My first GSW to head self inflicted small room

Toned out to GSW to head, self inflicted. LEO got scene secure, went in, It was bad, You could taste it in the air. Still had pulse and was moaning. Trauma dressing and wrap what I could.. Then boarded to transport to helo for air evac. This one kinda bother me with the guy still alive and moaning,etc. My first cranial evacuation and still alive. Picking up the pieces was nasty. Trying to get it out of my head and crash. Anyone else have the first lately? The smell of gun powder and matter was different, kinda made queasy, got into my sinus, kept the smell until showering.

Guess it will go away soon

Do you have access to a critical incident stress debrief team? If so, they are very much worth it. I know the smell and the taste quite vividly.

It does get, for lack of a more appropriate word, better, Amigo.

Thanks for what you do.

I seen one where gray matter was exposed. Brains smell different than anything else. Not saying you get used to it, but you will sort of.

And obviously, people don't always fall down dead when shot, even a head shot.

Sorry to hear that you had to deal with some nasty stuff, welcome to the PTSD club. That shit will come back and haunt some random Tuesday,a dozen years from now with a near photographic recollection complete with the smell and that metallic taste in the back of your throat. When you able to do so, sit down over coffee with a more experienced co-worker that you can trust and discuss what was going through your head before, during and especially afterwards if its bothering you. Avoid any attempts for serious discussion in an informal group setting (locker room, breakfast, midnight choir practice etc) bullshit bravado always prevails. Hopefully you'll learn some positive coping skills to deal with this and worse stuff that will inevitably pop up during your career. The horrors we see on the job is more than half the reason why ER/public safety/military personnel burn out so quickly. Be safe, YCB

you just have to figure out how to let it go. this is a tough job some days and knowing how to deal with the bad days is the only way to keep doing it. talk to someone if you need to but realize that this person did it to themselves and there was nothing you could do to change that. been doing this since 98 and can still see every code i have worked and every code gray/pri 4 pt i have ever had. shit haunts you for a LOOOOOOONG time and people outside of fire/EMS just dont understand it. you have to take care of your health, both physical as well as mental, see if your dept has one of the 800 numbers you can call. we have one that we can use and there are no names involved so they cant call and say "holy shit jim bob is off his rocker and needs to be committed." take care brother and just try to relax and let it go as best you can.

+1

Got some sleep and feel better. Took a while to get the smell out of my head. Patient never made it to helo. Don't know why this one bothered me have worked for worse trauma. Guess the smell and the somewhat alive was it.

Where in TN are you? If you are close and do not have access to a debrief team, holler at me. Our chaplains are all certified to do this and I have used them on several occasions. IM me. I am in Mid TN and will set it up for you. Doesn't matter if you are EMS/Fire whatever. These guys are volunteer and they care about us. I will help you out anyway I can. It gets better man, holler if I can help.

Last fall we had a guy go out to a nice remote seaside location @ 0-dark-30 and put a browning 12 gauge in his mouth. Some poor fisherman found him the next morning after walking 2 clicks out to his favorite spot (in waders). Cops called us out there to pronounce him, even though everything from the orbits up was all over the rocks. I was a little supprised that the seagulls hadn't gotten much/any of the grey matter. I might have been a little disturbing if he was still moaning, but we chalked this up as an injury incompatable with life. From there it was off to the store to get lunch...

Sorry you had to experience that bud. That is a tough call to go on, the worse part of the call is the taste and the smell. Just know that their was absolutely nothing you could have done to save this person. He was moaning but that was probably just agonal. I have worked in detroit for going on 5 years now. The worse call I ever had was a 3 year old shot in the head still making cognitive movement, he was reaching for his mom and trying to pull our tube. I still have nightmares occasionally. It is up to you to determine if you want to talk to somebody. Make it somebody you trust, whether it is a boss or your partner or your priest. If need be IM me and we can talk. Just don't let it gather up inside you and eat you alive. Oh and don't turn to the bottle, I lost a very close friend to that.

You'll remember it until the day you die. Use the experience for good, and it won't be a bad thing to have rolling around in your head.

You will adjust and learn ways to cope. A good trick is to have a tube of toothpaste with you, when responding or entering somewhere that you know will be bad, Put a small dab of toothpaste in your nose, it will block the smell and hold the gag reflex back. Contact your local chaplain and talk it out, holding it in will do damage. IM me if you need anything. Best of luck and stay safe

Vicks vapor rub on the inside of an N95 mask works pretty good, too. Our trucks have had the masks ever since the swine flu scare.

Unfortunately, the man is right. There are going to be some that stick with you forever. We all have 'em.

Talk it out if you need to, decompress however you prefer (not in a bottle, tho) ... it's fine to compartmentalize and detach while you're there dealing with it; but then you have to Deal With It.

