If you know someone who is a Paramedic, firefighter, or been in combat and have ever asked "What's it like to...." This is probably why you really didn't understand the answer.

"Why are you a Paramedic?" "Why are you a Firefighter?"

The usual answers don't stray too far from "to help people". If you happen to know the person giving the answer well, and look closely, you see that this is a rote answer. An answer carefully practiced in front of friends and family, or a mirror. Certainly the drive to help other people has something to do with the initial choice to become one or the other. This motive hasn't got the staying power for the couple of years it takes to become one of the anointed. It hasn't got the "legs" to carry one through the grueling training in fire science and the physically impossible tasks we ask of our fire trainees. Or through the long nights and even longer days of Paramedic training, where sleep deprivation becomes an old familiar friend, where your "real job" becomes something you simply have to endure so you can get to class or clinical time.

If you talk to a veteran of Viet Nam or Desert Storm and ask about some particular feature of their experience, and this experience is combat related, the REALLY polite ones will try to give you an explanation, but ultimately will fail and know this. The much less polite ones will simply change the subject. The ones who care about your opinion will, in a kind of strained, pained tone; or a tone of bravado (usually false) look at you and say something which carries the message "If you have to ask the question, you couldn't possibly understand the answer."

There is nothing demeaning in that answer. Quite simply, if you haven't felt the frisson that accompanies the first sight of a rolled over car that you are going to have to remove a person from; or the flat out body shakes that happen as the bell on your Scott Pack STOPS ringing with you inside a full Haz-mat suit or on an interior attack when you've lost your hose; you could not possibly understand an explanation of why someone does these things.

There is no way a verbal explanation is going to convey the sense of urgency that propels a Paramedic across the hood of a car and through the broken windshield to secure a driver's C-spine as the rest of the rescuers are frantically (and none too gently) trying to remove the doors of the car to remove the driver. The 36 stitches the Medic earns from the glass because she didn't have her turn-out coat on at the time are simply the subject of station house jokes and next week's training talk. Pain from the lacerations? Trust me, she didn't feel any of them until the victim was fully collared and boarded. You KNOW that you would have felt the 6 lacerations as they happened, don't you?

If you have to ask the question, you couldn't possibly understand the answer.

How do you possibly deal with the things you see on a scene? Ask a SEAL how he survives and completes a mission with several injuries, each normally incapacitating. You get the same answer "We click on at the start." The flashing lights, the roars, screams, shouts, the splashes of blood that are the graffiti of an auto accident, the spectacle of flames jumping 150 feet in the air and the launch of paint cans in the night; are all set and setting that we never even see or hear as we focus on what our job is. Whether that be "Knocking it down!" "Getting wet stuff on the red stuff!" "Board and collar, now!" "Clear! Clear! Clear! Shock! Do we have a pulse to go with those complexes?", or standing back and dealing out hose companies, squads and engines to the correct sector or segment of the fire scene or accident scene. "We click on."

Please don't ask why we do what we do and expect something more than "To help people". Some of us will share poetry with you, something about "dancing out on the edge" or "going toe to toe with God". Or, even worse, we'll talk about our addiction to adrenalin, or the jazz, or. . . . or the indescribable kick when the lights and siren come on and you know you're going to have to "work" on this one.

But the most honest answer we can give is . . . . . "If you have to ask the question, I couldn't possibly give you an answer that you could understand."

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), October 26, 1999

Answers

Thank you, Chuck. Not that long ago, I spent a lot of years loving such a man. "Moth to the flame" was his way of dodging the why. He is a retired fire fighter and still out there playing cowboy in other areas. His children and grand children keep their fingers crossed. The energy, the competence, the intelligence, the magnetism all contributed to his favorite phrase, "running down the road with his hair on fire".

Last week an absolutely gorgeous fire fighter started flirting with me in the grocery store. I did not know whether to laugh, run screaming, or respond.

People in the high risk helping professions be they EMTs, police/fire/ or professional warriors are a special breed that has my utmost respect.

Unfortunately, you all will be strained to the max in the coming months. It is sort of like combining the race riots of the '60s with earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, ice storms, fog on California's Interstate 5, and maybe the Gulf War and expecting you all to perform as usual. God Bless

-- Nancy (wellsnl@hotmail.com), October 26, 1999.

Awww, now Chuck you have made me cry. But actually I still do that everytime I see an old friend running a code 3 return, trying to get the idiots to pull over TO THE RIGHT GOD *&^%$ it!!!! :).

How many slaps on the dash, raw jokes, caffeine jitters, tough calls, 1144's? I never though I would lose count of those last ones - but you do. My dear hubby still laughs and shakes his head when I smell the air and declare the scent to be grass, trash, structure, or distant forest. Or when you are out for a lovely afternoon movie and driving home traffic slows suddenly and you see garbage that should be in someones back seat tumble out on the roadway - he thinks someone lost a bag from a truck - but I know better. He helped me on that one until ems got there. He still thinks about the dead bicyclist on the road and the blood of the drunk driver all over me (the gloves in the "glove box" had been used when he was painting a model train the week before). And me grinning dryly after, saying how much I miss doing this. The real irony is that, as an EMT, that was the first time I can truly say I saved a life - work comped out with a screwed up back and out on a joy ride - hmmmmmmmm.

Thank you Chuck for writing your post. You are right. And I really, really miss it.

-- Kristi (securxsys@cs.com), October 26, 1999.

I'd like to add some other departments to the list. When and if it hits the fan, they probably will all fall under OES.

-- flora (***@__._), October 26, 1999.

chuck

how can we help? besides getting out of the way, i mean.

-- Cowardly Lion (cl0001@hotmail.com), October 26, 1999.

As one who was a National Park Ranger for a couple of seasons, a Ski Patrolman for 10 winters, and drove ambulance for several years...yes, some people don't understand why one does such things. (My Dad was a fireman, so I may have learned to help people from him...)

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), October 26, 1999.