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First responder Mental Health
24 Plays1 year ago
Welcome back! This week is a bit of a tough one, so if you need to talk please reach out to us. After the normal Rigmarole; Ron and Chris talk about a serious issue- mental health and first responders. As always please like, subscribe and share with your friends. Come join the discussions on the Discord Channel (https://discord.gg/TbxA7gcUky) and follow us on Twitter, @cltruitt22. Thanks and take care!
--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/christopher-truitt/supportRecommended
Transcript
Introduction and Episode Context
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to another episode of the Mythic Draft Podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Ron, and this podcast will go out after the epiphany. Sorry. Yeah, changing the ninth. Yeah, we're going to miss the 12th day of Christmas. Yeah. And as I celebrate the epiphany, I went for a bike ride today in January.
Unusual Weather Experiences
00:00:21
Speaker
What? Because the 68 degree weather was
00:00:25
Speaker
It was a weird bike ride because it was starting to rain. And when the wind hit you, I was cold. And then when the wind was down, I was hot. I was like, this is weird. Like part of my body's hot, the other part's not. What's going on? It's a hot flash. Yeah, we can get a hot flash. The Andra, was it Andropause? Yes. Yeah. Hopefully not. I've had enough problems going on. I don't need that in my life.
00:00:51
Speaker
after my scare.
Healthcare Communication Frustrations
00:00:53
Speaker
Oh my God, that is so stupid. Yeah. Yeah. When you get a phone call saying you've got something that we don't even test for. It's like, you know, and as like I said, I talked telling people the other day at work about it, I'm not mad that they misread the test.
00:01:09
Speaker
or paperwork. I'm mad that the doctor didn't call me. It was a secretary. Yeah. And that just seems like a nurse and that just seems like our healthcare system in a nutshell to me. Oh yeah. Yeah. You can't get anybody to talk to you. Yep. You can't keep, uh, you know, we can't get anybody to get schedules. It's crazy. Yeah. I talked to somebody the other day and they're like, yeah, I walked down my doctor's appointment after they said they're running an hour and a half behind. Yeah. It's like, no,
00:01:39
Speaker
Every time I've had an appointment, I sit there for 45 minutes before I get in. That's ridiculous. Yeah. I get it. They're overbooked and things like that, but here's the thing. Don't book as many people. It's a magical concept. I have this tooth that's got chipped and I can't get it fixed. It's starting to bother me now to the point where I actually needed to get fixed. I'm like, I guess I'm just going to have to call random people and be like, can you fix it?
00:02:07
Speaker
There's an endodontic center in Easton that's really good. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you can't go to a dentist because he won't fix a wisdom tooth. And his only answer is, it's got to get pulled. Yeah. Even though it's perfectly fine, the chip needs to be fixed. That's it. Yeah. He won't work on it. And he won't pull it. So he's like, you got to go to a surgeon to go get pulled. Did Dennis and the old West just pull this shit? That's what I... Well, when I had to get my root canal, I told him, I said, look, Doc, I said, if you don't think this is going to take,
00:02:38
Speaker
You need to give, you know, I want you to just pull it. I don't like to do extractions. I don't care what you like. I want you to extract this. I don't get to go as a paramedic. Ah, I don't like doing innovations. It's not cool. That's not how it works. You're a doctor. That's your job. I mean, they're a step above chiropractors. They're a large step above chiropractors. That's not even a close comparison.
00:03:06
Speaker
You know, I still call them doc. I do not call it chiropractor doc. Yeah. No, no. Was it that one episode of friends? I was like, yeah, you're dating Dr. Bobby.
00:03:18
Speaker
Yeah. One of them was dating a chiropractor. It's like his name is Bobby. That's not a doctor. Definitely not a doctor. Whatever. I can't fix the life of the healthcare system. Oh yeah. Speaking of healthcare system. Well, it's not just regular healthcare. It's the mental healthcare system too, because I know of someone who
00:03:39
Speaker
went to show up for their telehealth appointment and nothing happened. So they called the office and the office said, Oh, your doctor left our practice. They were supposed to call you. And like, how do we get all of them? Oh, well, they left the state. So we don't really know. It's like that. That's a great doctor there. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's crazy. It's just, but you know,
Recognition and Challenges in EMS
00:04:08
Speaker
Here, EMS shines on national TV on Monday. Monday Night Football, EMS saves the day. And who do they have talking? Doctors and ESPN analysts talking about it. Not one time do they like, let's get a paramedic up there. I know. And it's driving me crazy. Yeah. Because at work yesterday was just all it was on TV all day. Oh yeah. And I'm like, we've known about this.
00:04:36
Speaker
for decades. We've even had one in Salisbury. We had one of those cases. It's not that, as I was trying to explain, it's rare. It's not that rare. Yeah, and the lack of explanation of why EMS sat there for 20 minutes. Right. Perfect opportunity to explain things. Yeah, the ESPN guy was like, I don't know what they're doing sitting there. It's like,
00:05:04
Speaker
Well, you can barely spell, so. Well, and then I was listening. My car has been having this weird problem where it desinks from my phone. So then I have to listen to regular radio. Like a peasant. Like a peasant.
00:05:18
Speaker
And, um, or I can listen to my speaker phone, I guess, but whatever. So, but they're talking on the radio this morning, they're talking about like the Sixers game. Wow. There was a guy who died at the Sixers game like last year and nobody, EMS never got there. It took him forever. It's like, do you understand how long it takes to get an ambulance crew from the outside?
00:05:39
Speaker
of a building into a stadium, find the person, and start doing care. And that's why most sporting events have some form of on-site EMS. They do. They probably need to step some of them up, but yes, they do. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because some of them are, oh, gosh, just, yeah, I've seen some of them. Yeah, yeah. And the only thing I've seen come out of this, that CNN The Good was,
00:06:07
Speaker
Here's why you should learn CPR. Yeah, I did. Yeah, that is true. You know, it's a good, it's a great CPR works folks. Yeah, it does.
00:06:16
Speaker
Yeah, he's done like the athletic trainers. Well, let's rub his calves. I was telling my wife that it's like the athletic trainers were like, well, maybe if we move some blood from his calves or to his heart, it'll work. It's like the old cartoons where he pumped the legs. Exactly. I was like, this is something. Yeah. Isn't there usually a doctor on the sideline? I don't know if they're on the sidelines anymore. Usually they're in the, the,
00:06:45
Speaker
like the medical area. I know in college football, because I've worked college football games, there's very strict rules about who's allowed to go and treat players on the field. So they have these very strict protocols about that.
00:07:01
Speaker
And I know that if I was in that, if I was the paramedic there, I'd have been like, hey, athletic trainers, get out the hell out of here. You're not in charge. And we've had that problem with our athletic trainers around who have said, oh, well, we're involved in patient care. Okay. He doesn't need a splint. This person needs your help. Can you help remove his pads, helmet? Great. That's all I need. That's what I need out of you.
00:07:25
Speaker
The stuff that you're good at, do that. You pumping the guy's legs on the television doesn't look great. But again, there's people out there that are like, look, they were doing something. Yeah, they were doing something. I hope more people take away from that to learn CPR.
00:07:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's my life mission is to teach the most CPR I can. I try to teach it as cheaply as possible. You could do your own version of super sexy CPR. I could do super sexy CPR. That could be on your OnlyFans. It could be on my OnlyFans. You paid it for the feet. You learned the CPR. There you go. See, it's a package deal.
00:08:16
Speaker
I thought I would be fired from the fire department in 10 minutes. Eh, maybe. I'd be like, is that one of our mannequins? Well, I'm trying to do an outreach thing. Yeah. But seriously, folks, we're out. Learn CPR if you don't know it. Yes, definitely. You're not talking to me. Seriously, you can learn it in 10 minutes.
00:08:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. I just taught the Girl Scouts classes. That's all I do is I teach basically Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts anymore. And the trooper is like, well, how long will it take to teach the CPR? I said, honestly, the CPR is the shortest part of this program. I can show you how to do CPR in five minutes and you can just practice it. And that is all you need. It's not like the old days where we was like,
00:09:06
Speaker
learning all the numbers and all the crap. Oh, yeah. You don't need that. It's a mouth. Oh, God. Only one time. Never again. No. No. Still gives me jitters ears and leader. But, you know, just go out. Don't pay for a card. Do not pay.
