No! You're Doing it Wrong!

Originally posted 7/28/2009, removed during a spate of paranoid content cleanup 5/26/2010, and now re-posted after some review and editing.

I apologize if this post offends, but it is how I feel right now. I get a little punchy after these calls.

First off, if you're going to end your life, you should realize how few will seriously have sympathy for you. They're not going to cry over your grave with a special leaning towards how wronged you were and how they wished they had done whatever differently. Or, if they do, you won't be around to know about it, so what's the point? This helps you how?

The mess you create, the pain, the baggage of closing out your story..... it is very selfish to unceremoniously dump your problems and obligations onto others by leaving them behind like that. I understand you have issues. I have had issues too. Issues I wouldn't seriously mind escaping from. But taking the final exit on purpose is seriously inconsiderate, to put it lightly, and that is the main way you will be remembered. Just so you know.

If you choose to pop a cap into your brain, it will make things much easier on your local emergency services if you do a little anatomical research first. Find out which part of the brain is important, and aim there. Aiming elsewhere usually will still do the trick, but on a much slower and more painful schedule. What could have been a tight, clean operation requiring only the intervention of law enforcement and ServiceMaster is then extended into a major operation which ties up an ambulance and its medics, a gaggle of firefighters to assist, and in some cases, even more firefighters to set up and monitor the LZ for the helicopter, not to mention the helicopter itself. All of these resources could have been better utilized to save the lives of those who want to still be alive.

Lastly, if you are ever dealt the agonizing hand of being present or arriving to find that someone else has taken the final exit, a final pointer to speed the response of help:

Our safety comes first. Until we know the scene is safe and that the person is not actively still trying to die and willing to kill anyone who attempts to prevent that attempt, we stay out and wait for law enforcement. We can act on our discretion if we get assurances from the dispatchers that the scene and the weapon are secured. It is not helpful to tell the dispatcher that someone has been shot and then hang up without providing all the details. It is not helpful to ignore the phone when the dispatcher calls back. Result: We wait up the road until our brothers in blue arrive. So, stay on the phone and answer all questions to get the fastest intervention.

A final rebuttal to myself: Actually.... doing it this way provides an excellent candidate for organ donation, leaving us a short-term viable patient so steps can be taken to save the lives of others. If that is your plan, I guess this is an example of doing it right. I sincerely and fervently hope that the person who inspired this post did not have any conditions that prevented this from happening. If it all works out, I guess we firefighters are OK with going through all that to save other lives, but the preferred alternative is to ask for and get help. Those resources are out there for the finding. It is better for all involved if you just stay with us.

Thanks.

The Talk

A couple of weeks ago, a local teenager was killed in a wreck. Just 16 years old, he was riding in an SUV traveling at a high rate of speed, when the teen driver failed to negotiate a curve. The vehicle rolled, and the unbelted kid was pronounced right on the scene.

Jayden’s bright red soft top Jeep was his pride and joy. As he and Brian, best friends since grade 4, met after school, the evening looked promising. Brooke and Lauren were coming with them to the mall tonight to hang out and maybe catch a movie.

After the wreck was splashed on the news, it cut close, as these things frequently do. As the father of a teenager who has just arrived at driving age, along with many of her friends, I have become acutely aware of this latest new thing to worry about.

It was a bright, sunny, clear fall day, and the four teens took down the soft top and climbed in. Money in their pockets and hours of free time beckoned them to a night of fun. They turned on the stereo and cranked it up. Seatbelts were ignored, all the better for wrapping arms around each other, you know.

I told her to think about what was going through this kid’s mind just before the wreck. Was he having fun? Was he scared? Was he unable to get out even if he had realized the danger and wanted to? Did he know that his friend would drive like an idiot, or did he think driving fast was just harmless fun?

Jayden looked over at Brooke, her blonde hair blowing in the wind, and she smiled back at him. He suddenly remembered a hilarious prank that he’d seen pulled in the locker room before lunch, and turned to tell Brian about it, but he was already locked in a passionate hormone-driven teenage kiss with Brooke in the back seat.

I asked her if she ever thought about what her friends were capable of as drivers. Did she think she could accurately judge their character behind the wheel? Would she feel brave enough to say something to the driver if stupidity was being committed? Would she feel confident enough to stay behind in the first place if they encouraged her to go and she had reason to worry?

Jayden laughed, reached back to punch Brian and call him names, and told them to get a room. Lauren looked up, and her eyes widened in horror. Someone was yelling. Brooke screamed. Jayden turned back around. The road curved right, but they were barreling straight at 60 on the 35-limit road. He yanked the wheel to the right as they crossed the center line.

