Last year I went to a possible suicide at the middle school. My best friend got there first & cut her down off the coat hook on the bathroom stall door that she had tied her shoe lace to. He had started CPR, when I got in the room. I took over for him. I can never get the look of her unseeing eyes looking up at the ceiling while I'm doing chest compressions, and the female officer with us whispering "come on sweetie" to her.
The psych we went to see told us that we all should be seeing professionals just because of how long we've been doing the job. 3 years, 5 months to go, and I will not miss it. My brothers & sisters, yes, but not this job. And I'll never get Emily's face out of my head for as long as I live.

NOT A COP.

I do believe this is true.

FWIW in my late 20s and early 30s I lived in Kodiak Island and between fishing, flying, drug wars, murder, suicide, just plain bad luck and general life I attended over 50 funerals and memorial services and about 3 or 4 weddings.

I wrote a post the other night and deleted it for some reason.

Oddly enough, the recurring dream I used to have was a replay that I finally went away a couple years back.

A friend blew his brains out with a shotgun. The place was considered a crime scene and I heard his father was coming to town to take his son away. I cleaned the mess up and damned near got jailed for it. I simply said it was the only decent thing to do because no father should see his son's brains splattered.

Thank God for a compassionate cop. He made it go away.

It is the craziest thing, but when the cop that tried to have me jailed for destroying a crime scene retired the dreams stopped. I got word he retired on GD and the dreams stopped.

I think the dreams were not so much the deaths I  saw routinely as a younger man but the callousness of others toward it.

Shortly after the suicide, cleanup and dealing with that insensitive bastard I woke up a basket case and started blubbering. I was a real mess and it was an old harbor cop that found me and broke every bit of police work to help me.

He gave me a shoulder to cry on and went on board my boat (which I was living on at the time) and found my smokes and bottle and gave me a couple of pulls off the cognac jug and lit me a smoke. He neither drank nor smoked but simply  instinctively knew what to do. It settled me down enough to get back on my feet.

The next day we both met outside the memorial service and both of us chickened out and just coulden't go in and sat there and held our own service for him. We laughed and cried.

Bottom line is this. Don't let it build up. Mourn each passing as it comes. Every single one.

Some will be a minute or two, some will take more time but DON'T LET IT BUILD UP!

If it gets to you then GET HELP.

I was a medic for awhile.  I still remember every patient of serious concern.  It builds up, and the stress accumulates.  Seeing someone die is surreal .  There was one scene I worked that will always haunt me. A guy was stabbed and at least 100 people were running around the scene as we pulled up.  I jumped out of the med unit and had to corral the guys on the engine.  They wanted to run into the action and help. We had no LE on scene, so the scene was not safe.  Radio reported possible gunfire, further bothering me.  I didn't hear gunshots, but I was concerned at this point.  

Eventually, someone showed up in a CV with strobes, and I thought it was LE.  It was the local undertaker/volunteer FF.  he starts screaming "trautic arrest" and I realize we still have no LE on scene.  CITY PD comes up, so we move in.  I see this guy on the ground, obviously stabbed.  He was gasping as I got ready to tube him.  I could not tube him, and I finally let another medic give it a shot, as he was saying "let me give it shot."  So I gave him the laryngoscope. The other medic tubed the PT almost instantly.


So we prepare to go enroute.  Our supervisor called on radio and told me to get going.  I was trying to get a large bore IV going before leaving the scene.  So I tell my partner to get moving now.  At this point we are bagging because the PT quit breathing.  I hit on the AC and started ringers lactate and Saline.  So two guys off from engines are with me enroute.  CPR, bagging, wound dressing; there was plenty of tissue hanging out right below the sternum.  We arrived at the ED within 10 minutes.  Life flight flew him to Grady, and the PT died as they were opening him up.  His portal vein was severed.  I probably delayed transport because I had too tube him.  My pride got in the way.  Did that window of time kill him?  I screwed up up the golden hour by a few minutes, missing the tube, then delaying transport for fluids.  Maybe he would be alive today if a different medic was running the scene.


I live with this every day.  

Stop beating yourself up.  The ONLY person responsible for that guys death is the person who stabbed him.  You did what you could, an extra two minutes on scene is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.  How long did he wait after he got stabbed for someone to call 911?  How long did he wait for the PD to arrive and secure the scene?  How long did he wait in the initial ER for a helicopter to arrive?  Despite all of our best efforts, sometimes our patients are not going to make it, and it doesn't matter how good of a medic you are.

After a quick google search, from the National Institute of Health:  "Traumatic injuries to the portal vein (PV) and superior mesenteric vein (SMV) are rare and carry a high mortality rate:" and "Overall mortality rate was 72%"  The deck was stacked against that guy long before you ever arrived.

OP, I had two dead infants last week. One was a bad abuse. Been a coroner for nine years and for some reason this one won't leave my head.

Having been "on the job" for 23 years, I can tell you that the older I get the more these types of calls bother me.  When I was young and invincible, these calls really didn't bother me.  Now, I think it does because the longer you do the job, the more you realize that you are not invincible, and that one day that guy will be you.  Can't dwell on it, live your life and when it comes for us, hopefully we have made it count.

It is the smells that trigger stuff in me.  For some odd reason olfactory memory in me is extremely powerful.  My partner and I were at a crank freaks house looking for him, when his mother came out.  His mother was eastern European, just like my Grandmother....the house, and the old woman smelled EXACTLY like my Grandma and her house.  I was as stunned as if someone had hit me in the back of the head with a brick.  My partner saw my reaction, and asked if I was OK.   Grandma had died nearly 30 years or so earlier, but it was as if I was standing in front of her.  After we left, he asked me what happened to me, and I had a really hard time telling him about it without breaking down bawling like a little kid.  Rotting flesh is another smell that triggers memories.

I think it is odd how different stuff triggers our memories.  But talking about the stuff does help.  I still have one thing from work that I have never told anyone about.  Maybe that is where the PTSD comes from.  But it is just something I have chosen to live with.

I really believe that I have PTSD from everything I saw in the 8 years I worked in EMS.  Funny how I was sober for several years, even during the job, but soon after I left the field, I started back drinking and I have a hard time stopping.  I wonder if there are support groups for guys like us?



 

Just remember, someone has to deal with these types of calls.  Someone has to.  Sometimes, that someone is you.

I gave up trying to save the world a long time ago.  But, I do save a small part of it.  And, sometimes saving the part of it that I do is still shitty.

I am an FTO in my department and I always remind my trainees that what they say to the family at that point can be critically important to them and will probably never be forgotten....good or bad.