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I AM A FIREFIGHTER!
| Posted at 01:15 PM on February 27, 2009 |
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I AM A FIREFIGHTER
I work 24-hour shifts. Yes, I am allowed to sleep at the station, but the likelihood of me getting a full night’s sleep is 50% at best.
I work the equivalent of 15 months a year when compared to a standard 40-hour job.
I’ve missed my oldest son’s first steps. I missed my youngest son’s first words. I’ve missed both of their birthdays twice. They are 7 and 4 years old.
I spend a minimum of one third of my life away from home. My wife sleeps alone more than 120 nights a year. I don’t get to tuck my kids to sleep at night at least 10 times a month. In the span of a 30-year career, I won’t be home for 10 of those years.
I have delivered babies on couches, on bedroom floors, in the back of an ambulance and in a driveway.
I’ve had men, women, children and infants die in my arms. I’ve had to tell parents that their child is dead.
I have physically picked up body parts and placed them in bags. I have shoveled the remains of a person killed in a gasoline tanker explosion into a steel bucket. I know, firsthand, what a decapitated human being looks like. I have seen literally hundreds of dead, dying, mangled, burnt and broken people. I have felt someone’s last heartbeat and heard their last breath. I’ve looked into the eyes of a dying man and knew I was the last face he saw.
Countless times I have been a part of the process that decides when to stop trying to revive someone and let them finally die with what little dignity they have left.
In the course of my duties, I have been sprayed and splattered with virtually every type of bodily fluid and secretion the human body can produce.
I have chronic, work-related back pain that required surgery to repair and will plague me the rest of my life.
I have a 50% higher chance of getting divorced than the national average.
I have a 3.5 times higher chance of getting cancer or some other potentially fatal systemic disease.
I have a life expectancy 10-15% lower than the national average.
I have cumulative Post Traumatic Stress. I have had bouts with chronic nightmares.
I show up when someone is having the worst day of their life and I do my best to stop or reverse the process.
I don’t do this because I want thanks or glory. I do this because, without me, someone who could be alive won’t be, and because I simply can’t imagine doing anything else.
I am a firefighter.
