Kids are why I’m no longer an Emergency Medical Technician

This is a short story of why I gave up being an Emergency Medical Technician in the early 1990s. The reason? Kids. More exactly: injured children. After five years of serving as a volunteer EMT, I quit.

I served on a local ambulance service in an isolated rural community. It was a wonderful way to help my community, and my reward was the great feeling when we were able to help our neighbors. I also served on an underground mine rescue team where I could use my EMT training to help my coworkers.

Ambulance calls came at the most inopportune times: during banquets; when family was visiting; holidays; nights; weekends; vacations. My pager was always on, and always attached to my belt or resting on my bedstand.

One moment that stands out in my memory is a bus full of fire fighters that rolled off a mountain road…in the middle of a 20,000-acre forest fire…at night. I remember wondering about the wisdom of driving between flaming trees when we had oxygen tanks on board the ambulance.

Then there was the fellow who was killed while working with a horse. He had apparently wrapped the lead around his waist and knotted the rope, but something spooked the horse who ran and ran in the field, dragging the man. A coworker had to get a rifle and shoot the horse so we could get to the injured man, only to discover he was already dead.

And I learned why you don’t use gasoline to light a charcoal grill when we got called on a burn victim. The grill wouldn’t get going, so she poured some gas into a mason jar and was going to throw it on the grill, but she tripped and fell forward, toward the grill, just as she was throwing the gas on the smoldering charcoal. The resulting ball of flame engulfed her. She was wearing polyester clothing, which melted to her skin and kept burning her.

As an EMT, I helped dozens of people. It’s a truly wonderful feeling to not only save a life, but also to recognize how much pain and suffering was avoided by that person’s family.

But after five years, I gave it up. I backed out of being an EMT. I resigned. I quit.

The events described above — and many, many more — did not impact me nearly as much as the injured children we were called upon to transport.

One incident I remember with great clarity is the child who had swallowed a coin, but the coin lodged in his trachea and our on-call emergency room doctor could not extract it. If it moved, it could completely block air getting into the child’s lungs. No other doctors were available that weekend. Helicopter transport was the preferred mode of transportation to get this child to a regional medical center for treatment, but it was winter, and a blizzard made approaching and landing in our valley impossible. We were directed to transport the child by road over a mountain pass in horrible driving conditions, to reach a location where the helicopter could quickly carry the child the rest of the way to get the help he so urgently needed.

At any moment, the coin could have become dislodged, only to become lodged more deeply in the trachea, potentially suffocating the boy. My family doctor, who was also our medical advisor, briefed me on performing an emergency tracheotomy. I remember saying I wasn’t licensed to perform a tracheotomy, and he said if that moment comes and it’s the only way to save that boy’s life, you will do it…and here’s how.

We had to transport the child in a semi-reclined position. This little boy was so exhausted he had no tears left. The parents were not available. The back of the dim ambulance held only two people: the child, and me. I strapped myself in and held him to cushion the jolts and bumps. I held him for two hours, until we reached a place where the helicopter could take him to life-saving treatment.

I will never forget the look in his eyes. He was about five years old, and at one point, I knew that he believed he was going to die. It was not safe to let him talk. I kept supplemental oxygen going and sang softly to him for two hours while we we were bumped around in the blizzard, a lifeboat traveling alone through the dark, remote mountains. For a while, it felt like only the two of us existed, wrapped in a cocoon of cold white darkness.

I will never forget the look in his eyes as this innocent child suddenly was old beyond his years and resigned to his own death.

And that is why I am no longer an EMT. I cannot forget the children who were in such need. Their eyes would wake me at night. I found myself waking up several times a night, staring at my pager, hoping it wouldn’t go off…yet hoping it would. When I realized I was getting sick more often, losing weight, and getting more emotionally reactive, I also realized the only solution was to stop being an EMT.

So I quit. I resigned as a volunteer for the ambulance service. And I was labeled a quitter, even after five years of helping dozens of sick and injured neighbors.

What I remember most, though, are the eyes of innocent children in pain and sorrow. All these years later, I still occasionally come awake seeing their eyes looking into mine. But I also remember how many children and families I was able to help because I chose to give something back to my community.

When I wake up in the night, I remember that little boy with the coin who lived. And then I can go back to sleep.

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