00:09:27
Speaker
for a card unless you need one. Yeah. If you need one for your job, that's one thing, but for, yeah, just to public, you don't need a card. Nobody's going to stop you and say, yeah, the paramedics aren't going to show up and say, whoa, sir. Yeah. Do you have a card? There's no CPR police. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that Girl Scout class I taught, like half the girls wanted cars and I'm like, you don't need these cards. And the parents were like, no, we want them to have cards. I'm like,
00:09:52
Speaker
I really trying to tell you not to spend the money, but yeah. Well, some of them do if they get their babysitters. Well, that certificate or whatever. Yeah, that's safe sitter. Safe sitter. I used to teach safe sitter back in the day. But yeah, for everybody else, if the paramedics show up and you're doing CPR, if it looks good, we're going to be like, yeah, keep doing that because we don't need to do that. Right. I didn't become a paramedic to do CPR. I got all these drugs that are not going to help.
00:10:23
Speaker
It depends on the timing, but yeah. Death by paramedics. Yeah. BLS save lives. BLS saves lives every day. Yeah. And for those of you who aren't in the know, BLS is basic life support. So yeah. Basic. Basic. Well, you know, it's, we call it basic life support, BLS, EMTB. They go through more school than police officers do.
00:10:53
Speaker
Yeah, they go to a 240 hour course now. Yeah, it's crazy now. You know, I mean, when I started it was Amos attendance, which was a 24 hour course. Yeah, you know, here's how you learn how to put oxygen on a patient. Done. Move on. Yeah. But it's they say you pick up the stretcher. But it's a problem in our in our field is these people, we treat them as
00:11:22
Speaker
basic life support. They're just EMTBs. These are medical professionals. Absolutely. They went through training. They do recertification. They are some of the best providers in the world, and they just don't get the recognition. No. And because it's been given a bad name, because there are the scumbag EMTs that are just the ambulance drivers. Sure.
00:11:51
Speaker
But there's going to be doctors and nurses all the way down. Like you said, most people still think, oh, the guy's on the ambulance. They took a 24-hour course. Oh, I bet they're Red Cross certified. Right. It's a sad thing. We want
00:12:15
Speaker
EMT and paramedic to become college-level skills, but we know that if we do that, we're not going to have enough people writing EMTs. Well, and we also don't have a way to compensate them adequately. We do not compensate them adequately at all. I just wrote a harboring article from Chester County, which is the county north of me. They closed two hospitals in this county. This county has 580,000 people.
00:12:43
Speaker
that live in the county. They closed two hospitals and they're threatening to close a third. So they're, so the EMS numbers went up the roof. So they did sort of, but really what happened is travel times went up and wait times at the hospital went up. So the EMS is failing. They talked about the, so where,
00:13:11
Speaker
the Chester County is kind of spread out from the Chester River West. So the western side of the county is more rural, but where they used to have at least a freestanding ER, now they have to drive into Delaware, right? And now you're feeding more patients into the Delaware system. It's just this whole
00:13:32
Speaker
backup of log of just and you know that those poor providers who probably weren't making much money as it was. Yeah. Are now just hearing the brother. Why is it taking so long to get me to the hospital? Why are we doing it? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Why are you taking me to Christiana? Well, there's nowhere else to go. Right. Every hospital is on divert. You're going to sit in a stretcher for an hour now. Yeah. It's uh. Which technically we don't need or don't have to do that. That's because we're nice people and don't just turf patients. We don't have to do it.
00:14:02
Speaker
but we would feel terrible. Oh yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. We're not bad people. There you go. Here's a chair. Yeah, exactly. But it's going to get to that point. Yeah. As has already happened in our district, in our small little part of the world, we've been so backed up that we're like, we got to do something with you because we got 14 calls. Exactly. Yeah. Pile it up. We got to go.
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we're fortunate that our turnover time is usually less than 15. But gosh, there are some places that it's hours upon hours. Sure. We also will get into my topic and we'll touch on this, but we're also burning out our people by making them turn around. Oh, no, I'm not saying the offload time at the ER is. Sure. Yeah, that's what I'm... No, I... Yeah.
00:14:58
Speaker
That immediately having to go clear for the next call is not good. No. I hope my most sincere wish in this world is that eventually people understand how important EMS is to this cycle and actually start putting money into it.
00:15:19
Speaker
Right. You know, American EMS is such a goddamn clusterfuck right now. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's so many different models and so there's no oversight. Well, and the fact that the main funders, Medicare, Medicaid, barely pay anything and have now, instead of getting the data themselves, are forcing the individual departments to aggregate the data and then send it into them or else they'll find you. Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:49
Speaker
Yeah. Hey, we need these numbers and you have to give them to us. We're not paying you to do that. Right. And you have to admit, I had to sit in a stupid meeting for you while you were off and listen to this person talk about this. And I was like, this is going to take, I don't even know how many man hours.
00:16:09
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I couldn't imagine that even 10 years ago when it wasn't digital. Oh, my gosh. No, no. I mean, we're fortunate that now we have the sergeant so I can have a little bit off my plate and focus
Standardization and Training in EMS
00:16:21
Speaker
on that. But I mean, some of these like you mentioned some hillbilly company like, I don't know, Palville having to do this. Well, but even take that the other way. So I live in in New York Fire Department district. It's not a career fire department. I think it was either New York or Christiana. One of the two of them was in our
00:16:39
Speaker
whatever cycle for this reporting in Salisbury. And think about them. They don't have a paid support admin staff to pull that data. So they've just got to pull the data. Volunteer officers are pulling the data or the pay guys who are running 20,000 calls a year. Who's running the data? Who's doing that for Medicare?
00:17:03
Speaker
But you're facing losing book funding and getting fined and you have no options, you know, and there's no state agency to step in and say, no, no, no, we'll do this. Exactly. It's just because of the lack of oversight. Right. Yeah. You know, it's just. Yeah, you would think a paramedic in Maryland would be the same as a paramedic in Florida. Oh, no, no. Well, it's Jersey. I can't.
00:17:32
Speaker
It's crazy. I get all these, you know, I still get the mailers like, Oh, you're a paramedic. We're going to come apply for it. And they're all from Jersey. They're like, baby, we need paramedics. We need paramedics. I see all these articles. We're just dying. We don't have enough paramedics. I can't even go be a paramedic in Jersey. I would have to go back to like a 1500 hour course to become a Jersey paramedic.
00:17:52
Speaker
Really? Oh, because they don't honor national registry. They don't do reciprocity national registry. So you're talking about why aren't people coming to you? I could be in Jersey in 20 minutes, but I'm not going to take a 15 hour, a hundred hour course, you know, at my cost. That's the thing. Like these people,
00:18:15
Speaker
go to school at their dime, whether it's their time or their fuel or whatever, it's still their time. If only there was a national association of EMTs. That doesn't really seem to
00:18:35
Speaker
push for anything. It really seems that NREMT and NREMT have kind of just been like hands off like, well, you guys do whatever we don't want to upstate any apple carts. Yeah. It does, right? No, you're absolutely right.
00:18:50
Speaker
The whole goal of like the, we were going to go to a standard and all that went out the window because it was like 2017. That all died. It's rough. We're on a, now we're inside baseball EMS super inside. I mean,
System Inefficiencies in EMS
00:19:10
Speaker
you got people, taxpayers need to know how bad things are right now because eventually it's going to happen that you're going to call 911 and no one's going to show up.
00:19:21
Speaker
You know, it's already happened. I mean, it's happened to me riding up here in Newark years ago.
00:19:27
Speaker
I got diverted off three calls on the way to one call. Just get diverted, go from an Alpha to a Bravo to a Charlie. And it's like, what the heck's going on? But somebody's not going to that call. And you're going to be an Alpha level call. You're going to be in a queue. You look at DC, where they don't even dispatch a DC unit anymore on Alpha calls. It's a commercial ambulance.
00:19:55
Speaker
Yeah. Again, for listeners, there's the EMD codes, the call taker, you know, listens to what you got and they prioritize it. So Omega's is you don't need an ambulance at all, but for some reason you called. Alpha is very low acuity. You've got up to, what is it, an hour for EMS to show up? Technically an hour for an ambulance to show up. Bravo is your emergent BLS stuff. Charlie is the next step up. That's your beginning ALS, but that's a cold response ALS most places.
00:20:25
Speaker
A lot of places, yeah. Delta is your, you know, you've got severe trouble breathing, some chest pains, and then echo is you're not breathing severe traumatic injuries, things like that. So yeah. And, and now a lot of people are, the fire department is pulling up the bird night. As you read the article from
00:20:47
Speaker
somewhere in California where they had, I think it was like San Bernardino or somewhere. It was some larger city in California, San Diego. I think it was San Diego. They had contracted with this agency to do EMS. Oh yeah. The agency couldn't hire enough people to cover the shifts. So then the fire department has to send fire department equipment to go to these places just to show up. Yeah. Just so somebody's there.
