First, my children should not read this. Anyone who is sensitive or easily offended should not read this. If you are afraid of the truth you should not read this. If you want to keep your delusions about how wonderful and god-like medical professionals are you should not read this. 

Audrey, Amelia, Megan… don’t read this.

They say I’m a hero. I don’t know why.

I’m a veteran. They say that makes me a hero. I say it made me tougher, more capable, more disciplined, and more resilient, but it doesn’t make me a hero.

I was a paratrooper. They say that makes me a hero. I say that it gave me the mental fortitude to face what I fear and to overcome it, the ability to do hard things even though I’m afraid of them, and the realization that most fears are exaggerated, but it doesn’t make me a hero.

I was a paramedic for nearly 30 years. They say that makes me a hero. I say that being a paramedic for that long proves that I’m stubborn, inflexible, and maybe a little dumber than average, but it doesn’t make me a hero.

I was willing to do things that most people are not. They say that makes me a hero.

I lived with the sick, injured, dead and dying on a regular basis. They say that makes me a hero.

I’ve held the hands of small children, of old men and old women, of young mothers and fathers, as they died. They say that makes me a hero.

I’ve crawled into the guts of broken humans while they were trapped inside the mangled wreckage of a vehicle. I listened to them screaming in agony and looked into their eyes to see the panic rising in them as they watched Death come for them. They say that makes me a hero.

I’ve swum in the blood of a mangled body, and picked up pieces of humans that are barely recognizable. They say that makes me a hero.

I’ve shocked a still, dead, corpse back to life, and nursed its’ breath back into its’ lungs so it could spend just one more moment with its’ loved ones and then watched, helplessly, as it faded back into death only a moment later, still, dead again, for eternity. They say that makes me a hero.

I’ve resuscitated dead people that lived for several months after they had died, that were awake, alert, and able to communicate with their families, and I’ve resuscitated people who never awakened again, who were lost, but alive, destined to only sleep until they died. They say that makes me a hero.

I’ve heard the screams of the dying, smelled and tasted the metallic mist of their blood in the air, stained my hands and clothing with the fluids that should have been inside of their bodies, not on the outside, felt their broken bones grinding as I lifted them to a stretcher, seen their eyes darken and fade as the luster and spark of life extinguished into lifelessness. They say that makes me a hero.

You say that I’m a hero.

I say that I’m broken.

I know all the times I failed to save a life.

I know there were calls I could have done more but didn’t because I was tired from working twenty four hours without sleep. I remember the calls at the end of long shifts where I secretly hoped the person was dead before our arrival so I could just return to my warm, cozy bunk and go back to sleep. I know the guilt that I carry for being so selfish. 

I know how callous and uncaring I’ve become from seeing suffering and pain for so long. I know how many times I’ve made jokes about drug addicts being too stupid to live. I know how often my co-workers and leaders have done the same thing. I know why they call it “gallows humor” and I am an accomplished practitioner of it. I have laughed at people when they got hurt doing stupid things and I know that the only medical professionals that don’t laugh at them are either very young, very naïve, or very temporary.

But you say… I’m a hero.

Yes, there was a time in my life when I was like, so-called, normal people. I was young. I was naïve. There was a time when I believed that medicine and training and hard work and dedication could save every sick person, start every heart, cure every disease, and make life better. I believed that with enough research, enough trial and error, enough patience and practice that we could all live forever. Once upon a time I had complete faith in the power of science, doctors, and modern medicine. I believed that doctors were gods, and that scientists were brilliant. I believed that no matter how broken we were they really could put us back together as good as new. But they can’t and God knows that they shouldn’t be able to, because life needs to be fragile otherwise it isn’t cherished.

Life ain’t like the movies.

Video games and television don’t prepare you for misery and suffering that penetrates your soul. Reading about working in a soaking rain at thirty six degrees is different from really doing it. Drama is just drama until you are actually in the same room with the family that has just watched you fail to bring their three year old daughter that drowned in their swimming pool back to life. It’s easy to be a hero when there is a script.  Watching a movie about Death is different from standing shoulder to shoulder with him. I didn’t realize this when I started my career. 

