CISD

Once again I've fallen behind in this whole "blogging" thing and I find myself left apologizing, my life has sort of become "scattered" sort to say the past 2 weeks or so, so please bear with me. Following my first Pedi Code the amount of support I have gotten from my co-workers and fellow EMS professionals, specifically seasoned medics who have been in my shoes has been incredible. I am glad to see that we are becoming an organization much like Fire and Police Departments that look out for each other across company lines. I decided to take the following two nights off from work and attempt to clear my head, spend time with friends and just reflect on why I got into this job and answer some questions on my own. I decided I'd go out Friday night and have a few drinks, bad idea, come midnight I realized I was the "downer" of the party, the guy who just sat there, staring into his beer. Everyone pretty much knew what had happened, or heard briefly about it, they knew why I was acting they way I was, but no one could understand. I felt separated, and then I started thinking that here I was out drinking trying to have a good time while a poor grieving mother was at home trying to plan the funeral for her child, and I started to feel awful. Not only was I feeling awful that i was out, but why after this many years was I suddenly feeling connected, when so many times I could just walk away from a tragedy and find a means of escape, a laugh about something funny I noticed on scene or something else, yet this call has thrown me in a world of hurt, why is that kid calls get to us?

That Sunday the company arranged a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) session for me and my co-workers that worked the call. It was the first time I had seen both of them since that night at work. I won't get into total details of the CISD session so I can maintain some sense of confidence for my co-workers and partners but I will say I wasn't overly impressed. We talked about the events of the call and how they made us feel, how we reacted. We discussed how true professionals we were, and my co-workers lifted my spirits multiple times, saying how impressed they were with the way I handled myself on this call, A brand new Paramedic day 4 of precepting with a dead child thrown in my arms, my ability to overcome the fear and tackle the challenge to them showed my true abilities, I however still have doubts in this. Sure it felt great to hear them say this, it was nice to sit there with them again to be reconnected but it was same message over and over again, it was "Your going to not feel right, and its okay". We weren't really given guidance on how to deal with our lives and move on, which is what i was really hoping for because honestly at that point I wasn't sure what was going to happen. We ended our CISD session and the 3 of us decided to go grab some lunch and of course a drink at TGIFridays down the street. It was great to just sit down with my preceptor and his partner outside of work, in normal clothes in a casual setting and just talk and have a good time. Of course we talked about how we've been doing, how we've been dealing with the call on our own. We talked about going back to work, what we each were looking forward to and not looking forward to. At the end of lunch my preceptor told me to let him know when I'm ready, meaning if I'm not ready to start precepting right away to let him know, and we'll just run calls together the first night back which honestly made me relieved a little stress lifted off my shoulders for my first night back.