ResQgeek

 A week ago today, i started noticing a number of condolence messages popping up on my Facebook feed, indicating that someone I used to know had died. This prompted me to do an internet search for news about the accident that was referenced in those posts. What I found was more than a bit of a shock. My old friend, Rod, had been killed in an accident, along with two other employees of the ambulance company he worked for when their car drove under a jackknifed tractor-trailer on the interstate between Syracuse and Watertown, in upstate New York.

I knew Rod from my time at Clarkson University, when I joined the Potsdam Volunteer Rescue Squad. I took my EMT class with his wife, Patsy, during the fall semester of my junior year, right after I joined the squad. The next autumn, I took my Advanced EMT-Intermediate class with Rod. He was one of my mentors in the squad, and I considered both him and his wife to be friends. I have fond memories of time spent hanging out with Rod at the rescue squad during my senior year at Clarkson. I even returned to Potsdam a couple of times during the first couple of years after I graduated to visit.

However, the distance proved to be too great an obstacle in that pre-World Wide Web world, and I mostly lost touch with them. Eventually, we reconnected on Facebook, but he was apparently not one of those people who spent lots of time there, so our Facebook connection was mostly symbolic. For my part, I felt some nostalgia for my college/rescue squad days when I saw his name, but otherwise there was no real connection to his current life. Specifically, I did not know that he had begun working for R.B. Lawrence Ambulance, a private ambulance company that provides inter-facility medical transport services for the North Country region of New York, and certainly did not know that he had become an EMS Supervisor for the company. I have no idea how active he was with the Potsdam Rescue Squad, but during my time there, I know he was a huge part of the organization. Given what I know about him, I know that he was a huge asset to the emergency services in the communities up there.

This week, I have watched Facebook fill up with notes and photos from his funeral.  It is clear that he was widely respected and that his sudden passing was a shock to the community.  These photos of the funeral procession moved me deeply:

              

The other surprise were the photos that showed that members of the FDNY Pipes and Drum Corps came up from New York City to pay their respects to a fallen brother. And the photos of the funeral procession passing underneath the giant US Flag hanging between the extended towers of two ladder trucks from different fire departments brought tears to my eyes. This was a funeral on a magnitude that is probably unprecedented in these small communities, and I think it shows just how widely spread the reaction to this tragedy was felt.

There was just no way for me to be able to attend the funeral myself, but I am comforted by the images of the massive outpouring of support. Rod dedicated his life to helping his community, and the community went to great effort to acknowledge his work on their behalf. Well done, all. Rest in peace, Rod. You will certainly be missed.

You've seen them, the crosses and flowers by the side of the road. Memorials to lives cut short in violence of a auto collision. They've become part of the landscape in the last couple of decades, marking dangerous intersections and deadly curves. They're now so common that they're easy to ignore. But with each memorial is associated with an untimely death, the grief of family and friends, and should serve as a reminder of the dangers we face in our cars.

I came face-to-face with the automobile fatalities fairly early in my life. I joined my local volunteer fire department when I turned 18, and the very first auto accident I responded to was a fatality. A man with a history of driving under the influence fell asleep at the wheel on his way home from a bar. His car drifted across the double yellow lines on a curved stretch of road and his drove underneath the trailer of a tractor-trailer truck headed the other way. He never woke up.

In the decade that followed, I responded to many other incidents involving motor vehicles, many of them fatal. Somewhere along the way I began to shield myself from the pain. I thought I had stopped feeling for the people who die in these accidents, especially the ones who die from their own mistakes. I was wrong.

Yesterday, a friend of mine posted a blog entry about witnessing a fatal accident while visiting her father in Florida. She has written a deeply moving piece about someone she had never met and it brought tears to my eyes. I felt a need to share her story here as well. Her entry is also available here on livejournal in a syndicated feed I created: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/mepsnbarry_adv/35948.html

So, the next time you drive by one of the many memorials on the side of the road, take a moment to reflect on the life that was lost. And ask yourself if you are being as careful as you could be...

Back in the day, when I was still an active EMT, people used to ask me what it was like. How do you explain what it feels like to work on an ambulance? Do you focus on the boredom of the waiting between calls, or the frustration when we have to transport a patient who really doesn't need an ambulance? Its easier to talk about those rare calls where someone's life hung in the balance and we actually could make a difference. This, usually, is what people want to hear about. But the one thing we almost never talk about is fear. Sometimes there are patients who are in serious danger, and nothing we do seems to help. The feelings of helplessness and fear in these situations is something most of us don't want to dwell on, and even have trouble expressing. However, Tom Reynolds, an EMT with the London Ambulance Service maintains a blog about his work, and earlier this week posted an entry about an asthmatic child that really captured these feelings, at least as I remember them. If you really want to know what it is sometimes like to work on an ambulance, read that entry, and you'll get a bit of an idea.

I really haven't posted much about my days as an EMT. Its not that there aren't stories to tell, because there are (in fact I keep hoping that someday I'll actually finish the memoir of my EMS career I started more than a year ago). I've been out of action as an EMT for eight years now, but I still love a good story from the streets. I recently noticed a link on suellenr's LJ to a blog that looks to keep me well fed with these stories. Night Runs is a blog maintained by some of her firefighter and paramedic friends. From what I've read so far, it is very well written, and provides some wonderful insights into what its like on the streets as a firefighter or EMT. I've found it very entertaining so far. If you'd like a taste of what my life was like before I became a family man, you should check it out. (I've added a LJ syndicated feed at night_runs, so you can add it to your friends page, if you're interested.)

Ok, so its day two of our all-too-brief stay in West Virginia, and we spent the entire day on the mountain skiing. The sun was out today, and it was a bit warmer. The snow softened up enough to be forgiving, but never really became slushy. A great day for skiing. We all had a good time, though we all could have used some sun screen, as we all sunburned our faces.

( My adventure du jour )