The following comment was posted on one of my entries by "anonymous." I thought it was so good, I am reposting it here so those who don't normally read the comments can read it. So to "anonymous" I hope you don't mind my reposting this here. Thank you for your moving account.
Anonymous said...
I struggle with the issues of spirituality. I went on a messy car accident call the other day where some people had been tossed from car that rolled off the road. They were teenagers. One of them was dead right there. Four of the others were transported, and one died a few days later in the hospital.
All five of the occupants, I found out in the newspaper, were close friends. Two were twin brothers. One twin died, the other was the one who died in the hospital. In the space of a week, a mother lost two of her sons.
I live two blocks from where one of the dead twins lived. The church down the street held a prayer vigil for the twin that'd been in the hospital.
Normally, it's pretty anonymous. But this wasn't anonymous enough. I didn't know these people personally, and when I saw the obits, I didn't recognize their picture. In the obit pic, they didn't have blood on their face and vomit in their hair. They didn't have a ET tube in them, or a BVM by their face. They didn't have blood coming out of their ears, or a bone sticking out of their leg. Everyone else remembers them as they lived. I remember them as they died.
I heard people talk about how it was part of God's plan, and how there will be something good that comes out of it.
But to me, it's just shitty luck. They might have been drinking, but no matter what the state police say, it's possible the alcohol wasn't THE factor. Maybe it was changing the radio station at the wrong time, or a tire blowout, or a cell phone call at exactly the wrong time.
I don't know what kind of Plan requires one brother to die in a ditch, and the other to aspirate his stomach contents and die on the vent in the ICU.
I don't see the Good that comes out of something like that. It's shitty luck, that's all. No plan, nothing fantastic. Just another grieving family. All the prayer in the world from all the caring people and pastors didn't help those boys live. They died, but their memories live on in those who didn't. That's the afterlife as I see it.
That call really bothered me for a while. It was one of the first really bad trauma calls I've seen. I'm new, that's why. And that's why it really bothered me.
For two or three days, I kept seeing the mangled bodies around the car. I kept seeing the bloody ambulance floor.
I never once had that whole 'If only I'd..." thing. I know that what we did was flawless. Nothing could save that person. The best I could do was to do my job well enought to, maybe, make it possible for them to die with their family nearby in the hospital.
I'll never forget that call, ever. That moment changed the lives of a lot of people forever. It changed mine too. I learned more about myself and this work and this world in that instant than I ever remember learning before.
In a way, that boy that died lives on in me. He's in my memories. I wish I could say it didn't bother me, but hey, I'm human.
I mention this because your post made me think about the amazing privledge people in EMS have in seeing such unadulerated emotions -- love and hate and terror and joy and fear and relief in such pure forms.
There's precious few times when one can see this in the world, these pure expressions of the human experience.
It is, I think, the best part of EMS -- the honor of being present at so many life changing events. It's not often spoken of in EMS: the honor of bearing witness and filling in the collective memory.
10:41 PM