Paramedics are human. Doctors are human. Nurses are human. Humans are imperfect. Humans don’t like to admit they are imperfect, especially hero humans. Hero humans need to be right. Hero humans need to be confident. Hero humans need to feel capable. Hero humans delude themselves a lot. I deluded myself a lot.

But you say, I’m a hero.

People have hidden agendas. Perceptions of the same event are different from one individual to another. Everyone experiences a different reality. We all look at the world through our own eyes, not another’s. My beliefs are not your beliefs because my experiences are not your experiences and they will never be your experiences because as they say… I’m a hero… and you are not.

But I know, for a fact, that I’m not a hero and if someone in the medical profession truly believes that they are a hero, then, they have either not seen enough of reality, or, they are deluding themselves into believing they are in control of outcomes that have nothing to do with their performance or abilities.

I’ve been on calls where I was certain the patient was dead, and then they came back to life. I’ve been on calls where I was certain the patient was going to live, and then they died. I’ve been on calls where the batteries to the defibrillator died when they had been checked just that morning. I’ve been on calls where a battery that was dead somehow continued to function and provide the needed jolt at the appropriate time. I’ve put equipment into bags mere moments before a call and then been unable to find it at a critical moment. I’ve been on calls where the critical equipment somehow just seemed to appear in my hands when I needed it.

We, the so-called, “healthcare heroes” don’t control these things. These things are beyond mere mortals. It doesn’t matter how prepared, rested, knowledgeable, or capable we are. People always die when it is their time whether there is a hero there or not. The only thing any of us can do is to be there to care at someone’s time of need. Our job, as heroes, is to provide an illusion of security, a sliver of hope, or a small bit of comfort to fellow human beings as they suffer. We don’t “save lives.” We only give God a chance to change His mind.

But you say… we are heroes.

We’re not. We are just human beings who have seen more of reality than the rest of you. Most people don’t see death all the time. Most people don’t visit sick people in the middle of the night. Most people don’t have to wear boots that are covered in blood, bones, and brains, and then decide what to eat for dinner.

We have done heroic things, yes. There have been moments in time when we have been selfless, caring, understanding, and all of the things that heroes are. But, overall, we are not heroic. We are human and imperfect.

The reality is; life lives on death.

If nothing dies we don’t live.

That is the horrible, terrible, truth.

We are not special. Hate to break it to you. Mother Nature doesn’t care about us. She wants to kill your physical form to feed younger, stronger lives and send your soul to the nether world. Mother Nature wants you to die, she needs you to die, because the only way that the physical world can continue to exist is by eating itself. Physical reality is based on the concept of sustainability taken to the extreme. Mother Nature is the ultimate recycler. Nothing is wasted. Everything is recycled, to make more stuff… stars, planets, birds, dinosaurs, people. 

I know this because… as you say… I’m a hero and heroes have looked into the abyss to know what is there.

I know this because I am not normal like you are. I probably have PTSD, or whatever the current popular acronym is to describe people like me. People with life experiences outside of what the “normal” population has. In my world PTSD is normal. In my world normal means being surrounded by death and suffering. In my world doctors make mistakes. In my world there is no such thing as safety. There is no such thing as saving a life. There is no such thing as security. Life always ends in death. 

But… you say that I’m a hero.

Being a hero implies that a person is somehow more perfect than the rest of the world. Being a hero means you care more about others than you do about yourself. Being a hero means you have powers that mere mortals do not. Being a hero makes you a demigod.

I am not a hero.

I am uncomfortable when you call me a hero because I know how far I am from being a hero. I am imperfect. I am unsure of myself. I don’t always do the right thing. I can be selfish. I can be mean. I can be unapologetic and critical. I am judgmental. I am only too human. I am not a demigod. 

Heroes only exist in bubbles of time. In snapshots of history we all have heroic moments, but, no, we are not heroes. We are humans. We are imperfect. We fall short of the title “hero” too often. 

I have let people down. I have lied. I have criticized others needlessly. I’ve said bad words. I’ve used God’s name in vain. I’ve committed sins I can’t even remember. I’ve yelled at my children and at my wife. I am not a hero.

I am mortal, human, flawed. I am wrong often, angry often, bitter, jaded, and selfish.

I am not a hero… but I’m trying to be one.