Mine is a teenage girl who was in a boating accident late at night. Her friend died (another boat went over top of theirs), she nearly lost her arm to the prop. Hearing her constant screams across the lake, docks, parking area, LZ ... ugh. It was the first call I went on, it's been ten years, and I still have weird flashbacks to it. CPR under floodlights on the dock, gravel from the LZ pelting me in the face, etc.

There's others, but I won't write you a wall-o-text of war stories. IM me if you need to vent, I'll listen.

wait till you get the ones where the brain comes out nearly whole. I have had three in close to two decades where the brain came out of the skull in two nearly intack hemispheres. All three were shotgun in the mouth'/under the chin.

Medical examiner advised that the way the blast goes the high overpressure causes the back/top of the skull to blow out not from the shot but from the pressure causing the brain to just kind of fall out, before the shot load goes through it.

Makes clean up easier. Sorry for the morbidy, I have prob seen/investigated 50 self inflicted GSW''s to the head in the last 20 years.

J-

when they are dead it doesn't bother me, its when they are still alive. Although at this point i feel pretty calous, im sure someday it will come back and affect me.

I've been to a couple, I would recommend not eating anything with tomato sauce for a while.

Just wait till your first one with a shotgun...

C.I.D. rep called and asked if I was okay or if I needed to talk. I said, no and I was just hungry for lasagna. Needless to say she was not really amused as I thought she would be. My lesson here is no woman is worth killing yourself. And if you want to kill yourself, use a shotgun.

I retired after 20yrs as a firefighter/EMT, I seen quite a few GSW's and other graphic incidents and I remember everyone one of them as if it happened yesterday. They will never go away, the best thing you can do for yourself is to attend a stress debriefing and talk about it. It does not help to keep things in.

Listen to the man, I don't mind setting it up for you. As my username implies, I have a few of thest rattling around in my head after 19 years on the job. If you are too far to drive to I can set it up on the phone. Where are you? Send me a private message to keep it off the net if u like.

from the .mil side I'll agree.....

I still remember call's from late 70's early 80". Even to this day if something someone says, driving and passing the dead smell on the road, or seeing something on tv triggers those calls and it could be a couple of day's before I can eat something again. One of those calls I speak of I had to get new clothing, new leather and shoes's and even had to replace the wood grips on my S&W mod 27.

My first code/DOA was years ago. On the fire / rescue side we get a few bad ones. I can still see the guys face as I am doing compressions on his mangled body. I see now others know the brain smell now. Something else to put back for later.

Dude, seriously - No.

Don't put this back, don't save it for later, do not hold onto it. Process it, and then let it go. It's when you hold it back that you get into problems later in life. Avoiding the memory or the feelings associated with it is what causes (in broadest possible terms) PTSD. Don't do that to yourself, it will hurt way less to get it over with now and go talk to someone. It does not mean you are weak if you have to talk, it just means you are normal.

Go talk to somebody. Anybody. Priest. Department Padre. Debrief team. EAP agent. Civvie counselor. Shrink. Anybody except Jack Daniels will give you what you need. Hell, PM me and I'll give you my home phone number. Just don't stew on this one.

Keep safe.

I had to deal with some really nasty stuff too...trust me, it is worth it to get some help. I was quite stunned how powerful smells can be over the long term. If you can get some help to deal with the sensory input (smells especially) in addition to the psychological stuff, it is really worth it.

Having dealt with a couple different bad scenes in my life, I have seen a couple of shooting victims, a hanging, and some bad car wrecks.

None of these compare to incidents with children. Be thankful your encounter today did not involve a kid directly.
Rest, put on some soft music with no lyrics- sometimes words trip the wrong images.

I guess I'm lucky in one way, I can never remember faces of my patients, alive or dead. But as others have said, talk to someone, do it soon. The memories will always be with you, some may haunt you, may wake you up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night 10 years later, but go talk to someone and get the feelings out in the open. It doesn't make you less of a man, less of a medic (or FF or LEO, whatever you may be), it makes you human.

I've always carried a small container of Vicks, a small dab in the nose will do you good.

You know you're acclimated when you leave one of these and go straight home for break to eat the wife's spaghetti dinner. I've always been blessed with a strong stomach and the ability to distance myself.

I still have "flashbacks" from my first burnt body(young new EMT)......makes eating barbecue hard sometimes. Like many have said....it will always be there.

Ditto- I've never lost sleep over them. You're there to provide assistance for someone else's problem not work miracles or render any judgement. You're not God (or a god if you prefer); you do the best you can and the rest is out of your hands. Always remember that life isn't fair- it just is.

