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Emerg Services Anniversaries of a bad emergency call

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another year. I was at a great concert last night and lost a big part of it thinking about the kids without parents, wondering where the person that caused it was now, thinking about the many nights I have lost to this accident, and finally the support that came from you all here.
My last therapist said that emdr would eventually become like a "blanket coverage" for all the traumatic scenes, so we started with the earliest and never got to the later ones. this one was about mid way through I guess but it does feel like life was divided into before and after this call. Maybe I just had to accept what we all know- these horrible events happen and any one of us could be a victim, a witness or a long term sufferer of the effects.
Like I said before. I was probably the last person that should have been on this call. The place has history that goes back to a very early time in my life and continues to be a place I have to go. the victims were doing something I did a lot of back then and still do today, in that place. And the memory of the event is advertised because it is an important day on our calendar and you can't escape being reminded of it year after year.
It was horrible and I couldn't do anything about it. I still feel inneffective overall when I remember my ten years of service, didn't save any babies, didn't bring anyone back. I called in helicopters and loaded up ambulances and slid in backboards. I held some hands and served out some kindness and respect to those that needed some. But I would sum up all of the good I did as just not enough when I get to thinking about the hopelessness of that day.
Another year and here I sit, wishing I had never seen the things I saw. Thats probably going to be permanent, but more and more distant as the years pass.
 
Oh my god. I searched using Google and found that this didn't happen on memorial day. It was two months later in the year, on the final weekend in July! I wonder when I stsrted thinking it was on memorial day? to explain the number of people there? I don't know why I lost that detail. I wonder what else is lost. Kids are thirty years old now. what a f*cking mess this is in my head. I still feel like I could throw up and now I wonder if I did at the scene and dont remember it? I never threw up on a scene. that always came later, I was on autopilot on scene. Parts are just parts, inside or outside, there was plenty of blood and guts here before, it's just that now we can see them so lets work on that and try to keep ours to ourselves, including our lunch.
It is hard for me to accept that I lost a major detail of this trauma like the date it happened. I dont like that I have spent so much time thinking about something that was basically incorrect from word go. What a mess.
 
But I would sum up all of the good I did as just not enough when I get to thinking about the hopelessness of that day.

1 terrible terrible call, where you did what you could to try to ''save'' casualties that weren't ever savable under any circumstances, doesn't wipe away or invalidate 10 years of service with kindness and respect.

:hug: be gentle with yourself
 
Why in hell would I sit here and type about this? It happened and i should be over it so suck it up and go on............yeah right. I guess i still want to run into the killer in a bar with a dark parking lot. or be able to know where the kids are and how well they are doing in spite of the senseless killing of their parents. I guess without this thread i don't have anyway to express these thoughts to anyone that might get it.
Google needs a function for ex first responders that type in the descriptors of a scene that would show up in old newspapers. something like:
Did you mean "trauma therapist?" Showing results for trauma therapist
 
s. I held some hands and served out some kindness and respect to those that needed some.
For decades I told my trainees -- you aren't here for the dying. They will die or they wont - all you can do is offer some instructions to those around them.

We are there for the living. The people who have to go on after the emergency.We treat them by being kind, by giving them a memory that they did the best they could, by helping them feel that they weren't alone at the worst moment of their lives. Kindness and respect? It's often the best things you can do,
y last therapist said that emdr would eventually become like a "blanket coverage" for all the traumatic scenes, s
Are you still doing therapy? If not please think about going back. I had those memories ....the ones that wake you up in the middle of the night, that leave you sick to your stomach all day, that you just can't escape. You need help getting them out - and that's not a bad or weak thing. It just is.

