We carry our shame.

We carry shame from our failures.
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Today at 2:30pm
This title could apply to all of us in all walks of life...we all carry a shame for our failures. Today I am writing about a shame over failures in this career.Over the last few months, many of us in EMS(Emergency Medical Services) have found ourselves struggling with Compassion Fatigue. Yes...it actually has a name. I don't know when the professionals decided to name it that but I do know it has been around forever. If you do this job long enough, you experience it in some way or another. We fight anger, cynicism, callousness, frustration and tears from call to call. You know when someone is battling it because you start to hear that person say" I don't know what is wrong with me...I am just sooo tired of all the crap and stupid calls we go on. I don't even care about people anymore." Yep...compassion fatigue. And why wouldn't we. We battle the public to gain respect. (that is a whole blog in itself) We battle life and death. We struggle with the elements, and fatigue and extreme situations. We are confronted by chaos on every call. We are expected to be healer, problem solver, miracle worker, therapist, victim worshipper, and above all...be kind, compassionate and professional...even when the patient or their family is rude, drunk, out of control, blame layers or crude. Add to the the stress of driving one of these big trucks. And driving them safely and quickly, avoiding the person who just swerved in front of you while chatting on their cell phone totally oblivious to the ton truck careening towards them...lights and sirens and horn on....praying to not hit them or the oncoming traffic...and then when we pass them and honk at them...they give us the finger.( I am not lying! I am serious as a heart attack!)
Now add that the call is a :
5 month old cardiac arrest. Basically a dead 5 month old.
47 year old woman having a massive heart attack in the back of your ambulance and you have to shock her 14 times before you reach a hospital.(and you do this alone in the back of the ambulance.)
A 50 year old man who had a recent diagnosis of cancer and dies in front of his family. Kids, parents, and spouse all standing there while you tried to bring them back to life.
A 4 month old that is in the back of a rural ambulance...and the crew is in tears because the baby isn't breathing and has no pulse and you land in the helicopter and are expected to save the day.
A 10 year old who is accidentally shot point blank range in the stomach by an older brother who suffers from some developmental delays and doesn't understand that he has killed his little brother and is standing outside the home excited to see us show up...because we save lives. He died.
The 17 year old girl who face is shattered by the windshield and she is screaming that no one will ever love her because she is going to be ugly now. And now the father shows up on scene because the other kids called the parents. Now you have a freaked out dad demanding answers as to why the accident happened and is interfering with all your attempts to extricate his daughter's face from the windshield.
The rural two car roll over accident with all the kids ejected and the one dead is the child of one of the first responders on the scene and you don't take the girl in the helicopter because you don't fly the dead. (You fly the ones you can save. ) And you are the one who has to tell him.
The 40 year old man driving to work and a truck coming towards him and loses control in the slush on the roads and slams into him head on. The man driving the truck has no injuries. The 40 year old man is crushed, and barely alive...only to die in your ambulance 5 minutes from the hospital.
Is that enough examples?
Compassion fatigue....we battle it. But what we battle and fear even more than the compassion fatigue is the shame of failing to save the lives. Now we all know that everyone dies. We get that. But we are expected to save lives. And we take our jobs seriously. If you don't, you wash out or get fired. We are all a little arrogant this way...and we are all driven to succeed and do our job to the best of our ability. That is why those of us who do this job do this job so well.So what is the shame. We don't save everyone. Honestly I haven't saved even half of the patients I have had in my 11 year career. Not because I am bad at my job...but do to things beyond my control...like death. Yet, when the family is hysterical...we try to save the patient who is dead and will stay dead. We know it...and yet we try. The family sees us try and they have hope. So when we fail, they don't understand. We are the ambulance...we save lives....what do you mean they are dead?????
Now add to that shame equation...when it is one of our own who we can save.Last night I was talking to a friend of mine about a woman she had just met while running. The woman shared with my friend who she was and that she was a widow...her husband (a police officer) had been killed working. I know the woman. I knew her husband. As my friend and I were talking, I mentioned that most of us here on the Ambulance know who she is...we knew her husband...but we all keep our distance out of respect. I went on to explain that we feel that our presence is an ugly reminder that we failed to save her husband. I went on the explain that we carry a burden of shame in that failure to save one of our own...and we stay at a distance so as not to bring more hurt to the woman. Oh I know that doesn't make a lot of sense to many of you...but then you don't do this job so it wouldn't. The explanation I gave my friend really stuck with me. I told her of the time I had been talking to the woman and all I could do was cry and she comforted me...that isn't how it was suppose to work...she is the one who lost a husband.
The public views us as life savers....heros....coming to save the day....and we don't save many.

Then we go home to our loved ones and try to live life, stay connected and have hope.
Today I received a quote from a good friend of mine. She was watching Grey's Anatomy and heard this quote...and sent it to me....those of us who do this job....completely get this and understand this quote...because this job breaks even the toughest person...we never ever forget the young ones we didn't save....not ever!
Here is the quote...
"Practicing medicine doesn’t lend itself well to the making of friends. Maybe because - life and mortality are in our faces all the time. Maybe because - in staring down death every day, we’re forced to know that life - every minute - is borrowed time. And each person we let ourselves care about is just one more loss, somewhere down the line. For this reason, I know some doctors who just don’t bother making friends at all. But the rest of us, we make it our job to move that line. To push each loss as far away as we can."
Now take the word Doctor and replace it with Paramedic and EMT....
we live in our community....sing in your churches, buy our groceries in your stores, walk our dogs in your neighborhoods, attend kids concerts at the schools , and we smile and we wave back....but we are utterly broken. And you don't know it.
Life is not fair, not ever and we know that....because we see it not only in our own lives daily doing normal living things....we see it on the freeway, in the back bedroom, in the hospital and in the back of an ambulance.
People try to tell us that we are to just get over these failures...to just let go....give ourselves a break....okay...yep...we do until the next 5 month old baby not breathing...then every one of the calls that haunts us comes rushing back. We are told to seek healing in God or in therapy ect....and most of us do. I just keep asking God how many more deaths does He want to me to experience. We may look detached on some of these calls....it is called professional education....but we cry in our cars, in our drive ways, we rage in the garage, we attack the gym, we eat away the pain and some drink to stop the memories.
Why am I sharing this today....because we are a group of people whom God blessed with a gift...and most of us take seriously that gift to be the best EMT/Paramedic.... we want to bring honor to our God for this gift.... but with this gift...comes a death...a day to day death of ourselves.
God bless all who have, do and will do this job.....because you will need all the blessings God can give you to survive.
Lorrie