24 hours of bravery

* Editor’s note: Graham County EMS Director Brian Stevens proposed a day of shadowing with those who work to save lives on a daily basis. This is a first-hand account from spending over half of a 24-hour shift with a rotation.

West Fort Hill – The kitchenette is fully furnished (and includes a seemingly-bottomless supply of ribs from a local barbecue stand); the living area includes four leather recliners, a massive smart TV and two computers; each bedroom provides all the privacy needed to get a good night’s rest.

There certainly exists worse methods of employment out there. “Maybe being a paramedic isn’t a bad gig after all,” I thought.

It would be impossible to properly document everything absorbed from shadowing Graham County EMS personnel Aug. 24; frankly, I am not sure everything I learned was retained.

But I will try.

The shift started quietly enough – literally: three members of the previous rotation had only been asleep for around three hours when I arrived to the EMS base off West Fort Hill Road. The trio were summoned to a call in the middle of the night that lasted three hours – and two of them were due to fill in on the next shift, so rest was a necessity.

Graham County EMS Director Brian Stevens greeted me and then took me back to the truck bay, where the three conscious crew members sat talking. Leon Allen is a paramedic, but also the captain of the shift. I learned quickly that EMS personnel are assigned to four different captains: Leon Allen, William Allen, Troy Grindstaff and Billy Hyde.

It would not have taken the same amount of brainpower that many of us watched Sheldon and Leonard display on a binge-watching session of “The Big Bang Theory” during the afternoon to figure that out, though. These guys knew each other well. The camaraderie was apparent immediately.

Leon attends my church, but I had no idea who Jay Chastain (paramedic) and Jon Marsh (EMT) were. As it turns out, both have Georgia roots, like myself: Chastain is a resident of Hiawassee (and serves on the city’s council); Marsh was a fire chief in Walton County (which neighbors Whitfield, the county where I was born).

Admittedly, I was a little overwhelmed at the beginning. I knew I wanted to learn whatever I could – I just did not want to ask the wrong questions. There’s things these men and women can and cannot talk about – or worse yet, do not want to talk about. I could not imagine what they have seen and though many tales were recounted throughout the day, all it did was paint a picture that they had to see in reality.

During a later discussion on politics (what else could it be), Marsh silently stands up and drives his truck outside for a wash. The personnel from the night before slowly begin appearing from their respective sleeping quarters, shuffling outside in a still-exhausted daze. Leon told me later that it not an uncommon occurrence for crew members to cover for other shifts; paramedic Stuart Lassiter and advanced EMT Elizabeth Davies are filling in for paramedic Chuck Jenkins and advanced EMT Josh Rae.

Around 11 a.m., Marsh is giving me an extensive tour of what is on-board those red-box vehicles that rush to aid in a variety of situations. 

My only prevailing thought is that these highly-trained workers somehow know where to immediately look and find a tourniquet in the midst of an emergency – while I constantly go on a search for my smartphone and find it five minutes later in my hand.

There’s a joke in there; we will move past it.

It is truly fascinating to see what EMS personnel have at their disposal when responding to a scene. Throughout the course of the day, I meet “Fred” – officially known as HAL, a $45,000 training mannequin – and later get to perform an intubation that goes … okay.

Just don’t ask me to perform the procedure when you swallow your roll too quickly at Texas Roadhouse and you start choking.

To make life simpler in the exercise, the crew brings me a $2,500 video camera dubbed “KingVision” and I wonder how anyone ever found the sweet spot in the past.

There is a $20,000 LUCAS device available, as well, which is mobile and performs CPR compressions. And with authority, I might add. This frees up first responders to perform other tasks necessary I the moment.

You might come to with a pair of cracked ribs, but it is better than the alternative.

I am also shown an $11,000 emergency cPap, as well as a $2,350 Eitan Medical Sapphire Pump, which has an expansive database and can deliver the correct dosage of medicine to a patient with just basic information available. (It is important to note these amounts listed are estimates).

Midway through the day, Hamilton Boxberger and I chat about the Graham County EMS Community Paramedicine program – which started during the height of the pandemic. Boxberger sees between 35-40 scheduled patients a week and the goal is to build the patient base enough that the program has to employ another paramedic for the cause.

By the time I chose to leave the shift, I had spent a little over 13 1/2 hours with the five – and got to know each of them fairly well.

The total numbers of calls received through the base-wide intercom system during that timeframe? Three. I rode to each scene, donned a pair of gloves to look the part and went in.

That’s all I’m going to say; HIPPA is still very much a thing.

Some of you are going to look back, or maybe you stayed hung up on the beginning of this account. A lot of money had to go into those luxuries, right? Wouldn’t your tax dollars be spent better elsewhere?

Go spend 24 continuous hours on the clock at your job. Away from your family. Away from your recliner. Away from the ability to go wherever you want for a period of 24 straight hours. Sure, you might get a chance to rest – but what if someone else cannot? What is someone else needs your help at 2 a.m.? Are you getting up from your slumber and going to their aid? Could you withstand the mental toughness of knowing that at any given moment, you might have to watch someone take their final breath – and then be tasked with immediately returning to work and writing up paperwork on it, before getting paged out to start the cycle all over again?

There has to be some sense of normalcy. They endure horrific sights, dangerous situations and just flat-out gross things the human body can do when it fails in any way – then they come back three days later and do it again. No call is too ridiculous, though you might think most are.

So I listed all the accommodations at the base for a reason: for what they do for us, it’s the least that can be done for them.