00:21:13
Speaker
But we do that in Salisbury. People ask all the time, why is there a fire engine here? Well, because we don't have an ambulance. Or we're here to help the ambulance. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's another thing. People still think, oh, you're on the fire truck. You're just a fireman. That's true. Not only is it people who call 911, but it's also people who work for us. Yeah. And not just us.
00:21:39
Speaker
Everywhere. Everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good discussion with a doctor about that today. Yeah. Yeah. It was we were trying to talk or figure out how to better educate even our own folks about, you know, the days of grab and go, especially for pediatrics is over. And the doctor from Hopkins, she was like, it seems to be, is it a machismo thing or something? It's like, I'm a fireman. So,
00:22:06
Speaker
You know, we just need to educate them. And I think once we do that, I said, doc, if you can figure out how to educate the entire fire service to listen to EMS, you will make a mint. Well, first you got to have a figure out how to not put two firemen in a room and break a ball bearing. Yeah. Yeah. And the one guy from Howard County, he was just, he was like preach. But I also see the other side of it is there are people who got into it.
00:22:37
Speaker
not to do EMS. And we went from a specialization, you used to be a firefighter and you used to be an EMS provider. And then we said, nope, everybody has to do both. And there are people who do not want to do both. And on both sides of it, there are EMS people who don't want to do both. And it breaks my heart when they say, well, I would apply for your company, but you're making me do fire. I don't want to do fire.
00:23:06
Speaker
You know, I don't want to run into burning buildings. I want to go help strangers. I want to go provide CPR and I want to be the best friend I can be. I don't want to run a burning building. And that seems like a perfectly reasonable worldview to me. Absolutely. It's crazy for all the people who do run their burning buildings. And this is somebody who runs into burning buildings.
00:23:28
Speaker
We just, 20 years ago where we just decided everybody has to play together and it's not working. It's starting to fail. Yeah, it is. The system is cracking. Or maybe it has cracked. No, it's cracked. It's just, yeah, we're waiting for that. The dam's eventually going to fully break. Yeah. Yeah. But we'll, you know, if you can figure out the answer, please email us or join our discord and tell us because we would love to hear the answer. Yeah.
00:23:57
Speaker
I would love to have an answer. All the time I sit there and think about what can we do and I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what the answer is. Unfortunately, it comes down to voters and putting pressure on politicians to actually do something. Yeah. Rubber hits the road with politicians not being involved in one of the most important services you can provide to your voters. Yeah.
00:24:24
Speaker
That's it. That's the end of the day. Well, you figured that one out. Figured it out.
Mental Health in First Responders
00:24:30
Speaker
Well, I saw these in the topic one if we're done rigmarolling. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. And I think we'll probably just have one topic today. Yeah, this is kind of a bummer topic.
00:24:44
Speaker
So we just had a first responder, a police officer take his own life locally. I would say locally, these are short, still locally. Yeah, a couple counties away. And it's becoming an epidemic. It's not even becoming, it's an epidemic. It is, yeah. Fire, police, EMS, it's an epidemic, providers taking their lives. And I just wanted to talk about, and it's not about
00:25:10
Speaker
my view, but it's my experiences and you can chime in on your experiences if you want. I'm not passionate too. I'm an open book. But I think sometimes I think the problem is a lack of communication. I think we all, everybody who works this job internalizes everything and says, I'm different. And I don't think we're as different as we think we are.
00:25:38
Speaker
And I think that really ends up being the problem. Yeah, we all think, oh, we're wired differently. We can deal with this stuff. Not even that. I'm different. The reason I'm having this problem is I'm different. Oh, yeah. I see those other people and they're handling it, but I'm different. So something's wrong with me. And they end up at a point where they can't move on past that. Yeah, no, you're right.
00:26:09
Speaker
Yeah. You know, and you and I are old enough now that we kind of have kind of passed three generations of this bullshit. True. Yeah. You know, we've kind of gone through, you know, I started in EMS. I wrote my first ambulance call in 1995 or 96 somewhere around there. I can't remember. And the guys who I wrote the ambulance with then were old salty firemen who'd been around since the seventies, you know, and
00:26:36
Speaker
Boy, your emotions didn't matter, right? You weren't tough enough. Right. Get the hell out. Suck it up, Buttercup. Yeah. And I don't want to ... I think there's a part of that suck it up Buttercup that matters because
00:26:58
Speaker
There is an attitude that you have to have to do our jobs that is sucking up buttercup. I'm cold, I'm wet, I'm tired, I'm pissed off, but I still have a job to do. Yeah, but that's the thing. It's when you have the job to do. When the task is over, when the call is over, whatever. Yeah, that's when you need to be able to let yourself be a human and feel and break down and get that stuff out. Yes, I agree. But I think
00:27:26
Speaker
One of the reasons people feel threatened is that they think the suck it up buttercup has to go away. And I think suck it up buttercup still needs to be there. You still have to be tough to do this job. It's a tough job. It is. So you still have to have that mental toughness. Yeah, I think that's a good point. So I don't want that to go away, but I also want us to be able to deal with things. So I was thinking about this on my bike ride today in the 68 degree weather.
00:27:56
Speaker
in January and been thinking about it all day because of the news out of the shore and thinking about my own experiences. I worked for bosses who didn't care about my mental health. I went through a period where I would get this feeling that if I went to work, I was going to die and I would call out sick. It happened quite a few times.
00:28:23
Speaker
I didn't talk to anybody about it because I knew that if I talked about it, I would never get promoted. I would be probably relegated to a position I didn't want to be in. And that would have been the end of the story. I probably would have quit the fire department and been done. So I think a lot of people get to that point.
00:28:49
Speaker
And a lot of people get to the point where they can't, they just can't find a place to turn to. Yeah. And then they look at the old salts and I sadly to say, I'm one of the old thoughts now. And they're like, well, how the hell did you do it? And you can't answer them. And that's the hardest part. Yeah. You know, because to me, I didn't know I had PTSD until I wrote a paper for college. And I was like, wait a second. Yeah. I have that and that.
00:29:20
Speaker
And that and that and that. Because I had been taught that PTSD only happens from an occasion. Right. Right. I've been taught you only get PTSD from the Twin Towers or a traumatic call. And traumatic calls never bothered me. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's the aggregate calls that build up and, you know.
00:29:43
Speaker
The constant stress, the things like that, that can easily now, I said, there's, there's another term for it now and I can't remember what it is. Yeah. I looked it up in my paper. I can't remember what it is. I wish I could find my paper because there was some, finally, when I was writing this paper, there was some research about the different kinds of PTSD that first responders go through.
00:30:03
Speaker
Every day, you're exposed to loud noises and stressful calls and your adrenaline dumps and your dopamine dumps and the highs and the lows and the lows and the lows and the anorings and just the burnout and all of the things. But we just never, we just dealt with it. Cumulative PTSD. There you go. And I think
00:30:26
Speaker
A lot of people in our line of work feel like, well, I have burnout, but that's my problem. And they're, unfortunately, when they go to their bosses and say, hey, I can't do this anymore, there's no answer. If someone comes to me at work and says, hey, I just can't handle being on Amazon anymore, I don't have an answer to them because where do I send them?
00:30:56
Speaker
You know, I don't, I can't be like, all right, we're going to put you down in the minor leagues for a while. So you can just chill out. Like we don't have that option. Yeah, we don't, you know. Yeah. I mean, other than, yeah, yeah. Referring them to, you know, inpatient outpatient stuff. And that's not always the fix. It's not a fix. Like I am, that is one thing. I'm so glad that we stopped the whole, Oh, you had a bad call. Go home.
00:31:25
Speaker
Well, there's two things I'm glad we stopped. Cause that was ridiculous. I mean, you send in, yeah, you would have a bad call at midnight. Okay. Yeah. Just, just go home. No, I want to finish your shift. I just go home. Okay. I'm going to go home to my empty apartment and drive past three bars on the way. Right. They tried to send me home one time at five in the morning. And I'm like, that's my shift's got an hour and a half left. Right. I got a two hour drive back home. What's the point?
