Life and a link

     Thank you to those that left encouragement and understanding it is appreciated.

     The last few days have been a struggle for me, I think it started just after leaving the "shrink".  During the last session we talked general stuff and he then allowed me to vent, following that he asked me kind of casually if I wanted to share a call that stuck out in my mind, one of the faces or "ghosts" as I call them.  It seemed a harmless enough question and I assumed because it is so often present in my mind I would start with the memory of "the 9 year old girl".  Eventually I will post this as a separate story but to summarize, my first month or so working in Toronto I was working in North Etobicoke when the call came in for a fire standby, no further information.  You have to understand that I worked in a provincial service prior to this and any time I went to a fire standby it was a barn on fire and nothing would ever come from it.....that all changed on this hot July afternoon.  When we pulled out of the station we could see a large amount of thick black smoke pushing up into the blue sky, we rounded the corner and were immediately faced with 3 young children laying on the grass in front of the burning home and a young boy about 11 years old being escorted out of the house coughing every time he tried to catch his breath trying to tell the firefighters his sister was still inside.  My partner and I began to provide care to the children when suddenly I heard a commotion and looked up in time to see a firefighter walk out from the smoke with a limp, lifeless body of a young girl in his arms.  The fireman glanced around frantically looking for someone to help, thats when our eyes met and as he began walking towards me I could feel my heart beginning to sink and this incredible sense of fear....I thought no, don't bring her to us we already have 4 kids to deal with, before I knew it she was on our stretcher.

     The events of this call have haunted me from those hot summer days in 1999 until the present.  Over the last few days I have had trouble sleeping, my emotions seem to be very close to the surface and I have opted from going out with my family to a friends house, felt more nervous around crowds and probably the two issues that have been most prevalent are the hyper vigilance anytime I hear a siren or loud, sudden noise and these moments of just kind of staring out and seeing these calls replay like see through movies, if that can make sense to you?  Anyhow I needed to get this out and I will write getting to know you part 3 and 4 in the coming days.

Here is a link to a website that has some great information regarding mental health and PTSD in particular.

http://psychcentral.com/disorders/ptsd/

Until next time, take care of yourself and others.

Damagedgoods