To be honest with you, I’m struggling to write this post. For the first time ever, I’m finding it difficult to put into words what I want to convey. For anyone who knows me, writing is like breathing, it just happens, like one of the easiest things to do. But today, this post is a different story. There’s things I want to tell you and I want you to know so please bear with me as I piece it all together.
As most people know I’m a Paramedic. And on most days I love my job. Every day is different, every day challenges me in different ways and most days I feel like I’ve been able to comfort someone in their time of need or make a difference.
It’s impossible to have this career without having a handful of jobs that stick with you. They are the ones that months and years later, stop you in your tracks, that creep up on you late at night and they are the ones that take your breath away.
The teenage drink driver that rolls his vehicle where I have 5 critical patients with only two paramedics.
The elderly man who is desperately through his tears doing CPR on his wife whom he woke next to, as he has done for the last 50 years, but this morning she wasn’t breathing.
The child who is continuously seizing and is requiring you to breathe for them, with no explanation as to why this has happened.
The young man who found his father lifeless after he succumbed to years of battling depression and mental illness.
The list goes on.
But there is no job you will ever go to that compares to one where a child is lost.
Some paramedics will tell you it’s part of the job, and while that may be true there is nothing that will ever make it ‘okay’ to witness or experience the loss of a child.
So to anyone who has ever lost a child and has called upon paramedics to help this is what I want you to know:
If we are unfortunate enough to meet while I’m at work, chances are we won’t have much of a conversation about the weather or your favourite TV show. I’ll most likely be rapidly firing questions at you while you desperately search your mind for the answers. I’ll be working fast and moving quickly.
Chances are you won’t remember my name but I promise you’ll remember every single minute it took for me to get to you. You won’t remember the colour of my hair or that my partner wears glasses but I promise I’ll remember you.
I’ll forever remember the look of fear in your eyes as you look to me for some sort of answer. I’ll remember the sound of your voice as you beg me for it all to be okay. I’ll remember your name. I’ll remember your child’s name. I’ll remember every moment I spent trying to save your child’s life. And I’ll forever carry with me a heaviness in my heart for the ones I couldn’t save.
You need to know, they will never be forgotten.