One piece of advice that's served me well on several occasions on self inflicted GSWs- always look up before you walk into the room. Lots of folks seem to sit on the foot of the bed and do it and the ceiling fan is usually above. Turn the fan off and get a rain coat if you need it. As for the smell, you'll soon learn that you can identify lots of problems before you even see the pt.

You should get a bit angry at the poor selfish bastard. It helps.

I guess I am lucky... I can work without any attachment for the most part (except kids.) You will find your coping mechanisms in time... just stay away from the sauce and other chemicals.

Memories stay with you, but bodies never bothered me though. The smell of a ripe one turns the stomach, but beyond the smell, none of them ever screwed with my head.

The one that haunts me was a natural causes female in her mid twenties, still during FTO. It was completely unexpected and her father discovered her dead in her apartment. The father was in a state that I can't even describe, and having just become a father myself then, it scared the crap out of me. I still remember the dead girl's name and get shivers down my spine every time I drive by that building, years later.

None of them after that one affected me hardly at all, regardless of how nasty or how sad the family was.

Talk to someone. Seriously, talk to someone. It helps.

I have 3 calls that still bother me, both EMS and Police.

The first was an elderly lady that I knew pretty well that stepped out in front of a freight train. I think every bone in her body was broken, in addition to NUMEROUS other injuries, big and small.....and missing the top of her head from the orbits up. You just haven't lived until you've been crawling under about 1/4 mile of train, picking up pieces of brain matter and skull. Especially when you are, literally, under a freight car and the air brakes blow off excess pressure. I never knew I could move so damned fast as when I thought the train was pulling away with me under it, when cleaning up pieces of a person who had BEEN under it. At least I didn't have to go clean up the splash at the engine.

The second was an older guy that, again, I knew pretty well. He was all drunked up, driving his convertible Mustang at an estimated 90 MPH (estimates done by the Ohio Highway Patrol after the fact) when, for whatever reason, he decided that he needed to put the convertible top down. He got one latch undone then, when he undid the second latch, the top popped and he got sucked out of the car. He landed, forehead first, some distance behind the car EXACTLY on the double yellow lines in the middle of the road. He had a literal river of blood coming from the hole in his forehead running from the double yellow lines to the side of the road. First responders started treating him because, upon their arrival, he still had a pulse. Every time we bagged him, the hole in his head sprayed blood, CSF and brain matter. It was so bad that, when we got back to the Station, we opened the side door and blood ran out of the step well onto the ground. By the time we had gotten him to the hospital, his blood volume was GONE and he was running clear IV fluids with maybe just a TINGE of red. We had to, literally, park the squad pointing nose-up on the apron and hose out the back. The really sad part is that his face was so mangled that I didn't even know who he was till we got to the hospital and they checked his driver's license after pronouncing him. I think that was what bothered me the most, the fact that I knew him well but didn't even recognize him at all.

The third, and the worst, was me responding to a non-breather call for a baby. The two above were when I was an EMT, this one I was working for the PD. I started CPR on the 14 month old and continued until EMS got there. When the kid got to the ER and they did some CT scans, they found out that he had a massive subdural hematoma......from being shaken by mom's boyfriend. I then had to assist the Prosecutor's Office with the homicide case, including interviewing all the family, including the douchebag boyfriend, while remaining completely professional, despite the fact that I wanted to squeeze his head till his eyes popped. I got to be there with the Prosecutor's Investigator when the kid was finally pronounced and they pulled the plug. Luckily, we did a good job and the douchebag boyfriend plead to Manslaughter rather than go to trial for Murder. He should be dead, not serving a measly 7 years, but it's better than nothing. The worst part was that, at the time, I had a daughter about the kid's age. Every time I looked at her for a week or so, I saw the kid. Hard, hard, hard.

I didn't talk to anyone after any of these and probably should have, especially the last one. It's been long enough that I have dealt with them and accepted them, but it was hard for a while, again especially the last one. If you are having a hard time, for God's sake, TALK TO SOMEONE! If your Dept doesn't have a Chaplain or an incident debriefing program, then find a Priest, Rabbi, Imam, whatever your persuasion. Even if you don't go to Church or practice a religion, there are good people who will talk to you and help you through it. If you don't want to speak to Clergy, talk to a shrink or someone, just TALK TO SOMEONE! Been there, done that, pray to God I never have to again! And, if I do, I'll damned sure talk to someone about it, rather than trying to "man up and deal with it!"

Bub75

x4

I am getting my victimology cert currently, this is very important.

I can't speak for the toothpaste trick (I may have to steal that one), but you will either learn to adjust or you won't. It takes time. Some people take longer to "steel" themselves longer than others. Do not consider this a sign of weakness. You are human, after all.

