Worst comes and goes according to my mood or present situation. People always ask me what was my "worst" experience. I'll flick through my library of horror, and pick the one I figure will freak out the listener most!
Here's what I've learned: Horror comes in all shapes and sizes, textures, weights and, yes, even Non-forms.
There isn't any such thing as the worst, there can only be personal favorites at the time. If you really look at it, each of us has a potential "worser" that can happen in any moment. If anything, that's the lesson of this thread and its litany of nightmares. I read lots that could be my worst!
But it really doesn't stop there because the horrors are part of a greater Wonder! One summer, I kayaked a few sunsets a week in Santa Barbara. One evening I found myself in the middle of a sunset, bobbing in the swells, an occasional dolphin swimming by, and literally exclaiming to myself, "It can't get better than this!"
And it did! I swear to the Great Whatever, the next ten sunsets I was in the middle of in a row got better and better!
It is my position that the degrees of horror that you're able to accept -- not fight, not succumb to, not deny or avoid -- will determine the amount of beauty you are able to experience.
This is actually a gift of the profession that has guided my life since.
I get what you mean, i work in the Detroit area, seen some stuff, but nothing really bad, but before i became an EMT, I just took alot of things for granted. Used to go up north for deer season every year, sit and wait for a deer, bored out of my mind. and just last year i went out, sat in my blind, and just felt so good to be away from Detroit and all the city B.S.. Got out of my blind and say near a tree instead to further immerse myself in nature, watched the sun rise, making the freshly fallen snow seem to glitter. the experience seemed so intense to me that i forgot to flick off the safety when a buck finally passed my way.:blush:
I don't really like talking about my worst call with people who weren't there... it was just a big clusterf***.. but i'll talk about it here. We're all sitting in the station watching a movie, most of us not even in uniform, meanwhile a city bus driver is pounding on the office door for help w/ a woman having a Sz on the bus. we get paged "somebody go out and check on this bus thing..." all 7 of us make a mass exodus to the bus. EMT#1 and i board the bus, find a large, but young woman lying in the middle of the floor. not breathing, call out to EMT#2 that she's not breathing, need O2. EMT#2 comes back with a nasal cannula. EMT#1 can't get a radial pulse or carotid pulse. at this time EMTs#3 & #4 show up with the canvas stretcher and help us move her on to it. We move her into the ambulance, hook her up to the pulse oximeter. it shows her around SpO2 60%ish w/ an inconsistent pulse reading as it bounces between 20-90. we are unsure if she has a pulse or not. perhaps due to her excess fat we just can't find the carotid pulse. EMT#1 checks for a pulse again, EMT#5 starts the ambulance, and then just leaves to stand in front of the building. EMT#4 jumps in the driver seat and tells us that we're going. EMT#6(is a completely incompetent whacker) is sitting at the head of the Pt, where i need to be to BVM her. EMT#6 then moves into the stepwell to watch, he is useless, i literally kick him out of the side door, and lock him out. EMT#7 didn't do anything but tell us what to do after we've begun doing it. Sepervisor#1 is yelling at EMT#5 because 3 of our 7 EMTs just left in that ambulance. en route, EMT#1 has started CPR, I'm on the BVM. EMT#4 got confused and missed the exit, reroutes to the next hospital, no distance difference really, but the code was called to Hosp#1. (all 7 EMTs and 1 supervisor totally forgot about the AED, which is locked up and the key is on the drivers key) We roll up to Hosp#2. the nurse who meets us wants to know if this is real. we look at eachother very confused, I inform the nurse that '
no... it's not real, we're pretending to perform CPR on a Pt who is pretending to be dead because we thought it would be funny.YES, fatass, this is real!". nurse sends us to resus room. they take over from there. time to fill out the paperwork. go through the Pt's purse to find an ID. i find it, along with a picture of 2 young children and a stack of GED prep books. the PT turns out to be a 27 y/o w/ 2 kids, working on a GED to try to get ahead in life. as i come to this conclusion they call it.