I want to be all of the things that you think I am. I wish I could take credit for the image you have of me. I wish I really was able to bring people back to life, take away their pain and suffering with the wave of a magic machine, cure diseases, protect small children and animals. 

I wish that the world didn’t have to eat itself. I wish everyone could get along. I wish the bad things in life didn’t exist. I wish that bad people didn’t exist. I wish that humans were not so selfish, greedy, or stupid. 

But bad things are part of physical reality and they always will be because the material world must recycle itself to maintain its existence. We’ve known this for thousands of years. The ancient symbol of the snake eating its’ own tail is evidence of that. The world eats itself. We are food for the next generation. Our children devour us and our beliefs, test them, recycle what is useful, and discard what doesn’t work in their new world. They are surviving on our ashes.

They will make many mistakes. They will establish their truths, the things that work in their time, and then… they will die. We will all die. We are already dead. 

But it’s OK. This is the way it is supposed to be. This is how the universe is designed. This is our destiny. We cannot escape it. We shouldn’t try to escape it. We should face it head on with the full knowledge that our time here is limited. We only have a few moments of life to contribute to the next generations of life. We should nourish our children, our neighbors, our fellow humans with our sacrifices. We should feed them our flesh in the form of truth and selflessness. We should nurture life, help it to grow strong and healthy. We are gardeners feeding ourselves to the garden. That is what we are here for. 

That is what heroes do. 

You say I’m a hero.

No. I’m just a dumigod.

Horses Save Heroes

It’s true. I was saved by horses, one in particular. Horses look into your soul somehow. I don’t know how they do it but they can see your intentions and when you’re having a bad day they will let you know because they don’t want anything to do with you.

Think you have a plan for a nice relaxing trail ride with your faithful horse… think again… he knows you’re having a bad day even if you don’t and he’s not playin’. He’ll be hard to catch, hard to saddle up, hard to control, scared of everything on the trail, dancing like an Irish Riverdancer.

He knows you’re not right in the head today. He doesn’t know why but he knows it in his bones and that’s enough for him to decide to be on high alert.

We heroes have spent so much time controlling our emotions that we don’t even know what emotions we’re having anymore. We’ve disguised our panic, and pain so well that now we don’t even have a clue what emotion is real, which one is truly appropriate.

A horse puts your awareness back where it belongs. Whatever the horse is feeling… guess what… odds are he’s reflecting your inner dialogue back at you. He really doesn’t care if you wear a cape at work.

You’re not fooling him into believing you’ve got it under control. He can feel your panic even if you can’t anymore.

If you spend time with horses you learn that you have to be authentic. You can’t pretend your way into calmness. You truly have to be calm… and then your horse will respond.

This kind of biofeedback is priceless for a broken hero.

It puts us back in touch with our senses. It shows us where we really are psychologically. It gives us the opportunity to reevaluate and regulate our anger, fear, sorrow, frustration, shame, guilt, and all of the other emotions that run rampant within heroes.

Horses force us to take off our capes and to be mortal in their presence. They allow us to see our inner reality and to change that emotion, not disguise it, but process it, live it through to its fruition and discard it when it’s run it’s course.

You can’t force emotions into submission.

You can’t understand them into control.

You can’t make yourself feel something by talking through it.

You have to feel the depth of your emotion completely and when your brain is done buffering… you can move on. Unfortunately no one trained us how to do this. No class ever taught us that it was necessary to “buffer.”

If you’ve ever caught yourself staring at the wall for an hour… you’re buffering.

Buffering is a good thing. It doesn’t make you crazy although “normal” people won’t understand. Buffering is how you finish the emotion. It’s like the stages of grief you learned about in EMT school; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

We lie to ourselves and say that, as superheroes, we simply jump straight to acceptance when something bad happens, and sometimes that’s true, but most of the time we collect unfinished emotions. Day after day we add weight to our baggage until it crushes us into the ground and everyone wonders, “What happened to Fred? He was fine yesterday.”

Fred wasn’t fine yesterday. He just didn’t know he needed to buffer… so he snapped instead.

We’re killing ourselves by trying to be gods saving the world.

We need horses to show us where we stand, how we feel, to accept us in whatever state we’re in but lead us down a road where we can empty our emotional baggage safely, honestly, with dignity.

Horses save heroes.