She looked back at me and gave me some mild and sort of noncommittal assurances. She was listening, and probably taking me seriously, but was confident that it could never happen to her. I know that look. I used to wear it, too.

The Jeep went up on its left wheels, yet made the corner. Lauren was thrown onto Brian’s lap. Brooke managed to hang on. Screaming. Crossing back over the line, Jayden was now aimed off the embankment to the right. He made another panic yank to the wheel, to the left. The jeep momentarily fell on all tires and then went all the way up on its right tires. Lauren and Brian were both launched up and out of the Jeep.

So I asked her this. I said, last week, if I sat you and the dead kid down side by side and gave this same lecture to both of you, do you think he’d respond to my worries about like you are? Yes? But now he’s dead. Do you think if I had lectured him last week that he would have taken me seriously? What could have prevented this stupidity?

As the Jeep swerved back to the left on its right tires and crossed the line, it was tipped up to the point of no return. Janelle, mother of three, with her two littlest ones in car seats behind her, was coming the other way from the grocery store. She was adjusting the AC when a red blur caught her eye. Looking up, she didn’t even have time to scream.

So I told her, again, that when she goes anywhere with friends, she needs to carefully consider what the driver might or might not do. Was it worth risking her life just to not be embarrassed by saying no or asking the driver to behave? Who knows, maybe the dead kid had asked the driver to slow down and got ignored, making him a helpless passenger unable to save himself.

The Jeep came right up over the hood of Janelle’s sedan as it rolled over. The impact was enough to deploy Janelle’s airbag, but the Jeep’s main point of intrusion was through the windshield, shoving the roof back and downward as it rolled over the top, leaving red paint on Janelle’s hood like bloody streaks. The airbag was not able to fully protect her head from the inward and downward collapse of the roof.

So, I went on, imagine yourself in that car instead of that kid. At what point do you wish you had not gotten in, and now it is too late, your fate out of your hands?

The leading edge of the roof of Janelle’s sedan caught the Jeep and flipped it violently into the air, the centrifugal force throwing Jayden and Brooke in different directions. Brian and Lauren fell onto the pavement close together, sliding and tumbling off the right shoulder into the bushes.

She looked thoughtful. Maybe the message was getting through. It’s hard to tell, but one can always hope.

The Jeep came to rest on its top, unrecognizable as a Jeep except for the ubiquitous roll cage. Some tires were torn, its hood was in the ditch, the engine partially dislodged, and debris everywhere. Jayden and Brooke landed on different sides of the road. Janelle’s car rammed into the opposite embankment and came to rest. It became quiet.

I love my kids. And this one and I have had this talk before, but the recent death was cause to bring it up again. Never pass an opportunity to use a tangible real-life lesson, you know. It’s different when it is not an anonymous face in the newspaper from somewhere far away, or an overplayed re-enactment done at a school assembly.

I later found out that the first caller reported “kids lying all over the road” and that one of the cars was smoking. It was in the 3rd-due from Station 51, and the way it was dispatched sounded a little hairy, but the “all over the road” part was toned down to “possible ejection”. I picked up Engine 51 and came online. Engine 56 arrived first and gave the size up from hell. Declared MCI, multiple patients on the ground, three trapped requiring extrication including two car seats, request three more ambulances, launch a helicopter, close off the road in both directions, and more manpower.

So I can only hope the message sticks, and try to not go completely crazy when she’s not under my direct supervision and protection. I can’t guard her forever, and I have to trust that she will learn how to make sound decisions. She is an outstanding daughter, and though we have our moments, she is nothing like the nightmares my friends told us teenagers would be like. I’ll take three.

Beyond all reason, none of the patients in this incident were critically injured. Major road rash and a few broken bones for the kids. Minor head trauma and lacerations on the Mom. This should have killed all the teenagers and the Mom, should have left the two little ones with a distant memory of the crash that killed their Mom. But that’s not how the cards were dealt.

Hours later, I had a chance to sit my daughter down. I said, remember what we were talking about a couple of days ago? Well, guess what I just got back from? I said, what do you want to bet those kids would have rolled their eyes had I given them The Talk this morning? It was never going to happen to them, just like it won’t happen to you. I got three hugs from her today. I can’t remember the last time I got three hugs in one day.

Only broken glass on the shoulder, some discoloration from spilled fluids, and orange spray paint on the roadway marking skids, impacts and final resting points give a clue to the day’s events. We were all fairly sure that there would be multiple critical injuries, and possibly a fatality in the mix, which resulted in a full scene workup by the Sheriff's Office that kept the road closed for hours.

