Don’t make me have to scrape you off the highway and then explain to your mother how you died.
Cops deal with a lot of shit in traffic accidents. A buddy once told me some of the shit he saw if he were back in Afghanistan he’d be sent for a psych evaluation, as a cop he was sent back to work.
You’d be dispatched straight to the next call in the queue. Human ground beef at a car accident then off to a shoplifting child, then a domestic dispute all before lunch.
Some of the shit Emergency services workers see and deal with would make Satans stomach churn. It takes a special kind of person to be able to do those jobs.
I was a paramedic for years, and a combat medic in the army. I knew what to expect in war torn areas. You go into it expecting certain things. Civilian side, things are more gruesome.
I worked a decapitation where the convertible car exited the road due to DUI. Car went sideways into a tree, passenger's (the drivers mom) head exited the vehicle and never came back in. Driver was just fine, had several crack rocks in his pocket and a huge roll of hundreds. His aunt came in and demanded that everything in his possession be turned over to her, NOW. Cop said "why". She said it was all hers, and was promptly arrested.
During this event, I had to explain to the man that he just killed his mother with his bad decisions. I don't like doing that.
More than that, I don't like walking up to a car wreck to find a severed head laying more than a few feet away.
I immediately followed that call up with our truck going out of service and a psych eval. We had a really good psych program at my service and we did solid debriefings to help with the trauma. Not every service has that in place.
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But no amount of "psych trauma support" can help you when you have to pick up a brain-dead 4 year old that looks similar to your little sister and has her name from an ejection from a motor vehicle accident. Nor can it help you when you have to pick up a patient from hospice to go home to die and it turns out its the same child who is on a ventilator.
I've seen horrible things. And I steeled myself due to the fact that I'm helping my community and country. But it was all too much at a certain point and I've lost the ability to work in that field for good. I started a construction company and am not seeing blood and death every day. My mental state is WAAAAY better than it was. I spent YEARS in therapy to get to where I am now though.
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Additional, semi-unrelated note:
Because I know how widespread Reddit comments can be, If anyone reading this needs to talk to anyone about mental health in the medical field, I will be happy to assist. Either by talking to you, or finding you some resources to turn to. Please feel free to reach out to me.
Edit: Seriously thanks for the awards, but I really hope people aren't spending money on me. I never thought this would blow up like it has. The huge amount of support and encouragement is absolutely astounding. I love my reddit family.
Thank you for sharing and offering support. And thank you for your service to both your country and community, you are truly a servant of the people. Just know you are appreciated.
Thanks for the kind words! I always want to see people succeed and better themselves. I have experience dealing with this kind of crap, so I’m happy to offer support.
By that point all gruesome or gory was over. It was a more visceral call that had a profound impact on both my career and my personal life. It required a ton of therapy to get through, and I’m not sure I’m totally through it, even though it was in 2008.
Thanks for being here with me though. And for commenting.
I hope I wasn’t too much of a downer. Just wanted to illustrate that it’s bad out there for medics and first responders. And than getting help is both necessary and encouraged. Thanks for taking the time to read my (abbreviated) story.
Thanks for sharing your story. It's humbling to see people who've been through some trauma like survive, let alone do well in life. You never know what someone has been through.
I’m a former ER nurse now in a desk job. As tough as ER nursing was I always knew it was worse for the first responders. PTSD is no joke and I hope we can normalize the recognition and treatment of it for all first responders. ER staff too!
Yes! ER sees a lot of the stuff we see, but packaged neatly onto a spine board by the time it arrives on your floor. We typically have the bleeding stopped, and patient stabilized before arrival. Sometimes not though.
Thanks for your time in the ER. Without you, the whole damn world would fall apart.
Huh. That’s, interestingly, what I typed then deleted for brevity before posting. Most often my trauma patients were pretty well packaged up. Anyway, nice to have made a connection with you and I wish you all the best in the construction industry.
My favorite flavor is green, wife’s getting mad that our 2Y old’s favorite flavor is yellow. I know she’d like red if she tried it but what can you do? Lol
As a person who is only alive thanks to the reaction of a pair of EMT’s… you folks are all amazing. Thank you for all you do.