My first self-inflicted GSW to the head was two weeks ago. Guy put his 1911 under his chin and pulled the trigger because his girlfriend broke up with him. The .45 ACP went through his chin and exited out his temple. He did not make it and he made a complete MESS out of the bathroom since the door had been closed. That scene did not get me. Neither did the one I went to last year in which a diabetic woman drank herself to death and had been down for nearly a week in which her poor starving dog had began to eat her face! When I was brand new, in field training, a guy had attempted suicide by slashing his own throat with a kitchen knife and laid down in bed to die. This genius must have a guardian angel, because he woke up in the morning ALIVE and running around like a PEZ Dispenser trying to get help from his neighbors. The smell produced by clumps of dried clotted blood from that make me queasy. Since that incident, I've gotten more numb to critical/death incidents.

My point is...you are going to likely continue seeing and smelling horrible things and you will either get used to it or you won't. It doesn't make you any less of a person. Good luck and stay safe.

I had my first GSW on January 1st of this year, about a month and a half into my new career. He called 911, waited for us to get there, and did himself.

It was eerie. We were in a park, it was chilly out and a little foggy. We walk up carefully after hearing the gun shot to find this dude on the ground with smoke coming out of his mouth, and the back of his head. 2x3 inch hole in the back of his head. When he shot, he sprayed a ton of blood from his mouth on the way down, and then leaked a nice puddle from the wound once he was laying there. Between all of the blood and grey matter there was a very distinct smell.

It was definitely weird to see. I don't know if it's all the jacked up stuff I've seen online or what, but it didn't really bother me. I left the scene and went with my FTO to Dunkin Donuts (I know) and had breakfast and coffee with him and one of our crisis guys. They were both real good at making sure I was OK, which I appreciated, but didn't need.

I can tell you that I can still see that whole scene though. The walk-up, hearing the shot, the dispatcher not knowing what she had just heard on the phone and then her describing the guy still breathing after the shot (just gassing out). It was a couple months ago, and I've been pretty busy here, but that one is sticking.

When I was an active Medic they way I dealt with it was just think to myself.....It's just parts.

If you need to talk to someone, feel free to IM

You have to deal with it now or it will eat away at you and you will be permanently damaged by it. I know lots of guys that are alcoholics now that wouldn't talk about these things and tried to "suck it up". Talk to your supervisor....they will be able to arrange a CISD meeting. I have always heard you have 48-72hrs to talk about these things before they become permanent so do it now while you can.

If no CISD is avaiable talk to co-workers that are serious about wanting to listen. Did you have a partner there....I assume you did? If so talk to him/her and see what each-other is going through. It will help.

bad calls stick with you. you eventually get to where you just block them out, at least thats what happened with me. 2 hours after a bad call i could barely tell you the details.

i have a few that have stuck with me. what you have to remember is that you didn't cause the trauma, you were there to help them. do it to the best of your ability and let your conscience be clear. 25+ years working fire, ems, mil and now le reserves i have seen my share of shit no one should have to deal with.

Figures fire guys get all the help, cant have something bothering you while in the Laz-boy......Chaplain? whats that?



Take advantage of that help, I tried to and found it not effective but its worth a shot. Sorry you had to see it....

Or 30.06

Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

That's one I haven't seen yet. I've ran quite a few DOA's and traumas from vehicle accidents though. The worst I've seen so far was a guy with burns over 90% of his body. He was trapped in a house fire and was rescued by the first engine. In cardiac arrest but EMS got him back, transported to the hospital where he died a few hours later.

Ooooo I bet that would be a good one!

When someone takes their own life OP, you kind of have to look at the human body for what it is: a piece of meat not functioning properly anymore.

Takes a lot of the humanity out of it. You get used to it. Just remember to look up so you don't get dripped on...

Kids on the other hand...

Gun shot to the chest New Years Eve/Day... No problem.

One where we went into this house and the elderly wife was alive on the couch but had become PART of the couch was a tough one.
She was still alive and covered in her feces and was literally part of the couch as the elderly husband left her there over months.

She coded and I did compressions on her and could hear and feel her ribs breaking under my pushes.

Pealing her apart from the couch was terrible and ripped her skin apart.

That's the day I learned from the paramedics that Vic's under your nose was your friend.
I can still see it all BUT it does not bother me unless I smell something similar THEN it all comes flooding back.

RW3

Listen to the Canadian. I had some hard times a while back dealing with my past (similar to yours), and had more than one LEO here offer to talk to me on the phone if I needed to vent. If you don't think it will affect your life, you are in a serious need for a career change, and NOW. Talk about it. Holding it in has nearly cost me everything I've ever loved, and I'm not planning on doing that again any time soon.

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