Not this time, though. And somewhere, the next fatality knows....won’t happen to them. Never.


 

They Waited an Hour to Call

We arrived a little late to the party.

As it turned out, it took the bystanders something along the lines of an hour for someone to decide a 911 call was in order.

An hour.

The three of us made our way into the Mayberry district and pulled up in Engine 56 at about the same time the Heavy Rescue from nearby Kinda Big City was unloading its crew.

A quick look down the trail to the river bank showed the surreality of a few local rescuers and bystanders frantically attempting to free someone from under a log in the river, who was struggling to get air while held down by the water, as well over fifty others continued sunbathing, only a few paying attention.

By the time we got down to the edge, the kid had been pulled free.

The kid.

And he was blue.

He had been weakly flailing and fighting to escape when we looked down. Only a few minutes had passed. Now he was limp. They broke his leg to get him out when he lost consciousness.

Shit.

We worked him for a long time. The medics of course threw epi and lidocaine at him, but the monitor gave us nothing but asystole. Still, we kept working.

Now a few people were paying attention.

We loaded him onto a basket and rigged up to take him up to the bridge. No way were the medics going to call it in front of the crowd.

I thought of my own kids as I bagged him all the way up the grade. Don't we always do that?

His dulled eyes stared in different directions under drooping lids. One-handed compressions continued as best as could be done by the guy across from me as we stumbled over the rocks. It was a miracle that I didn't dislodge the tube with the BVM as I was climbing. There was blood coming up the tube, from the tissue damage we were causing while working him.

Tried not to look at his parents, but how can you not?

It was after the ambulance departed for the landing zone to the helicopter, when we found out about the hour delay.

The entire freaking hour, the kid fought, screamed, struggled, his head not quite level with the water as the few bystanders who found the capacity to give a crap tried to free him, to help him get air.

An hour. Good God.

So, for the record, and I think I speak for all 911 dispatchers as well as my brothers and sisters on the BRTs and bone boxes, we would all rather hear about a problem ten times than never.

For the love of all that is good and right, pick up the phone and CALL.

For what it is worth, against all odds, the medics got a faint rhythm on the way to the helo. The kid was hypothermic, so the chance was there. The helicopter took him. He survived. Expected to make a full recovery.

Are you serious?

God was looking out for this one. He was about as dead as dead gets.

I guess that's a save.  No thanks to the spectators.

A Couple of Demerits

Arrived by myself in Engine 51 to a truck off the road with some front end damage.

On the other side of the road, some people were kneeling in the ditch.

No one is in or by the damaged truck

Are you serious?  You whacked a deer and called 911 so we can save the deer?

Wrong.  Two demerits for me, for jumping to early conclusions.

I spent about ten minutes as the only firefighter on the scene, trying to get the guy to cooperate.  No seatbelt, drinking, smacked a tree, involuntarily used his lower abdomen to push the bottom of his steering wheel into the column. Wouldn't let me put a cuff on him or get lung sounds or anything. Pretty whiny when I touched his belly, though. At least his feeble struggle against me told me what I couldn't get from his vitals: Enough blood was still going round and round for him to function up to that point.

Sometimes those drunks walk away.  Not this time.  Though he gets two stars for trying, seeing as how he made it to the other side of the road before collapsing.

Eventually, more help started to finally show up.  About 25 minutes after that, the helicopter took him away. Dude was seriously messed up.

I will never, ever get tired of calling for a helicopter and watching them take my patient away.  I don't know what it is, but I always get goosebumps watching them take off with a hot one.

Last I heard, he's still alive.  Amazing.

And then I got to go to that housewarming party I was on my way to in the first place. They still had beer, so it was all good.

.......

And by the way, I apologize for the misleading title of the last post.  There was nothing at all about the literal "truth" about lying.  It was just a catchy title that I wasn't bright enough at the time to realize was misleading.  If you didn't notice, then go ahead and forget you read this paragraph.

MedEvac + Power Lines = Danger X2

Brought to my attention by Dave Statter, here.

The item of most importance: No one was hurt in this incident and the helo landed safely.

What I want to point out as the fire AND power guy, is that probably most people there did what the camera guy did: follow the helicopter. It's louder, more interesting, and presents itself as more threatening. Equally deadly, though, is the power line, which the camera guy eventually figured out was still live and not drawing enough fault current to trip. It might have initially tripped and then got popped on later by the dispatcher. It could be flopping around. Imagine how your attention would have been split if two lightly damaged helicopters were landing. That double-threat mindset is how this should have been treated: Two separate immediately lethal hazards.

Situational awareness keeps you alive. Tunnel vision kills.