00:31:55
Speaker
And it didn't, the call didn't bother me. It was never a question of how are you feeling? It's a question of this is what we think you should feel. Right. Yeah. Right. And the other thing that I hated was the chaplain coming over and saying, this is how we deal with this. You're nothing to me. Yeah. And I am sure there are some departments that have a very engaged, personable, likable chaplain. We haven't had that. I don't, but, but it's presumptuous of,
00:32:24
Speaker
the department to think that I want to talk to a chaplain anyways. Well, yeah. You're not talking about my religious beliefs. Right. Talking about somebody else's religious beliefs. Yeah. You know, if you're going to say this is our mental health counselor, and maybe he also support, does spiritual support, that's a different conversation. Exactly. But this idea that you have to have a chaplain, and if you're not a follower of that religion, then fuck you. Yeah. You know, terrible. It is. Yeah.
00:32:52
Speaker
How many fire departments have they have chaplains and that's their spirit. That's their support system. Yeah. You know, I think there are probably some amazing chaplains out there who do amazing work, but that doesn't mean it's for me. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those, it should be an option, but not a force. Yeah. We forced it. Yeah. We still force it on people in our department. It's insane.
00:33:20
Speaker
I don't want to get in that conversation. We don't have a good answer. We think we have answers. That's the worst part. I think that's the trap we're in now. That's the part I feel like we're really screwing up. We think we know the answer is, but we don't.
00:33:40
Speaker
Because if someone comes to me and says, this is going on, okay, well, we're going to send you to inpatient care. Well, I can't not see my family for three months. I can't work my three other jobs that I need to work for three months. I can't survive off the money you're paying me to go to inpatient care. So no. Yeah. And like you said, and then there's
00:34:07
Speaker
another reason why people are going to keep things close to the chest. Cause they're gonna say, well, if I say something, they're going to try to do this and that, and I won't be able to work. I won't be able to do this. And yeah, it's a shame. It is a shame. And you know, the other part of it is I always felt, and I'm just going to stop talking. I'm talking only for myself. I always felt it was my burden to bear. I signed up for the job. This is what I signed up for. But you didn't.
00:34:37
Speaker
I did. There is a part of that that's true. We can't get away from that. I took an oath. I'm special. I'm not special, but I'm more special than some because I knew what it was going into it a little bit. My mother was an ER nurse. My dad was on the ambulance. I knew more than most going into it. I knew what it was going to be.
00:35:04
Speaker
So, but I always felt this is my burden. I do this so other people don't have to. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think that comes. That's part of the whole, you know, mentality of a lot of first responders. Yes. It's because we're, you know, we're fixers and we'd rather lump it on ourselves and deal with it. I mean, that's why.
00:35:25
Speaker
I can't remember what the study said, but it's like more than half of all first responders fire EMS police score, like six or higher on the ACEs score, the adverse childhood event. Cause we get into this so other people don't have to go through some of the stuff we did or see some of the stuff we see and all that. Yeah. I mean, it's.
00:35:48
Speaker
It's such a hard job, you know, and then I can tell you now going into my 20, whatever, it's the year of this stuff. It's not getting easier if anything's getting worse, you know. And I talked to the guys that did work the other day. I don't think it's the bad cause because I went to paramedic school to go to the bad cause. Yeah.
00:36:09
Speaker
I went to paramedic school to go to traumas. I went to paramedic schools to give D50 and bring back diabetics, and I went to do CPRs. That's why I went. The contract failed when I had to go to the nursing home for the 14th time in a shift. When I became a shuffler of patients instead of a caregiver, that's where the contract failed. Oh yeah, I think you're absolutely, that's a big part of it.
00:36:38
Speaker
I think it's also, I knew for me, another hard part of it is, look, I can take care of you sick as could be this and that, but it's, I think it's the ripple effects I see sometimes, especially once we started doing the termination resuscitation and everything with little to no training on how to tell a family that I still is so hard. Yeah. I mean, the other day, the shift before Christmas.
00:37:07
Speaker
I had to tell a family that their father was dead. Yeah. I didn't sign up for that. No. No one trained me for that. Right. No one has given me the skills for that. Now, the state gave you a half hour video about it. Yeah. The state gave me a half an hour video of it and everything they said in there was bullshit. And not one part of that was you have to look the family in the eye and tell them what's going on.
00:37:36
Speaker
And not only that, but then say, and see if I were leaving. That's, I think the worst part is for me, it's become, I have to give it as bad news and there's no resolution. Yeah. Yeah. Because so often, I mean, I've had people, what do I do now? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. And I have to go on another call. See ya. Yeah.
00:38:10
Speaker
And that's going to weigh on me, and it's going to weigh on anybody, I would hope. But the state has determined that that's my job. But they didn't ask me. They didn't say, hey, do you buy into this? And I believe in the EMS side of it. I don't believe in what they're doing.
00:38:30
Speaker
Yeah. I think making EMS workers into social workers is not... I know a social worker. She happens to be one of the best people in the world, but I couldn't do her job. No, absolutely not. The fire department's not the fire department. The state has mandated that I have to do her job.
00:38:51
Speaker
Yeah. That's crazy. It's absolutely insane. Hey, you spent 15, 20 years becoming a paramedic, learning all this stuff, becoming a firefighter, becoming an officer. Boom. Now we want you to be a social worker. Yeah. One call, Big Red does it all, right? No, he doesn't. They do? I was talking about our Big Red.
00:39:20
Speaker
You know, but it's been a pride, a moment of pride in my life that always, we've always answered the call. Oh yeah. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. I mean, and that's why people, when they don't know what else to do, they call the fire department or we even have dispatchers. We're like, why did you send us to that call? And they're like, we didn't know what else to do for that person. We knew you guys would find a way to fix it. We're the fixers. And I think that's part of it also is we get so,
00:39:50
Speaker
upset when we can't fix things. Of course. And we're upset with ourselves because we should have been able to fix it. And then like you said, well, I don't want to tell, you know, talk to Joe about it because maybe Joe could have fixed it and that's a fault on me. And you know, it's, yeah. Think about, I'm going to say again, from my experience, I went to fire one basic firefighting in 1997.
00:40:19
Speaker
They taught me how to tie ropes, throw ladders, fight fire. That's what they taught me. They never taught me to help people with their possessions that are ruined or find grandpa's ashes in the bottom of a car fire or turn off. They never told me the simple things like how do you turn water off in a building? Because people are going to call you for that. These are things that they never taught you for, but now we've become this
00:40:49
Speaker
Johnny on the spot and we're going to do everything. Yeah. And then when you can't, or you don't know how to do it, you're looked at in disgust. It's like, but what we called you, you're supposed to be the heroes. Right. Right. Yeah. I don't, I've never met a fireman, fire person firefighter. Yeah. I've never met somebody in this job who says no. Oh yeah. Yeah. And that is such an amazing,
00:41:19
Speaker
set of people that I am so privileged to be a part of. But also so worried that it's going away. Yeah, I agree. You know, yeah, I mean, think about it. We are. We are the only people who. We show up at your door and people let us in without question, they will hand us their loved ones, their kids, their whom ever and just trust this stranger.
00:41:49
Speaker
to take care and fix things. And we all signed up for it. We all loved it. And I think I said loved it very purposely there. We all did it for love. Nobody who works on the fire department is like, I guess I got nothing else to do. I'll go work at the fire department.
00:42:16
Speaker
Nobody. This is a way that I'm going to get rich and famous. Right. Not one person has run into a burning building like, yeah, this seems like it'll be something. Yeah. That's not true. We loved it. Loved it. Yeah. And then you and I, and I'm going to talk to every first responder, I hope you hear this, who's in my generation of firefighters. We all are the 9-11 generation.
00:42:47
Speaker
We changed our lives because of 9-11 for a lot of us. We made this our life, our career and we grew up- 18, 20. Yeah, we were dumb kids, but we grew up in the fire service from bosses who didn't give a crap, how you felt, who bosses who thought if you took sick time, you're weak.
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah. Bosses who thought you should be so excited to come to work that you never even take off a day. Right. And you should do it for $12 a day. Yeah. What do you mean you're going to take off? Right. But don't you know I need somebody? Well, no, but I need to be with my family. Yeah. But not only that, and we did it for new pay. Yeah. Yeah. We loved it so much. And then somewhere along the lines, not just our department,
00:43:42
Speaker
Oh yeah. Every department across the country, the 9-11 money ran out, the joy. I'm going to say 15 years after 9-11, no one give a crap about the fire department ever again. Yeah.
00:43:55
Speaker
You're just the guys that show up and then we're going to yell at you because you did this instead of this. Or you were too slow or you blew your siren in the middle of the night and it woke me. How dare the fire department take a vehicle down this road? Yeah. Oh my gosh. That was a bad mistake that lady did. Absolutely. But that's what we deal with. Yeah. Yeah. Don't you know we're going to a fire? Yeah. Yeah, but I got to get it to the grocery store so I'm going to pull over. Yeah. You know? Yeah.
