ve experienced death in so many personal ways that I seem to feel almost numb to the ones we “couldn’t save” while in reality, I see the truth… they were elderly, lived a whole life, and had to die eventually. I am sypathetic to the families because I know the pain of grief and that it last a lifetime. Being a patient advocate, I understand that sometimes death is truly what is best for the patient. 

So far I’ve written my viewpoint on what doesn’t too much bother me in this line of work and threw a few lines in that have you thinking I’m absolutely heartless. No, I just don’t do vomit. What I do, do is struggle with mental health, undiagnosed, and scared to pursue answers that I may never have. All of my life I’ve struggled with wondering why I am here, or why I’ve had to feel the pain and suffering I have. Wondering why I can’t just be “normal”, why I have spells where I only have the energy to sleep, and that’s truthfully all I can do to survive. The ups and downs, the instability, the hopelessness and hurt that becomes “unbearable” at times. The thoughts in my head that won’t just shut the f*ck up… 

These calls I run are a weird sense of peace that I’ve found. Early on in my career, I found a saying and it screamed so loudly at me. "I didn't become an EMT to get a front-row seat to other people's tragedies. I did it because I knew the world was bleeding and so was I, and somewhere inside I knew the only way to stop my own bleeding was to learn how to stop someone else's." It spoke to my soul in ways I never imagined and explained everything I held within so accurately. 

Sometimes the calls we run aren’t the ones that you can physically see, sometimes our patients have problems that are soul deep. I’ve been that person who was bleeding so loudly, yet no one seen red. Those are the calls that I’ve found are closest to home thus far, and while they do hurt me more than most of the calls I’ve ran, I know how to care for these patients because I too, have had this sickness. 

I’ve never turned to drugs to numb the pain because I am scared of what “normal” feels like, if I am still feeling pain, I must be alive right?

Picking up a classmate and not just any classmate, but one of the ones you seen come to school with the smile on their face and the comedy in their personality, to hide the scars they don’t want to talk about, is a rough one. 

“Seizures” don’t respond to sternum rubs, obey commands, or walk to the truck. I’m no doctor here and “seizures” weren’t the only medical problem, but to walk into a house and find your classmate, lying on a bed with purple lips is nothing you ever dreamed of in high school. 

When you graduate and part ways with your fellow classmates, you wish them the best and never expect to one day see them in less than high school condition. This isn’t the first classmate I’ve picked up and from what I can gather, I believe it’s #3. Maybe I struggle because I care too much, maybe I struggle because on some level, I can relate. I can’t relate to the admission of “Meth” but I can relate to the comment, “I just want to go home, not my home, home”. I knew what it meant, my partner knew what it meant, even the patient knew what not to say, which leads me to believe he’s been to this place before and my heart absolutely breaks for that. 

I signed up for this job due to shortages and lack of resources. I signed up for this job to be there on someone’s worst day. I signed up for this job because I have trauma too. I signed up for this job because “I knew the world was bleeding, and so was I, and I knew somewhere inside the only way to stop my own bleeding was to learn how to stop someone else’s”

Every patient is different, every patient is special, every patient matters, but there are some that seem to matter a little bit more and I know, those patients need me. 

The struggles we face personally, the experiences we’ve had, the resentment that’s built  during times of loving family members who put us through hell, due to their addiction or mental health issues, is no reason to ever treat a patient who is suffering an unimaginable pain any less than a patient who is bleeding out from an open wound. 

These calls carry a different weight to them and for me, stick with me. I find a level of compassion, empathy, and even peace, in these calls that remind me why I’m here. Sometimes, someone just needs someone to care. I find it easier to handle these calls with a clear mind, it’s just the aftermath of wondering, if they’ll be okay. 

The stigma around mental health has somewhat been broken but suffering from mental health issues still isn’t an easy thing to deal with. It hits you when you least expect it, it puts you in places you never wanted to be, it makes you make questionable choices, and it also leads to addictions that holds onto you. 
Returning to add, I had a clear train of thought and so much to say but I finished the sentence and the tones dropped.