H/T to Western Rifle Shooters Association
The coping mechanism we use is the black humor. It occurs back at the station and only amongst ourselves, NEVER in public. I once dealt with a guy that accidentally set himself on fire. Rather than do what we are taught from a young age of "STOP-DROP-AND ROLL" he ran out of the house and down the road. Neighbors reported him to be a giant screaming fireball when they tackled him and put him out with pots of water from their houses. It was one of our first aeromed transports by LifeStar helicopter and I was in charge of the L.Z. The EMT's were bringing the PT up the road on the stretcher to meet the bird already on the ground. Have you ever burned a hotdog on the grill? That is exactly what this guy looked like.... all blackened and his skin split open all over his body. They loaded him up and flew off to a trauma center. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
When we got back to the firehouse it started out with everyone kind of quiet, then they started talking about what we just went through. It did not take long for the "crispy critter" comment to come out, and from there it was a free for all of jokes and laughter. I said I was going to be off grilled hotdogs for a while. More laughter. That's just how it is. We do it. Cops do it. Hospital personnel do it. The military does it. It must be done privately among ourselves because publicly it would be disrespectful and hurtful if family members overheard it. But believe me, it is very beneficial to us.
45 years in healthcare, most of it seeing ER patients. If you don't find a way to deal with what you see you WILL go insane. Satire and dark humor is the most coping mechanism.
ReplyDeleteI totally understand. After doing some military (Reserves, no combat) and Corrections for nearly 30 years, I've definitely developed some dark, twisted humor tendencies. Also a severe lack of trust of just about everybody and extreme pessimism seem to have grown in me.
ReplyDeleteFirst responder at a large industrial complex for 18 years, I saw a bit. The electrician who laid an arm across the 800 Amp bus bars fried his lower arm. Instantly went into shock and didn't feel a thing, but the smell of cooked human flesh is unforgettable.
ReplyDeleteBlack humor is a valid coping mechanism, but the uninitiated don't understand it.
I spent my adult working years in a steel producing factory. Kind of like a foundry, with molten steel and such. In my 35 years there, we had 3 deaths due to events. I don't know if it would be easy to get over the types of things that I saw, but the smell is certainly something that you will never forget.
DeleteOne case, a molten bath blew up cooling water got under the bath, covering a man that I had trained on the job metal. I had gone onto 3rd shift, and only found out when I got in the next night. He was just a kid, out of the Army. He joked with me every morning in passing about how he was a trained killer, since he had been in the Army. His job was a water filtration specialist.
The other case was when a co worker who was mentally ill came in on a Thanksgiving day with his two young kids, and put them in a cold ladle, and put the preheat torch on top and lit it, killing both the very young one, and the toddler. They told us that the kids would have been unconscious within a very short time, due to lack of O2.
The aftermath of those incidents almost made me quit the job, especially with the kids. The fire rescue and paramedics told us that it was the worst incident that they ever went out on. For those whose jobs entail dealing with these types of events on a regular basis, I give my respect. And thanks, for doing a job that only a certain sort could do. The physical toughness would be the easy part. The mental toughness is what I have to say, makes me stand in awe of those who are able to continue on the job for years.
It's been said "Laughing keeps me from screaming." You don't need to have been in combat for this to come into play in the military. Just being at sea was enough to get the dark humor engine running! In the Coast Guard, going to sea was "prison with the added risk of drowning." More often than not, we were dealing with heavy weather, trying to find some damned fishing boat whose captain didn't have the sense to put into port before the storm. The weather stressed both the ship and the crew. Dark humor kept us functional!
ReplyDeleteDo what you gotta do brother and thank you for what you do.
ReplyDeleteWatching family members die close up does not hold a candle to that but still not easy. Probably why I'm a dark humor fan and contributor.
Retired 28 years as a firefighter. A mild one; my dad had just passed away, a few months after his mom (my grandmother). My mom, my wife, and I are holding each other just a couple minutes after, and I start giggling through the tears. (It had also been us three there when grandma passed.) I said, "We have to stop meeting like this...or hire ourselves out." They snickered instead of hitting me. Knowing my dad, he would have approved of the joke.
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