00:44:24
Speaker
What do you mean the firemen are at the grocery store or the store? Yeah. How dare that firemen run in the drug store and buy, I'm perfect. Cause his back hurts. You know, how dare he, he should be on calls. Yeah. I mean, we get dragged through the mud through the internet. We get dragged through the mud by our bosses. What's the end goal? What's the end in sight for us? You know, pension.
00:44:54
Speaker
Yeah. But some of us aren't making it to pension. Yeah, that's yeah. You know, we're not making it because we're, we're not dealing with these problems. We're not having answers. And we, we, we feel like we've developed an answer and that's it. You know, I mean, I got in an argument with a neighboring department because they had gone to a system that I think doesn't work.
00:45:20
Speaker
Not that I think it doesn't have a purpose and doesn't have a place, but that's not the end of the program. And they were so built in, they put so much money into this program and they just didn't want to hear that training firemen to be social workers is never going to be the answer. Oh, yeah. No. We're not therapists. No. I don't have the temperament to be a therapist. I don't have the temperament to be a social worker. I don't like people that much. People are a puzzle to me. Yeah, you say that though, but you
00:45:51
Speaker
But you are good at in that moment. You're taking care of them. You're doing things where, like I said, we're the fixers. We're not the maintainers. Yeah. 25 minutes. That's totally different. I'll be your best friend for 25 minutes. Yeah. I'll do whatever you need for 25 minutes. Yeah. After that, I don't want to talk to you. Yeah. Yeah. And that right, wrong or different. That's, that's the deal I made. Yeah. No, I think you're right. There needs to be that, that warm handoff and you know,
00:46:22
Speaker
we are pre-hospital caregivers, emergency caregivers. We're not, you know, six hour fixers or whatever. It's in the moment, the heat of it, we're fixing it, we're addressing it. And now it's, we're going to give you to this doctor to continue your care or, you know, whomever. And I think a lot of the times we don't have the right whomever and it's,
00:46:50
Speaker
And then we take it on ourselves. We're like, I was supposed to fix this. I didn't fix it. So we work for you and I, and then we could talk just for fireside.
Non-Emergency 911 Calls
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah. The city we work for uses the fire department to enforce codes, not the firearms office, but they expect us to find problems and kick people out of houses in the middle of the night. Yeah. I'm not a code enforcement officer. I trained up front into burning buildings.
00:47:20
Speaker
I see people in need, I'm going to help them. That's my job. Don't expect me to find problems, but that's what it become. It's just another thing that's been added onto this list of stuff. I think my theory, my hypothesis is that's the stuff that's getting fire and police and EMS workers to the point where they can't handle anymore. It's not the emergency calls.
00:47:50
Speaker
It's the other stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it absolutely is. Like you said, we're trained for, you know, the high tech stuff, the, you know, the cardiac patients, the diabetics, the, I mean, even the grandma schmerkins who fell, we're trained for that. Sure. It's the, well, I called 911 because I can't find my TV remote. Yep. I, you know,
00:48:18
Speaker
You know, I'm thirsty. Oh, I, you know, we're not joking. We are not. I don't, I was not joking about it, but we talk. You make that comment and we had that person in Salisbury and he was in my first two and I just could watch our responders getting angrier and angrier. Yeah. And to the point where something was going to break. Yeah. And our responders feel like they can't,
00:48:48
Speaker
They can't blow off the steam that they need to. They can't be angry because if they were angry, their bosses are going to come down on them and say, how dare you? Yeah. When we're also never allowed to say no. When we're never allowed to say no. So we run out there and we pick his remote up and say, what channel you want it on? Yep. Three o'clock in the morning, you're finally getting some sleep. Nope. He's thirsty. He wants you to call. He's called 911 because he's thirsty.
00:49:16
Speaker
Yep. Or he wants a sandwich or whatever. And I could watch our responders to the point where somebody was going to lose their job. Yeah. And no part of me as the boss could say, I'm never going to say you can't vent to me about it because anybody that says you shouldn't be frustrated by it is a liar. Yeah. You know,
00:49:44
Speaker
You didn't get it. You didn't go to paramedic school to do that. No, no. And to think anybody should make you do that is insane. Yeah, I agree. You know, but our, I know, and because I've had bosses tell me, you just got to be nice all the time. Well, sometimes you're not going to be nice. Yeah. You know, there's going to reach a breaking point for everybody. There is, hopefully you can,
00:50:15
Speaker
do something before you hit that breaking point, but yeah. But again, it's, it's what do you do? You know, I don't know. You know, as a boss, now I, that's the, that's the part that's frustrating me as a boss. I can look at from the boss side of it and say, right, this is doing harm, but I don't have an answer what to do about it. Yeah. I can't send you out to a rural, you know, if we were a county department, I could be like,
00:50:44
Speaker
Hey man, go out to Palvo for awhile. Chill out, get some rest. Right. You know, it's not the perfect solution. No, but it's, it's some sort of a solution. You know, what was the, what was the stat? I can't remember what our calls per day was. No, I didn't. I can't remember off the top of my head. But the number is insane. Too many. It's too many. You know, our providers are not getting breaks and
00:51:13
Speaker
So back in the old days, we were like, Oh, just get on the engine for a while. You'll have a little break. Yeah. That's not, that's not happening anymore. Yeah. Station one, go to the vacation station. Yeah. Go to station one, go to the vacation station. Well, I could tell you if I was misled, there were, there were lies. There were lies. Cause there was no vacation out there. You know, they are busier than they've ever been.
00:51:39
Speaker
And it's not going to get better. And I think that's what's really bad for fire and police and EMS. This all comes out of this police officer. Think about the calls that they go on. They walk in, some of these police warrants walk in and their queue is eight hours long. They walk in saying, well, if I get to all of these calls,
00:52:04
Speaker
from, that's the cue, my whole shift's done. I'm not even getting to the calls that are going to come in while this is going on. And they didn't get into this for those calls. I can only imagine, I think about it all the time, a police officer, the people who want to be police officers, more than likely were like, oh man, SWAT looks awesome. Cop and robbers. Cop and robbers. You got into it because that's what you thought the job was going to be. It's not
00:52:31
Speaker
Donny Roy lied to me. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think that is one thing you got touched on it that we were fortunate in firing EMS because we're, if you're on the ambulance, you're with your partner. If you're on the engine, you're with two or three other folks cops are by themselves. They are. So they get done that call and it's, they've got nobody to bounce anything off of, or they just have to sit there and, you know, be in their own heads. That's awful.
00:53:00
Speaker
It's it's clearly awful because it's killing cops. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, and you also have a ticket one step prior to that. You've got the dispatchers. Oh, yeah. They hardly ever get resolution. At least a lot of times, you know, we we took the patient to the hospital or, you know, the cop, they apprehended the suspect or whatever. The dispatcher on the other end is like, I dispatched him to a call. I have no idea what happened after that. Dispatcher is to me the worst job in the whole thing. Yeah.
00:53:30
Speaker
You know, you're more than likely the least paid. Oh, yeah. You're definitely the least appreciated. Oh, yeah. You get yelled at by everybody. You get yelled at every side. And there's very rarely do you hear stories of let's reward the dispatcher. It's always well, the dispatcher fucked up. This is what's happening now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's and hearing people screaming
00:53:55
Speaker
For help. Gosh. On a day in and day out basis? Oh my god. Yeah. You want to talk about cumulative PTSD. And I've never met a dispatcher who's healthy. No. I've never met a dispatcher who is dealing with things well. No. It seems to me. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah. They all seem to handle it poorly because they're not getting support.
Coping with First Responder Stress
00:54:22
Speaker
No.
00:54:24
Speaker
But we're not doing it. Maybe that's another part that I want to transition to is in this conversation is what I did to get healthy ish. Yeah. I'm not saying I'm perfect in my brain, but, and I'm not saying it's going to work for everybody, but you got to have the time to unplug yourself. No, that's the biggest thing.
00:54:49
Speaker
I don't hang out around, there's only one firefighter who I talk to on a regular basis and that's you. I don't go to firefighter bars. I don't hang around firefighter events. I don't want to talk shop. I have a couple of friends who I check in on across the country who I've met and I have good relationships with, but they're not my friends that I hang out with.
