In need of a class on "How to commit suicide"

[WitchDr]

:evil: You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You must be very lucky that none of your close friends or family was ever in a crisis that they couldn't handle, life circumstances that were beyond their control? I guess next you'll be saying crippled people don't need crutches because they have all of their appendages!

Now I'd like to take a minute to say that I wasn't always compassionate. I would snicker, chuckle or joke about somebody less abled until the day I was critically injured. Shoe on the other foot and the like, ya know. I used to be less than compassionate about "people that wanted to end it all..." until I got to the point were I couldn't deal with the fear, stress and pressure of being a combat medic in Iraq. Walk a mile in someone else's shoes and the like, ya know.

Yes, the BS calls for headaches, sniffles, stubbed toes, three week old injuries and everything else makes me want to pull my hair out and curse the gods and goddesses of Prehospital Care. Yes, it is not my emergency, it is theirs'. But they called me, I'm there on the clock for them. They are relying on me to take care of what ails them, to take care of their emergency. If I don't like it, I can always quit and find another job. When your instructors tell you to treat your patients like one of your family, you need to treat your patient as if they were one or YOUR family. You need to treat your patient as if they were one or YOUR family. You need to treat your patient as if they were one or YOUR family.

It's not something printed in texts to boost book prices or for instructors to say just to be PC.

If you can't reach down and find compassion for the people you are charged to care for, you are just a driver, just a babysitter. Therefore, you could go work for UPS/FedEx or babysit the neighbors kids and leave the lifesaving to the dedicated ones.

(WitchDr sits on his soapbox and hangs his head)

[firedoc5]

Each and everyone of us can tell a story or experience on this matter. And there are us veterans that have seen so many situations that you don't know whether the proper response is humor or drama. And after awhile you may even get de-humanized of it. I know I told of one call on another post about this. How we were all so tired of getting calls for this guy wanting to kill himself, that the police sergeant cocked his 9 and handed it to the guy and told him to do it. Of course he didn't do it but we scattered because we knew the guy was such an idiot and drunk enough to get one of us. That is getting to the extreme end of the spectrum. But there was drama enough there he felt at the bottom of the world, but there was some humor there just trying to imagine all of us diving for cover and the ludicricie of the officer actually giving the poor slob a cocked and loaded weapon. So potentially the whole gambit of emotions are involved.

[DwayneEMTP]

Are some of us not getting that we're not talking about laughing at suicides here, but at people that simply use the word "suicide" for attention? (Not you FD, following your post was coincidence)

One medic I precepted with once said, when pulling up to a drunk/psych(?) woman that weighed at least 400lbs, "God, If I'm ever reincarnated please don't send me back as her ankles!" Then proceeded to get out and treat her like a perfect lady.

I thought it was funny as hell. I can empathize with the emotional pain of being so heavy, and perhaps the pain that I believe is necessary to cause someone to become so heavy, but it was still funny.

It seems to me that if you believe that laughing at a kid that claims to have put a gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger, and missed(!) is the same as laughing at someone with a serious self inflicted gunshot wound, or perhaps one that has recently ingested a glass of Drain-o, then political correctness has truly come to rule the world.

Terminally unhappy people, to me, are not at all funny.

People that do idiotic things in an idiotic way to attempt to wallow in the compassion we have for those truly in anguish deserve to, at the very least, be laughed at behind their backs.

And if you believe that I would not have treated the “almost” gunshot kid with respect, kindness and my complete attention, then I’ve still not made my point very well.

As far as treating him like I would treat my family member? I’m not sure how my medical director or the state board of EMS would react if I snatched him up by his hair and made him apologize to everyone on scene before dragging him kicking and screaming to meet his new counselor.

Dwayne

[firedoc5]

"Suicide is the permanent solution to a temporary problem." That's the best way the concept of suicide was explained to me.

[JPINFV]

^

Damn it, someone stole my saying from me

[Lone Star]

A local FFMedic had pt who tried to commit suicide by slitting his throat with a vertical cut, apparently was the second unsuccessful attempt....en-route medic informed him that to kill himself he had to cut horizontally. Short time later, they were recalled to same patient for a now successful suicide (with horizontal cut, this time).

:?

I hope that medic was charged criminally for assisting a suicide, and the family owned him in civil court for wrongful death!

[Don1977]

Beautiful!!

[BEorP]

Call it cold, but I have not much respect for anyone who commits or attempts suicide.

Although I'm not offended by your initial post, I'm not a big fan of this comment. It is your right to feel that way, but I see many medics who have no sympathy for people who attempt or successfully commit suicide without thinking about the depression that often lies behind it.

[medic1963]

Although I'm not offended by your initial post, I'm not a big fan of this comment. It is your right to feel that way, but I see many medics who have no sympathy for people who attempt or successfully commit suicide without thinking about the depression that often lies behind it.

Just because I do respect someone who attemps/commits suicide does not mean I do not treat them any less than anyone else. My personal feelings are just that, personal. There is a difference in personal and professional. I have never been unprofessional in my treatment of any PT regardless of the situation or my personal feelings. I do not have much respect for repeat drunks due to past personal experience, but that doesn't mean I treat them unfairly.

The people I have sympathy for are the ones left behind to deal with the aftermath of someone discission to commit suicide. To me, suicide is a selfish act with no regard to the feelings of those left behind. If anyone is wondering, yes I have dealt with suicide in my own family, more than one time.

I think the idea behind the my original post has been greatly misunderstood. I intended no fun towards everyone who attemps suicide and deffinetly not towards anyone who commits suicide. The situation was a funny moment in a world of death, sickness, and injury, whom the PT himself found the event to be funny.

[firedoc5]

I'm not sure if I totally agree, but I was told that suicide was the highest form of selfishness.