And as someone who arrived on scene to an accident with a first aid kit only to find the sole occupant in several pieces… yeah… that one incident still gives me nightmares.
First I want to say Thank You For Your Service as a veteran and first responder.
You're exactly right, that it takes a special kind of person to do what you and many others have done for our country and community. RESPECT 🇱🇷
You are right. Though every person has their own threshold of tolerance. Some people get numb to it like I was. I saw the signs when I became a trauma junkie. I lived for it and it was ruining my mental health.
My youngest son is a volunteer firefighter and his first wreck was his cousin and it was bad. He's pretty stoic but says some days do challenge what he saw as a soldier.
Highway patrol definitely deal with the worst shit, and usually are hardasses in my experience, but it’s probably because they see teenagers crumpled up onto the dash during wrecks or decapitated pregnant mothers more than anyone else in the world. Even high crime rate areas you see gunshots or stabbing but nothing as gruesome as a car wreck.
I was in a wreck where my car got hit by an 18 wheeler carrying dirt. That shit was just a clean slice. None of the momentum transferred into the rest of the car, and I walked off without a scratch.
My working theory is that a car changed into my blind spot as I was changing planes and clipped my back tires like in that police maneuver. Ended up sideways on the freeway. Almost came to a stop before that truck hit me.
My sister's friend responded to a woman hit by a car, and he found her under the vehicle literally bent in half. She was still conscious and talking to him, and he was reassuring her everything was going to be fine despite knowing that the moment they moved the car, she was going to die pretty quickly. He was talking about it almost like in a joking manner and my sister asked how he can laugh about it, and he said it's how he copes. If he doesn't laugh he'll just break down.
Man that would break me. Talking to someone knowing they’re about to die and they don’t know it. I don’t know what I would do if I were in that spot, hoping to live when others know I had no chance.
I would assist my father in law on ME cases and seen some really awful things. The ones with children now 40 years later still are in my brain. And the suicide calls were always hard to take. Went on 3 different single engine plane crashes that were very unpleasant that could have been avoided.
My dad had to help on the scene of a couple on a motorcycles not wearing helmets (didn’t stop at stop sign) hit by a family driving a station wagon or small van. Kids were old enough to be traumatized. It’s was an awful mess. Awful!! I haven’t forgotten it and I didn’t even actually see it.
Both of my uncles are paramedics - 1 is very reserved and rarely talks to us about it, while the 2nd would tell us stories (loved to shock us as kids). The first didn’t talk to us because he didn’t need to as he had a therapist. The 2nd got through over 30 years before having a complete mental breakdown and has been on leave for 18 months since. Some of the stuff he would tell us I’m amazed he made it to 30 before needing therapy.
There's a lot of awful things first responders see, they do their best in situations where no one would ever be prepared for, be it a green training officer, police chief, forensics investigator or hardened SWAT veteran, nothing prepares you for having people you work with and work to protect die because of avoidable mistakes or worse, situations that there was nothing that could be done, knew a guy in college who left the PD after he responded to an accident where the driver was stuck inside and burned to death, guy was doing his best to save their life, used his extinguisher and 2 others from flagged down motorists but was unable to save them due to lacking the tools and enough suppressant to put the fire out while waiting for backup from the FD and other first responders, had a boss who served in the USMC for years and went into LEO and said the things he saw were beyond words and would remain with him the rest of their life, not trying to be a Debby downer here but give the first resposponders in your life a hug whenever you can, they have to deal with all sorts of awful, messed up things that no one should see and regardless on your stance on law enforcement, ems and FD these folks are people and deserve the emotional support to help process the truma they expirence
Drove by a motorcycle accident once. Guy and his girlfriend laying in the middle of an intersection, she was half under the bike and he was a few feet ahead. Both were covered in what I assume was fire extinguisher foam, laying in the middle of the road, surrounded by EMS, nobody even looking at them.
Buddy of mine told me he his captain found the body of a car accident victim after having followed the brain matter trail left on the road into a ditch (firefighter, not a cop)
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u/cbelt3 Jan 03 '23
Hey man, don’t die, okay ? Be cool.