Deep inside every EMS professional is a storage bank. A file of faces, sounds, scene’s, and stories. A nightmare bank, you might call it. Imagery is my life. Before I wanted to be a medic, or a doctor, or a tank driver I wanted to be a photographer(I opted out because I wanted to make money! What was I thinking!!). I remember things by color, shape, texture and style.

I remember people by faces. Soft, pale, wrinkled, weathered, gray, bloated. Faces are my connection to the past.

Week two of my internship. I’m very unsure of who I am. Of what I’m doing. I feel like every call I am doing something wrong. Everyone keeps dying. I know, I know. People die. Everyone dies. But up until this point I had never had someone die in my hands. I’m not sure I’m capable of doing this. I’ve just run back to back arrests and we’re en route to… my first ped’s code.

I am trying to stay calm. I’m looking down at little hands. At tiny feet. I’m looking down but trying not to look. I’m trying to not look his face. 18 months old. EIGHTEEN FUCKING MONTHS OLD. I look up.

I can’t figure out what is worse. Feeling such a tiny person squeeze in my hands, hearing the sound of BVM ventilations into tiny lungs, or looking up and seeing the man responsible for it all. We knew from the minute we walked in that this didn’t just happen. This baby boy didn’t just die. Healthy baby boy’s don’t just die. He was shaken. Violently. The back of his head had been pulverized like crab legs in a Pacific Northwest diner.

I walked to the truck. My gear half gone, my heart missing, my soul crying. I sat there. Just waiting. My preceptor says to me… “sometimes it isn’t about them. Sometimes it is about us.” But this isn’t about me. This is about a little boy who will never see another birthday. Who didn’t get to see the fireworks, or the Christmas trees, or the fucking Easter Bunny. This is about a man so sick that he took the life of his own son.

The nightmares come. The nightmares go. I remember very little about my patients. But a few of them have found a way deep into my soul. They keep me going. They make me work harder, think harder, try harder. The nightmare bank eats at you as time goes on. The only thing you can do is fight to push the nightmares out, and good days in.

Now I sit here. I look at my boy. How sweet, how pure, how innocent. I have a hard time not putting the face of a little boy I met a little over a year ago. I didn’t know that boy’s name–and that saddens me. All he is to me is a face. I’ve found my peace, but he is still there. Do they ever go away?

Just how hard being away from my baby would be. Tonight is my first shift away from home–away from my little boy.

With Ninja Medic. Then Epi followed suit. 

Headed to the doc soon for the weekly checkup. Hoping baby is coming soon! The Mrs is getting mighty uncomfortable–I still can’t imagine how you women folk do that!!!!!!  

Thursday morning we went to the perinatologist for a follow up ultrasound and a second opinion concerning the size of baby’s left kidney. The issue is 100% repairable, but will require at minimum a follow up ultrasound after birth and possibly a 250 mile trip to see a pediatric urologist as there isn’t one close.

Essentially baby’s kidney is dilated to 14mm where it should be <7mm. This could be a blockage distal to the kidney or post bladder, likely post kidney as the other kidney is fine and post bladder would effect both.

I was working a 24 Thursday and had to have someone cover for me for a few hours while we were at the doc’s office. Soon after getting back I was sent to take a patient to the very hospital we might be headed to soon, for an 11 yo African American female in renal failure. Upon arrival at my pickup facility I found a young girl, drowsy in bed with mom in the corner and kids piling out of the room. Mom didn’t give her a hug, ride with, or really seem to care. She had to stop at home before she could drive up, and no one wanted to ride along with my oh-so-young patient.

It wasn’t a good way to end my day.