00:55:19
Speaker
Firefighters hang out with firefighters. Yeah. And they talk about firefighter calls. Well, it's like you talked about for the beginning, you know, it's cause they love the job, they love the trade and it's, that's great. But yeah, you've got to, you've got to have that other way to disconnect from it and you know, touch base with what's, I hate to say about the normal life, not the stupid life we have and be able to
00:55:47
Speaker
you know, attach yourself to a more grounded reality. And because the job's not going to be there forever. And I think that's another big issue we see is when, you know, these guys and gals, they can't do the job, you know, for whatever reason it cripples them. Yeah. Because that's all they've known their entire life. I mean, we just had a gentleman retire after 42 years. This, this is the only job he's ever had. Right. This is all his life has ever been. So.
00:56:17
Speaker
Yeah, that's got to be hard. Sure. I can tell you when I thought that my shoulder injury was going to maybe lead to permanent disability, that I got to the point where I would hear fire sirens and be like, man, I miss it. Yeah. And I talk about, oh man, I'm ready for my retirement. I don't know if that's true. I don't know what's going to happen in six years, how I'm going to feel, but I know that a part of it is I've got to walk away.
00:56:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yep. I don't see the fire service getting back to the point where I think it's going to be a good, I don't want to say this the wrong way. It's a good job. It is. Yeah. It's the best job I've ever had. It is. But the service has got to change or it's going to, it's not going to work anymore. Yeah. I mean, you don't call the garbage man to come mow your lawn.
00:57:12
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You know, which one it's because I'm always the, I guess, contrarian. And that's another thing I always felt. I always felt that as an outsider in our fire department, I still feel like an outsider in our fire department. And I think a lot of people feel that way. And it probably gets on you. Like, you know, as a contrarian,
00:57:39
Speaker
As an officer now, I get to say, no, we're not coming out to unlock your car. Call Papa Lock. That's their job. No, I'm not unclocking your toilet. Call a plumber. That's their job. I think that's going to be the end result is eventually some leaderships are going to have to say, no, we're done. We're not doing that. I don't know the answer.
00:58:09
Speaker
We had a unit a little while ago dispatched to light up a scene for police. And they were out there for hours, didn't get to eat dinner, didn't get to go to bed on time, sitting there lighting up the scene for police. And the boss's excuse is, well, it's our job to help other agencies. It's not our job.
00:58:34
Speaker
That's the police's job. If they need heights, then they need to get their own lights. Call the electric company. Call the highway. Call somebody who's not us because you're just putting us in situations that we don't need to be in and you're just adding stress to their day. When they're sitting there hungry.
00:59:04
Speaker
It was some kind of traumatic or sure sentinel event. So now we're re exposing our folks to that. Taking them out of their somewhat normal cycle. Yeah. Now we've deprived them from food, shelter. It's the whole Maslow's hierarchy. If you talk about just the damage that we do to ourselves just by working our shifts and there is no
00:59:32
Speaker
I don't care what study comes out. And I know this sounds contrarian and wrong to say, but I don't care what study comes out. There's no good answer to who handles the EMS call at three o'clock in the morning. Yeah, but no, there's not. There's no perfect like, Oh, well, if you work from eight to three, then it'll be okay. There's no good answer to this. Yeah.
00:59:57
Speaker
humans are already doing by doing that on a circadian rhythm. It's right. You can't change that. And. But to as a boss to sit there and say, all right, well, now we're going to go take extra duties and you're not going to eat your food and you're not going to get to sleep. Right. Yeah, that's. Yeah, you're just going to go sit out there and I've sat on fire calls. Oh, yeah, starving to death. I've been on EMS calls, starving to death. Yeah. So tired that I can't keep my eyes open.
01:00:26
Speaker
I staged one night on Christmas Eve for four hours. That's four hours that you could have been doing anything else. The leadership doesn't think about that. They just think, oh, we're out there doing a good job. Well, I got to take a piss. It's four hours. This is a funny aside maybe.
01:00:56
Speaker
Well, you don't have it as bad as we do because you're on the ivory tower. When's the last time when you were a frontline firefighter that you could take a shit in peace? Oh my gosh, that never happens. No. Even if a call doesn't come in,
01:01:14
Speaker
You're thinking about what if a call comes in. Hey, I just worked out, I need to take a shower. What's going to happen if a call comes in? I'm going to stage my shorts here and my socks here so I can get them ready to go. I'm going to run out soaking wet. Yeah, the pooping thing is the worst though. I try to explain it to my friends. I'm like, you guys will never experience
01:01:37
Speaker
the idea that I can't take a shit in peace. Because you're like, do you wait until you're about to explode? Because then you're going to get a call and you're going to grab your pants. You're going to be on a call for... If you have to take a dump and you don't, you're going to get punished and you're going to be on a call for two hours or you can't get to a toilet. And then there's going to be a picture on the news of a fireman taking a shit in a field.
01:02:05
Speaker
Uh, that was the nice thing about the old fire engines, the side doors, they opened, made a perfectly little, you know, covered area. Yeah. But yeah, it's, yeah. Yeah. It's all stress we're adding to our people. You can't, you can't poop in peace. You can't eat a meal. No. Not that my overeat, my overweightness is not partially my fault, but I've never eaten a meal in less than 30 seconds. Oh
Impact of Shifts on Eating Habits
01:02:34
Speaker
yeah.
01:02:35
Speaker
You know, I mean, I haven't been on shift in four or five years. I still eat like a wolf. It's like someone's going to steal my food. It's not that someone's going to steal my food. It's that I'm not going to see that food. Yeah, I know. But yeah, it's, you know, it's, and I go out with friends or something and they're like, what you're done already? Yeah. Yeah. Because I might have to go to call. Yeah. What are you talking about? Yeah. You don't know what's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah.
01:03:05
Speaker
But that's crazy. And the calories that we eat just to survive the day. If you ever go into a firehouse, you've never been in a firehouse. You go in a firehouse, there's cookies and brownies and whatever sitting around because sometimes they just need something. And they'll be snacking. And the problem is you're snacking like you're going to use 18,000 calories and then you don't end up doing it. But if you don't snack like that, you're going to end up at two o'clock in the morning going, Oh my God, I can kill somebody for a brownie.
01:03:36
Speaker
Yeah. I will eat a Wawa hot dog at this point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wawa is the greatest thing that's ever happened to the fire service. Oh my gosh. I can't tell you how many times I've gone out of a call and gone right to Wawa, grabbed anything and just shuffled in my face. Yep. You know, three o'clock in the morning, there's three donuts. Yeah. Why? Because I'm on my 18th call and I'm not going to stop soon. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. What was it?
01:04:05
Speaker
Like just the act of going to work increases your caloric need by like 500 because as soon as you turn on for work, you're.
01:04:16
Speaker
Your heart rate goes up, your metabolism kicks up a little bit because you're in a pre-alarm fight or flight the entire shift, and that's not healthy. It's really bad when it starts to bleed into the day before and the day after. That's what I was about to say. It's not just the day of the shift.
01:04:37
Speaker
It's the night before the shift. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's six o'clock. I kind of go to bed because I got to get up at three o'clock. I want to go to work. Yeah. And, you know, oh, it's the day after shift. Oh, man, I got I got to do seven things before I can even think about taking a nap. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I used to when I had a Fitbit, I would track and it was like clockwork because we were D shift A shift.
01:05:03
Speaker
I got off that morning, that night I would collapse. I would get like 10, 12 hours sleep. The next night, B shift night, I would get normal eight hours most times. C shift the night before we worked, I would be lucky to get six hours of sleep. If I get six hours of sleep on a C shift, I think that's a win. Yeah. And then of course, you know, D shift we work. It was usually between two and four hours of sleep. Yeah. I have the, um,
01:05:29
Speaker
the garment now. Yeah. And I can pull up my sleep from last night at work. Yeah. You know, and we didn't even run a call. Right. Yeah. But still your, did I miss a call? Is there a call going on? Are those guys okay on their call? What's going on there? That's yeah. Yeah. Cause that's the thing folks. You don't just, it's not just, you know, the dispatcher comes in and rubs your shoulder and says, Hey, wake up. There's a call. It's this horrible cacophony. And you're like, what?
01:05:58
Speaker
Oh, that wasn't even my station. And then you're supposed to go back to bed in a decent restful sleep. It doesn't happen, folks. Yeah. So or or you come back from the call after you just you said you you drove like a maniac across town, pulled somebody from the jaws of death. You took him to the hospital and then you're supposed to go back in out like a light. Yeah. So yeah. Bye, Carmen.
