Like It Happened Yesterday

You will hear a lot of people saying not to go into details about a run or try not to think about it. To be honest it is never that easy. See, for me its all about triggers. I try to avoid but unfortunately I can not.

In school they will tell you. Are you ready to kill someone? Ready to feel helpless? Ready to tell a parent your child has passed on? We as a class sat in silence looking around at each other. Not knowing what to say to those questions. I can tell you when it came time for some of those answers they were the hardest.

In EMS when you run cardiac arrest call there are a lot of factors. Was it witnessed, down time, DNR, or expected death. When it comes to children. Most of those go out the window.

I was maybe a month in to my new station I had transferred to. The medic I was with was so burnt out you could smell it through his tone of voice and comments. None the less a great medic. Taught me a lot of the tricks of the trade. In the service I work for fire and EMS is separated. We were on our way to grab something to eat. Late afternoon. Then the tones came over. The sound of panic in the dispatchers voice was something to remember. She was speaking so fast she had to repeat two more times with all the details.

"Medic 7 respond cardiac arrest! Two month old baby ! Unknown down time! Mother just found him and he is blue!"

Words you never want to hear...

I remember the medic repeating to me. "Put away the feelings. Remember it's not your child."

I never had a pediatric code before and millions things were going through my head i forgot to tell him. As we turned on the street he tells me, "Run in grab the kid and run out." So now I'm in a panic. I can't tell you what the mom looked like or the inside of the house. Its all a blur. What I can is i remember how heavy my feet were trying to run through the sugar sand. I remember seeing this tiny lifeless grey human laying in the middle of the walk way. I remember his blue stripe shirt wearing overalls. I remember running so fast and time being still as I pick him up under his head and lower back.

Mom says he was laying there playing while she was doing dishes. When she went to check on him that is what she found. I didn't ask his name or for his birthday. I just ran back to the truck with him in my left arm and doing compressions with the other

My partner had grabbed everything to set up waiting for me to bring him in. When I opened the doors I placed him on the stretcher softly and remember how bad my hands were shaking. The first thing my medic says is "Yeah he is dead." In disbelief I shook my head and kept working. Not paying him no mind. I put the monitor on him. Nothing. I put the pads on him getting ready to shock. Nothing. So I start compressions. What seemed like forever was maybe three or four minutes.

While I was doing all of this. The medic had called the doctor at the receiving facility. Told him what we had. What we had done. And for how long we have been doing it. The doctor said it was ok by him to stop CPR and call it. The anger I felt was unreal. How could he agree? How could my partner do this? How could we give up on a healthy child like this? Now like I said before my partner has been doing this for decades and I had to listen to what he said. He knew something wasn't right with this call. He then calls for a deputy to respond to us. I went out of the truck thinking a million different ways to say it. This is what the do not teach you in class except to be honest.

I told the mother, "Ma'am I am so sorry but your son didn't make it. We literally tried everything we could on the truck but nothing worked." She dropped to her knees screaming. I didn't know what to do. I just hugged her saying over and over I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

We left the scene after the medical examiner came and he took the child from us. I asked him why he did this. He explained in detail what his reasoning was. It took me a long time to come to terms with this call. A week or so past and I heard from my supervisor the mother was arrested for suffocating the baby. Apparently she had a mental breakdown while talking to the officers.

I still don't like walking in sugar sand or beach sand.

I still see his face when I see a small child in blue overalls.

I remember like it was yesterday.