And the answer to the question of why one becomes either a Paramedic or a Firefighter....
I did this one one day when someone asked a question on the Board about something or other and the only valid answer to ME was "If you hadda ask the question you could never understand the answer." Oh sure the person who was asked was polite enough about it but still, there are a LOT of questions out there that get asked and the answer is some version of the above.
QUESTION
"Why are you a Paramedic?"
"Why are you a Firefighter?"
The usual answers don't stray too far from "to help people". If you happen to know the person giving the answer well, and look closely, you see that this is a rote answer. An answer carefully practiced in front of friends and family, or a mirror. Certainly the drive to help other people has something to do with the initial choice to become one or the other. This motive hasn't got the staying power for the couple of years it takes to become one of the anointed. It hasn't got the "legs" to carry one through the grueling training in fire science and the physically impossible tasks we ask of our fire trainees. Or through the long nights and even longer days of Paramedic training, where sleep deprivation becomes an old familiar friend, where your "real job" becomes something you simply have to endure so you can get to class or clinical time.
If you talk to a veteran of Viet Nam or Desert Storm and ask about some particular feature of their experience, and this experience is combat related, the REALLY polite ones will try to give you an explanation, but ultimately will fail and know this. The much less polite ones will simply change the subject. The ones who care about your opinion will, in a kind of strained, pained tone; or a tone of bravado (usually false) look at you and say something which carries the message "If you have to ask the question, you couldn't possibly understand the answer."
There is nothing demeaning in that answer. Quite simply, if you haven't felt the frisson that accompanies the first sight of a rolled over car that you are going to have to remove a person from; or the flat out body shakes that happen as the bell on your Scott Pack STOPS ringing with you inside a full Haz-mat suit or on an interior attack when you've lost your hose; you could not possibly understand an explanation of why someone does these things.
There is no way a verbal explanation is going to convey the sense of urgency that propels a Paramedic across the hood of a car and through the broken windshield to secure a driver's C-spine as the rest of the rescuers are frantically (and none too gently) trying to remove the doors of the car to remove the driver. The 36 stitches the Medic earns from the glass because she didn't have her turn-out coat on at the time are simply the subject of station house jokes and next week's training talk. Pain from the lacerations? Trust me, she didn't feel any of them until the victim was fully collared and boarded. You KNOW that you would have felt the 6 lacerations as they happened, don't you?
If you have to ask the question, you couldn't possibly understand the answer.
How do you possibly deal with the things you see on a scene? Ask a SEAL how he survives and completes a mission with several injuries, each normally incapacitating. You get the same answer "We click on at the start." The flashing lights, the roars, screams, shouts, the splashes of blood that are the graffiti of an auto accident, the spectacle of flames jumping 150 feet in the air and the launch of paint cans in the night; are all set and setting that we never even see or hear as we focus on what our job is. Whether that be "Knocking it down!" "Getting wet stuff on the red stuff!" "Board and collar, now!" "Clear! Clear! Clear! Shock! Do we have a pulse to go with those complexes?", or standing back and dealing out hose companies, squads and engines to the correct sector or segment of the fire scene or accident scene. "We click on."
Please don't ask why we do what we do and expect something more than "To help people". Some of us will share poetry with you, something about "dancing out on the edge" or "going toe to toe with God".
Or, even worse, we'll talk about our addiction to adrenalin, or the jazz, or. . . . or the indescribable kick when the lights and siren come on and you know you're going to have to "work" on this one.
But the most honest answer we can give is . . . . .
"If you have to ask the question, I couldn't possibly give you an answer that you could understand."
c C. Rienzo 1999