01:06:27
Speaker
says that yesterday. I got two hours and 47 minutes of rest. Okay, a 24 hour period. Okay. Now, my 24 hour period starts at three in the morning when I get up because yeah, that's just how I work. My stress level from 7am until midnight is all in the stress over 75%. Oh, that's that's that's healthy.
01:06:54
Speaker
That's good for your body. The only time I got rest was somehow at 9 30 until about 9 40. I got like, it was actually asleep. 10 minutes. 10 minutes. We were going to call. Yeah. So think about what that's doing to my body. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but just, just alone that high stress level, the cortisol levels. That's,
01:07:24
Speaker
And the only way I deal with it and that's what I've developed is I drive by myself for two hours. Hopefully no doctors call me during that two hour drive. And then I go for a walk or I go ride my bike or that's the only way I can dump it out of my system. Oh yeah. Yeah. But unfortunately too many guys and gals, they're not, they don't have that luxury. They're,
01:07:49
Speaker
going right to another job or they're coming home to take care of the screaming kid or the whatever. I watched my driver this morning get off his work and he looked like shit because I don't care what you do. You don't sleep great at work. You just don't. And if you do sleep great at work, you're never going to get a call and then you get yelled at your boss because you missed the call. But you don't sleep great. And he was like, I'm on my way to work.
01:08:19
Speaker
And I'm like looking at him going, you look like shit now, and you're about to go drive a big truck around. Right. Yeah. Full of petroleum products. Full of petroleum products. You know, what is that doing to your body? He's 28 years old. Yeah. And I'm looking at him going, I know where you're at. I've been there. Yeah. Christ, I would drive all over the goddamn country after my shifts, you know? How do we fix him? I don't know.
01:08:48
Speaker
You know how we fix them, Chief? Yeah. We pay them right. Yeah, that's a big part of it. $40,000 a year for a man who's trained as much as he has and has dedicated his life. Yeah. It's not a fair trade. And when that man finally says, I'm done, I'm going to go deliver widgets for Amazon.
01:09:13
Speaker
and where you have to go. We just lost, we just lost all that dedication. And I, you know, I look at, we just lost, love or hate him. We just lost what I thought was one of the best people on A-Shift to go be a deputy sheriff. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and we didn't just lose a person. We lost, I think you had like six years on the job. Yeah.
01:09:41
Speaker
six years of experience. Oh, yeah. The dedication that he brought to learn his job. Yeah. To do all the training that he did. And, you know, he was one of those. He seemed like a genuinely happy to be here, proud to serve kind of guys. Sure. Absolutely. You know, the rarity now. Yeah. And we couldn't keep him. Yeah. And the fire department didn't give a crap.
01:10:11
Speaker
The fire department said, you're right. Say bye. You want to go somebody somewhere else? Screw you. You know, instead of having a conversation, what can we do to fix this? It was, thank you for your service. Say bye. We'll get somebody else. We don't have anybody else anymore. No, we don't. You know, and that's, I don't know. I don't know the answer anymore. And when my firefighter walks out and says, I'm done, I'm going to say, I don't know what to do. Right.
01:10:41
Speaker
you know, and I can't blame them. I literally can't blame them anymore. Um, we did it. We shouldn't have done it. I think that's the problem. I think that's one of the worst attitudes in the fire services. Well, I had to put up with it. Yeah. Oh God, it is. Do you remember? I came to work for $27,000 a year. Well, that was wrong then too. Yeah.
Fire Service Challenges and Misconceptions
01:11:02
Speaker
Oh yeah. You know, it was wrong. Yeah. Um,
01:11:07
Speaker
I don't know the answer to that problem. I do the answer we've already talked about. Politicians. And you talk to our politicians and they say, well, you're the most expensive fire department in the state. What are you talking about? I would love to know where they get that. Do you know how much other fire departments pay? They still don't pay enough.
01:11:38
Speaker
You know, it's, it's, I dunno, I dunno boss. I don't know the answer to all these problems. I think that's the worst part for me personally. And I think the worst part for a lot of our fire services, and I think that's ultimately for the source responders is they end up at this point. We don't have answers to fix this. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, those are my ceiling fan moments is, you know, how are we going to fix it?
01:12:08
Speaker
Yeah. How are we going to prevent suicide? Yeah. I don't know. You know, we talk about, Oh, well your peers are going to notice something. You know what that does? That makes your peers feel like shit when they didn't notice. Yeah. Oh, I should have noticed that. I should have seen it coming. Yeah. He was just the same guy. He's always been, you know, or,
01:12:36
Speaker
they were always like that, or I just was wrapped up in my stuff and now you've put audit on me. And I don't know the details and the stats, but departments that are affected by it, I can't imagine how that long-term effect, I know for a fact that Wilmington Firepart, when they lost three firefighters in line of duty,
01:13:02
Speaker
A bunch of firefighters said, I'm done. I can't do it anymore. And we all, again, I don't want to take it away. We signed up for that. We signed up to burn into burning buildings. No firefighter is ever bitching about running into burning buildings.
Workplace Culture in Fire Services
01:13:19
Speaker
And we know it's dangerous, but we didn't sign up for the rest of it. No, no.
01:13:28
Speaker
And I don't that's I feel like I just waste everybody's time. No, you didn't waste anybody's time. I mean, it's definitely it's I mean, even if all this does is generate a conversation in a firehouse or an EMS station or something like that, or even a police station, it's done something. Yeah, it really has because the more people talk about it and understand it. And so it's not just that.
01:13:56
Speaker
You know, I'm different or this and that. No, we're all screwed up. I would love to sell you all. And if I could reach every firefighter, every person, spotter, every police officer, EMS worker, dispatcher. Yeah. You're not different. No. We all feel what you feel. Yeah. We have all felt like we couldn't turn somewhere. Yeah. But if you, if your boss is someone you feel like you can't turn to,
01:14:26
Speaker
you should quit that job. If your boss thinks it's okay to yell at you at work over shit that doesn't matter, you need to quit that job. Because if your boss is making the parts of your job that shouldn't be difficult, more difficult, quit that job. It's not worth it. I'm going to tell you that 100% of the time. That's just the truth of the matter. If you can't talk to your boss about this stuff,
01:14:55
Speaker
And here's the problem. As a boss, I don't have an answer, but I'll listen to you, you know? Yeah. What if you yell at your boss over something stupid? Wrong directions. But again, I mean, that was a buildup that I know that was, that wasn't an isolated event. No, it wasn't. No. So.
01:15:25
Speaker
I mean, if my employee yelled at me or something like that, we're like, all right, look, we're done. We're not going to yell about it. But, you know, this sounds weird to say because of how I grew up. I grew up in the fire service with guys who thought it was okay to yell at people in the fire service. This is my job.
01:15:51
Speaker
I don't go to fucking Bank of America and have some manager come screaming at me about the fucking toilets not being clean. There is no place in a professional environment. I don't care if you're talking volunteer. I don't care if you're talking police, fire, EMS, dispatcher. There is no place in any workplace for a person of power to yell at a subordinate.
01:16:20
Speaker
Right. That's just not right. And that doesn't help the situation. No, it doesn't. No, it just escalates. It just escalates until you lose that employee. Yeah. You know, but it doesn't help anybody. It just, it only makes things worse. And if you can't see that, you shouldn't be a boss. You know, just shouldn't be.
01:16:45
Speaker
Because you don't have the temperament for it. No, you don't. And that's, I think that's another side of the fire department. We have personal, we specifically the fire service have is people don't treat it as a profession.
Administrative Roles vs. Fieldwork
01:17:01
Speaker
Cause we do joke around and we laugh and we have fun at work as much as we can. Right. But it's still our profession. It's still our job. It is. It is. You're not there to be treated like shit. No. You know, I'm, I used to even, I can say I was because I was raised this way. Probies are probies and probies are blah. Yeah. And when I got promoted the first to take over the off the, be the officer of station one,
01:17:29
Speaker
My probies reported to me and they said, they told me I wasn't supposed to talk. And I said, bullshit, because if you're not talking, then I don't know if you're learning. Exactly. And they, they even told me that they weren't even supposed to carry radios because they weren't supposed to talk on the radio. And I said, bullshit, because you have eyes and you're an adult. And if you need to talk on the radio, you need to talk on the radio. Exactly. And
01:17:57
Speaker
to break that cycle of probationary members being less than dirt. Sure, they don't know everything about the job. They're on the job. But they're on their job. They're not at their hobby. You're not their father. You're their boss.