EMDR is amazingly effective. Slow, but effective. It's actually being used now on scene before the responders leave so that the memory never gets suck like this. Instead it is just a memory from the past - not something that drives me.
d. I dont like that I have spent so much time thinking about something that was basically incorrect from word go. What a mess.
This will take help. But it can be left behind,
y. It was two months later in the year, on the final weekend in July! I w
This is pretty common in the trauma world --- its your brain trying to make sense of things even when it can't be made sense of.
id you mean "trauma therapist?" Showing results for trauma therapist
Yes - you need a trauma therapist. Hopefully one who is familiar with first responders

You don't have to do this alone. The people here understand. There is help out there with therapists that understand. It's not a sign of shame or weakness to ask for help. It's what you need to heal. :hug:
 
woke up wondering how much of the memories that haunt me are details I got wrong by ruminating about them. I know my timelines are all jumbled. I left home at 14 and worked dozens of jobs and picked up on the flotsom of my world to get by and I can't even toss a rope around a 6 month period of it all until I was about maybe 18. Thatys OK in my head, i
 
I cant type today
I was saying I can accept the jumbled memories of my early days but once I was clean and sober and working with intent towards a goal (that I acheived, thanks) I should have the gift of recall, right? evidently not. now I will question everything about my traumas and that means spending time thinking about them, so today is hard work and skip the barbecue and alcohol and hopefully sleep well tonight.
Sorry to all those that listened to what I now know was the raving of a PTSD sufferer with holes in their memory files.
 
and thanks to all who served, memorial day is about the loss of those willing to run towards danger to protect those that won't ever fully know what it truly is. War is hell but soldiers and medics are not from that place, they only work there. I mourn the loss of those that lost their lives in wars so I don't have to know what danger truly is. thanks.
 
So I just had a thing last week... that I wrote the entire sucker out because it was so much of a mindf*ck, then decided not to care & let it die in drafts.

The extremely short version?

There was a no big deal no one was hurt training accident a million years ago. I have this clear as day memory of bubbles streaming over the glass. Which means we were already submerged. Except that at impact, the lights went out, I wasn’t flung like a rag doll until impact, and my area doesn’t didnt (omfg, my tenses) have windows / I shouldn’t have been where I’d have had to have been in order to have seen what I saw... until after I was flung and the lights were out and we were submerged. Which makes the whole thing impossible. Except? It happened. So it must have been somehow possible. The only way it could be possible? Is if I’m resembling shit out of order. Hence the mindf*ck.

Sometimes things happen so fast I’m never able to properly remember the order in which they happened... and I’m okay with that. It’s the remembering things wrong which f*cks with my head.

If I was going to title a book about my life? It would read It All Made Sense At The Time. And that’s basically what I’ve decided happened here; although the title comes from a different kind of thing, I’ve got pretty good foundation for looking at things in a vacuum? Doesn’t usually tell the whole story. There is undoubtedly a totally rational reason why shit went sideways in my memory, that if I could remember that? It would make sense.

Like Memorial Day. Maybe 2 months later was the first 72 you could get “for” Memorial Day / that was “your” Memorial Day weekend but you got called in anyway, or maybe there were banners for a Memorial Day parade on the asphalt under glass and blood and it just stuck in your mind, or maybe the next Memorial Day was your first flash to this event, or maybe one of the victims had just gotten married on Memorial Day and was telling you about that in shock over losing their spouse on their honeymoon, or maybe before this call you’d been fighting with Paycheck Harpies because you didn’t get paid for working Memorial Day and you did damn so work that day, or maybe...? A hundred other things. All of which mean that this got filed under Memorial Day.

Just my personal experience... these things usually do make sense... at the time.
 
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It All Made Sense At The Time.
I think that would be an AWESOME title for a biography.

That little memory blip you experienced is really pretty common. It's one of the reasons eye witness testimony isn't necessarily as good as people would like to think. There's been a fair amount of study into it, but I can't give you an explanation. Sometimes we remember wrong and then we remember remembering..... I'm pretty sure you remember the significant stuff accurately. My T has actually played around with this a little, to make the point that maybe memories shouldn't be given such awesome power to be taken so seriously. (Nice idea, not sure I'm ready to buy it just yet.)
 
to what I now know was the raving of a PTSD sufferer with holes in their memory files.

nah.. ^ you have a normal memory. Possibly shock or attachment to another anniversary have merged the dates. But does it really matter in the end? The real details will not be different.

Please don't start doubting yourself. You were there and it happened the way you perceived it. Everyone there would remember the situation differently and their perspectives are all correct too.
 
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