“Always Look To Your Light Source.”

When I first started my career in EMS, I was given a lot of “helpful tips” by the many people who trained me. A series of guidelines that would help me throughout the chaos of my newfound career. Most were medical related:

1. Sick people don’t bitch at you
2. Air goes in, air goes out. Blood goes around and around. Any deviation from this is a bad thing.
3. If a child is quiet, something is very wrong
4. If the patient vomits, try to hold the head to the side of the rig, toward the equipment that will be easiest to clean
5. Pain never killed anyone

I found these to be what I expected from every salty medic I came across. They’ve had years in the service, the knowledge they have is gold. But there were some other helpful tips that weren’t as straight forward as the others. To this day, three years into my career, some of them still don’t make sense to me. But there are some that have changed how I look at life:

1. Always trust a threat
2. There will be problems, what matters is your solutions
3. All people die, you can’t control that
4. The important things are simple, the simple things are hard
5. Always look to your light source

I wish I could say things in emergency medicine always make sense. The truth is they don’t and never will. We are talking about a career field that is constantly changing by the minute, but while the protocol stays the same, people are always going to change. When I started, I was excited about helping others and I felt like I had found my calling. I woke up everyday at 3am excited to start my 5:15am shift. Today, I still feel like I found my calling, but I also feel like I’ve aged about 30 years. But despite all the change and the illusions of stability, there was alway one constant: the truth of the words that were told to me by my teachers.

1. In a world where drug addiction is a serious concern, when a patient with no outlying medical history to indicate a problem and with no noticeable injuries and with textbook perfect vitals starts yelling at you and calling you every slur in the book because he’s in pain; its a sigh of relief. The “syncope/man down” call you got sent out on that you thought was a full arrest? Sick people don’t bitch.
2. Air goes in. Air goes out. You’re breathing. You’re breathing. Blood goes around and around. Your heart is beating. If both these things are true, it means you’re alive. If either one of these things isn’t happening, you’re dying and you need help.
3. You never want to experience a quiet child. The silence is deafening.
4. I learned fast that it’s easier to just change your uniform then clean vomit out of all of the cabinets in the truck
5. See number 1

Those were easy. One year on the job cleared everything up for me when it came to those rules. The others were a little more difficult.

1. When someone says they’re gonna kill you or they feel like they’re dying. Believe them. Believe them. Every. Single. Time.
2. Nothing is ever easy. All the things I learned in the textbook didn’t matter when it was compared to having to figure out how to stabilize someone who was crushed beneath a car.
3. There is one thing promised to everyone. One day, we will all die.
4. Be able to say with confidence to a family “we did everything we could” and meant it.
5. Always look to your light source.

Number 5 stayed with me.

I asked the paramedic who said it to me if he meant always look to the source of light during night calls. He said no. I went through a dozen different meanings, asking him if any of them were right. It was always no. For nearly two years, it was always on my mind. What could he have meant? How could every thing else make sense, but his words didn’t?

In the two years that I had pondered his words, it was the worst two years to be a first responder. Covid took over and decimated everything we thought we understood about normal life. People were stuck inside, families were kept apart, people were dying so slowly and yet so quickly that every single emergency system across the world struggled to keep up. Hospital morgues were running out of space, some were so desperate for space that they purchased large industrial coolers to keep in the parking lots. I would hold that hands of more than two dozen people as they took their last breath, struggling for air; and then I would go home to see my national leader claim that the illness wasn’t real. It was a time where I was filled with so much disbelief, exhaustion, hopelessness and fear that I thought things would never be normal again. I saw the faces of those I saw to the end of their lives in my sleep, their names are forever etched on my heart. The days were long, the nights were isolating. There was no end to the pain, misery and grief that I saw people and their families go through. I often hear other medic talking about how Covid affected the younger generation of first responders in a way they have never seen before. We were faced with insurmountable suffering unlike anything they had seen before. One medic told me that the only thing he could compare it to was the Oklahoma City bombing; but Covid was different because of how long it lasted. Personally, it was one for the worst times of my life for a multitude of reasons. But it was when my mental health took a big hit. I felt like I was surrounded by darkness, and I no longer looked forward to getting up in the morning. It was hard to bring myself to put on a uniform and be excited about helping people when I knew what was going to happen. I wasn’t going to be able to help anyone. I knew that I would pick up a patient with Covid who couldn’t breathe and I would most likely sit with them in the ambulance bay of a hospital for hours until either my shift ended, the ER suddenly freed up a bed, or until they passed away. It was hard getting up knowing that’s what I was facing. But the thing that made it better was realizing how blessed I was to have my family safe and healthy. They were safe. That’s what mattered. My parents had jobs where they could work remotely and my sister was doing school remotely. I didn’t have to worry about them. And it was through their support that I was able to make it through all the uncertainty.

I remember when I finally realized what my mentor meant.

I had sat down to play the Last of Us, one of the first games I had ever played and one that was near and dear to my heart. I was unwinding after a long day at work, readying to sit down and play something before going to bed. While I was playing, I came across one of the single most recognizable phrases to the game. “When you’re lost in the darkness, look for the light.” And it all clicked.

It was never the light source on scene. It was never any of the things I thought it was. The light source was always the people and things in your life that made the darkness feel a little less dark. Where the light starts streaming in and, inch by inch, the darkness starts to feel less heavy. For me, it had been and always will be my family. My brilliant, funny and smart younger sibling who always faces the world with her head held high. My incredibly brave, kind and compassionate mother, who has the biggest heart and isn’t afraid to let that make the decisions for her. And my strong willed, senile and old soul father, who is constantly telling me how proud he is of me. When I think of the lights in my life, it’s them.

So, whenever you’re lost in the dark, remember to look to your light source for guidance.