01:18:19
Speaker
They should expect you to treat them with respect as adults. Yeah, absolutely. That's just another bullshit thing that is affecting people, I think. This has just become a rant now. Yeah, but you got to get it out.
01:18:36
Speaker
Yeah, I'm very lucky. I mean, this is another thing I could tell you. If you have the opportunity to marry my wife, marry her, she'll really keep you grounded. She makes me feel like crap all the time. But you need to have somebody in your life you can unload to. Yeah, you do. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got to have a person.
01:18:58
Speaker
You've got to have somebody. I don't know. It doesn't have to be the love of your life, but you got to have somebody in your life you can just talk to and get this shit out of your system. The frustration of the fire services.
01:19:16
Speaker
It's real and I think it's killing people. No, it is. It is. And it's like you said, it's not just our profession, it's dispatchers and cops too. I don't know how, I look at the couple of dispatchers that worked for what? Comica County for as long as I've worked for Salisbury. And I'm like, I don't know how you've done it. Yeah, I don't. It's such a crazy job that they have and get paid as little as they get paid. Yeah.
01:19:45
Speaker
you know, we give them crap all the time. Um, but I couldn't do their job. No, no, no, no. Yeah. There's fire departments that are so crazy that they're like, Hey, you got promoted. Now you're working in dispatch.
Challenges Faced by Dispatchers
01:20:01
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What? Yeah. Or Hey, you're on late duty. You're in dispatch. Exactly. Hey, um,
01:20:12
Speaker
You've never been trained for this and you're not ready to experience this, but go listen to people screaming about it. They need help. That's fine. What? Yeah, it's healthy. This is another personal opinion. I don't think it's healthy that we have admin officers. No offense to you guys in the admin, but you didn't get in the, I hope you didn't get in the job to be an admin. And I'm sure there are people who did.
01:20:42
Speaker
They were like, Oh, I want to climb with the ladder and be over there. But like, Hey, you're promoted. You're going to supply. You're going away from everything you trained for and yeah, experienced. And what's the frustration of that? I couldn't even imagine. Yeah. You know, my boss asked me why I didn't put in from promotion. I said, because the only place for promotion is a job I don't want to do. Yeah, that's true. You know, you, you take that away from me. You put me in supply for my career and I would be, I'm walking away from the job. Yeah.
01:21:11
Speaker
I was fortunate in my part in admin. You are, and I'm not taking away that it's not an important job and it has to be done, but you didn't sign up for it, right? You signed up to go on calls. Yeah. You want to help people. Oh yeah. Yeah. I can't imagine the frustration when you're like, man, there were three amazing calls in Salisbury, but I was in meetings. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. There's that frustration, but it's also,
01:21:41
Speaker
Say to go back to one of your very earlier points. Now I'm doing, you know, those meetings and stuff. So somebody else doesn't have to. Sure. But you're taking that on yourself. Oh yeah. That's yeah. What's that doing to you? Exactly. Yeah. You know, um, I look at our captain who's trying to get the hell out of admin as quick as he can because he wants to get back to the job he signed up for. Yep. Oh yeah. You know,
01:22:10
Speaker
Um, and some people are, and this is not a Salisbury thing because you look at some of these, the bloat on all these departments. Yeah. You know, Hey, congratulations. You're promoted to fire prevention. Yeah. I want to be on an engine. Yeah. I want to be on enabled. I want to be doing, no, no, no. We need you talking to school kids. What? Yeah.
Mental Health Support in Emergency Services
01:22:32
Speaker
Yeah. I have no training for that. Oh, well, you'll figure it out. Right.
01:22:37
Speaker
We're lucky in Salisbury that the people who are, for the most part, on the admin side are very dedicated to that job. I look at the fire marshal and say, man, we lucked out with that guy. Yes, we did. Well, what happens when he leaves? I don't know. A fire inspector will take over. Sure.
01:23:02
Speaker
There's a part of me that says, why do we have a supply officer when we should just hire a civilian to do that job and keep our firefighters doing firefighting jobs? You mean that was pitched six years ago? I know. And I look at that person going,
01:23:21
Speaker
He's stressing himself out over this job because I think ultimately he's not doing the job he wanted to do. Right. Oh yeah, yeah. That guy hired, he started the job with me. I know for a fact, he didn't start the job to be like, you know what I want to be? The supply officer. Yeah, I don't think so. Nobody did. Yeah. I don't know. Now it's just random. I'm just random. Yeah, no, but making it longer.
01:23:52
Speaker
I really wish I had an answer for everything I said. The only thing I can take away from all this is please, you're not different. No. Reach out, get help. And if you feel like you can't get help, reach out to us. Yeah. Reach out to somebody. Yeah. Because God, it's a tough job. It is. And whatever side we're talking about, it's a tough job. Yeah. And you doing things you didn't sign up for?
01:24:22
Speaker
And I feel for you. Yeah. And like you said, you don't have to, you know, struggle through it alone or whatever, reach out, talk, you know, hit us up, whatever you need to do. Yeah. And a weird thing to think about is not every therapist is going to be the answer for you. You might have to go through different people. You might take multiple people to find a therapist that you like or a system that you can work with.
01:24:50
Speaker
Yeah. It's like buying shoes. You got to find the pair that fits. Yeah. I wish I could live in a world where not a single firefighter, police, EMS, dispatcher, took their life for this job.
01:25:02
Speaker
Because we only get one. It's so precious. It is. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah, it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart. The family goes out to, how much, just the feelings of the family of the officer who took his life and the department that all of those ripple effects. And that guy didn't sign up for the job to then take his life because of it. No, he didn't. That's not fair to him. It's not fair to his family. And I wish I had an answer for all the problems.
01:25:31
Speaker
I don't, I don't think anybody has an answer and that's the problem. Yeah. Just try to be good to each other. And smoke weed. You know, the more I read about PTSD and marijuana use, the more it's driving me nuts that it's not more widely accepted. Yeah, I say smoke it. I mean, gummies or something. Whatever you got to do. Yeah.
01:26:00
Speaker
You know, the thing we know is bad is alcohol. Right. You know, turning to alcohol to solve your problems is just not working. No, it's not. And since I, we have other options and we're not, we are so against those options.
Pop Culture Chat and Self-Care Reminders
01:26:14
Speaker
Yeah. Well, uh, this on a happy note.
01:26:23
Speaker
Um, this season of destiny is really fun. That's good. I'm frustrated, but you know, the freaking legendary reset me all the way back to the middle of it. Yeah. That was a little frustration. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but think about how, how good you'll feel when you do it. Yeah. Yeah. Get a really cool gun. I got the cool gun.
01:26:48
Speaker
Yeah, but you get the next part of the gun. Right. Which means I just got to do more work. Yeah. And then more work. Yeah. Yeah. I can help you. I did get an exotic bow that I really like. Oh, nice. I don't know which one it is. Yeah. The tripwire canary. No. No. It's the one that splits into three shots. Oh.
01:27:09
Speaker
Trinity Ghoul. Yes. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Get the catalyst for that. It is. It's the war. I'm literally thinking about changing my whole spec and having a book spec. Yeah. Yeah. Trust me. Trinity Ghoul is a very, very capable weapon. Any movies coming out? Oh, I did see violent night. I totally recommend it. Okay.
01:27:38
Speaker
Romping good time with lots of blood and gore. Okay. Yeah, I'll check it out. It's on Amazon I think now. What's that? I think you can rent it on Prime. I'm sure. Yeah. You don't have to go to theater. Yeah. Theater. There's no MCU movies even coming out soon. Ant-Man in March. Yeah. And Hawkeye is now laid up. Got hit by a slow pile. Yeah.
01:28:07
Speaker
Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. Well, he doesn't have any superpowers, though. Yeah, but he's doing his best. He's out there trying. He is. I mean, think about the poor guy. He's got no superpowers. And he's stuck fighting aliens and... Yeah. Oh, yeah. He's a maniac. Yeah. Somehow he knows how to use swords, it seems.
01:28:31
Speaker
Is that in the comics where he goes like that? It is. Yeah. Okay. Fair. Yeah. Fun stuff. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, I passing judgment on Marvel snap. Eh. Yeah. I, it was fun and I've got burned out on it. Yeah. I just, I don't see a point of jumping in every day. Yeah. No.
01:28:52
Speaker
So that's fine. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's going to be it. I do have to make dinner for the wife before she goes crazy and kills me. I got to go pick up one of my kids soon, I think. Yeah. So seriously, folks, be safe out there. Take care of one another. Take care of yourself and then take care of one another. Yeah. Just be good. Yeah. So you're worth it. Hang loose.