The Life of EMS (Emergency Medical Service)

Today, I was sent this by a friend, Sarah Mossey, who was sent it from another fellow EMT/firefighter.

Please read it in a quiet place, and absorb it.

The life of EMS…….

I wish you could comprehend a wife's horror at 3:00 in the morning as I check her husband of forty years for a pulse and there isn’t one... I start CPR anyway, hoping to bring him back knowing intuitively it is too late but wanting his wife and family to know everything possible was done to try to save his life.

I wish you could understand how it feels to go to work in the morning after having spent most of the night up for calls. I wish you could know my thoughts, as I help extricate a lifeless teenage girl from the remains of her automobile. "What if this was my sister or a friend?" "What are her parents' reactions going to be when they open the door to find a police officer with hat in hand?"

I wish you could feel the hurt as people verbally and sometimes physically abuse us or belittle what we do, or as they express their attitudes of "It will never happen to me.” I wish you could realize the physical, emotional and mental drain of missed meals, lost sleep and forgone social activities in addition to all the tragedy my eyes have seen.

I wish you could know the sister/brotherhood and self-satisfaction of having saved a life, or being able to be there in time of crisis. I wish you could understand what it feels like to have a little boy tugging at your arm asking, "Is Mommy okay?" not even being able to look in his eyes without tears from your own and not wanting or knowing how to tell him that his mama is dead.

To have a patient die knowing you did everything possible to save their life, but it just wasn’t enough, it was out of our hands, is the worst feeling that I hope or wish no one would ever has to feel! Especially if it’s a child or young adult. Someone who had their whole life ahead of them!

Going on a suicide of a young adult, who did it in front of their family or loved ones and they are too far gone to even start life saving measures. Seeing the look on their families' faces, hearing their screams of ultimate sadness , as we cut them down from where they hung themselves or cover them up while they lay in a puddle of blood.

Seeing an accident where there are fatalities that could of been prevented, had seatbelts or car seats were used. Or where someone was negligent by texting or drinking or had done drugs.

Finding a patient who died by themselves, with no family or friends to miss them.

Feeling the gratitude from a patient or family member after saving a life! You cannot describe it, you would have to feel it for yourself to understand!

You’ll never understand the feeling of defeat, to have a child die in front of you, after doing everything humanly possible to try to save their life.

Unless you do or have worked in this field , you will never truly understand or appreciate who I am, who we are, or what our job really means to us and also the rewards we get by saving lives! We do this job for the lives we can and have saved, not for the ones that you couldn’t.

We definitely don’t do this job for the money, as you all probably know, McDonald’s pays close to the same.