"Every bad call leaves a ghost."
It made me think about my own experiences as a paramedic. Before I could legally enter a bar, I'd seen shootings and stabbings, suicides and murders. I held a man as he died of cancer, I've done CPR on an infant. I've fought drunks and drug addicts, witnessed a shooting...I chased a drunk driver at 80mph in an ambulance.
But I've never thought of them as ghosts.
Instantaneous shock is anesthetizing. Dealing with feelings in the days and weeks following a bad call is like trying to run underwater- a slow and very, very frustrating process.
But in the end I'm going to be a better doctor for it. When I'm in class and the professor lectures about diabetic ketoacidosis- I think of that teenager who I thought was lying for attention but ended up in the ICU- and lived - because I happened to check his blood sugar. Just in case.
When the lecture is on crush syndrome I think about the wreck when the extrication took 2 hours because a patient's leg was mangled in the wreckage. Or the time that I sat in a crushed van trying to console three terrified patients as firefighters cut off the roof.
I still remember my first call in May, 2005- a car accident with 6 patients. We rushed to the hospital with helicopters following us overhead.
When the lesson has a face, when it has a name- it actually means something. I feel like I have a foundation, an infrastructure in my mind around which I can build the remainder of my medical knowledge.
Ghosts or no ghosts, the trials we face make us stronger and wiser....
I wouldn't give up my four years on an ambulance for anything.
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