When Kids Die

The other night I ran a call that came out as a Pediatric Full Arrest. This is pretty much the worst call in EMS. Fortunately, when we got there, the boy had a pulse, and after pushing air into his lungs, he quickly started breathing again and was soon fine. However, the feeling I got when we received the call got me thinking about the subject of losing a kid on the job.

As of now, I have not had a patient die on me that was a child. Yet, I’ve had a few close calls that I’ve gone into wondering to myself,

“Am I going to have a kid die on me tonight?”

Because the reality is, the longer you do this job the more your odds increase of having a pediatric patient die on your watch. It’s just like rolling the dice. Do it enough and you’ll get that rare result. You don’t go into every shift wondering this. But when that call for an unconscious child comes out, I must admit, it can run through the back of my head. Fire, Police, and EMS personnel all encounter this.

I’ll never forget the image of busting into a wedding banquet to find a four year old little black girl in a gown unconscious on the floor.

After this recent call about the boy, I found myself thinking it over that night. Why is this such an issue? I’ve had multiple people die on me before, and although they’re negative experiences, I’m always able to handle them with ease. But even close calls with pediatrics put me in a very somber contemplative state. Why is this?

We must feel there really is something unnatural about a child dying. Death is hard enough without a sense of tragedy I suppose.  The idea of innocence plays into it, I’m sure. Also, kids are the only patients that EMTs carry in our arms by ourselves. I think when you pick up and carry an injured child who isn’t breathing, you create a different personal type of connection.

One of my co-workers and a good friend of my mine once described to me his worst call. A two year old got run over by a car and he held spinal precautions on this bleeding child before it died in the ambulance. These are the calls you don’t forget. Extremely rare, but when they hit they never really leave you.

As an EMT, we emotionally disconnect from the patient because not caring is the best way to care for someone in an emergency situation. However, this emotional disconnect is more like a threshold. At a certain point, it spills over and you feel the emotion on the call. This is very rare, but it happens, most often on horrible pediatric calls. Regardless, like any trying experience, you process it in a healthy way, learn from it, and move on.

I wonder how I’ll handle these things when I’m a father. I imagine difficult calls involving children will remind me of my own and hurt all the more. I guess I’ll have to see.

If I were to keep doing EMT work, eventually a kid would die on me. It’s possible I will get to switch over to Police work before this happens, but in that case, my odds of seeing horrible tragedy with a child will only increase, just in a different context.

As with any of the life and death issues we deal with in this world, I do my best to hand this over to a God I believe is just, loving, and ultimately, in control.