Daughter says Paramedic Dad had no one to help him

When my father needed help, no one was there
Sydney Morning Herald
By Cidney Jenkins
27 May 2018

Many of us assume that the most traumatic part of a paramedic’s job is what they find when they respond to an emergency call. What many of us failure to consider is what happens to paramedics once they leave a scene.

For many of us, an experience requiring an ambulance is often limited to a single unfortunate event. An event that will never be repeated or forgotten. For our paramedics, this is their daily life. My father, Tony Jenkins, was one of them.

As I sat at my laptop a few weeks ago, fumbling around with words for my father’s eulogy, I was left questioning how it had come to this.

How could a man, who preached about his good fortune, his loving family and his remarkably happy life, be driven to take his own life, without warning?

How could a husband, father and friend who had never spent a day in bed leave the world that he had so openly enjoyed and loved every single day?

But the final hours of my father’s life were spent behind closed doors with incompetent and insensitive managers, whose response to my father’s plea for help was to drive him back to his station, where he was left to walk off into the street, by himself. The next morning, police and ambulance workers came to our house, to tell us they had found his body.
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Gunman Kept Shooting, Paramedic Kept Helping Others After Being Shot

Las Vegas shooting: San Bernardino paramedic helps save lives after being wounded

ABC Eyewitness News
Elex Michaelson
October 8, 2017 

While helping a gunshot victim, Jimmy himself was shot in the leg. He didn't tell Matt about the gunshot wound, at first. He simply told him to run.

LAS VEGAS (KABC) --

Jimmy Grovom is a trained paramedic. But he never thought he'd need to work during his Las Vegas vacation.

The Mission Viejo native came to the Route 91 Harvest festival with his girlfriend, Briana, his brother, Matt, and a group of their friends.

They were enjoying the music when shots rang out. Jimmy knew it was time to get to work.

"It's just how I'm wired, I guess," he said. "I like to help people when I see them in need."

Amid the gunfire, Matt Grovom watched as a woman standing next to him was hit.

"When I first heard the shots, the first person I yelled for is my brother," he said. "That just says something about him right there."

Jimmy began to administer aid to that woman and then moved on to help someone else. Then there was another round of gunfire.
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Golden Retriever Watches Over PTSD Veteran on Job as Paramedic

Local service dog rides in ambulance to help her owner cope with PTSD
ABC 13 News
Lisa Guyton
November 2,016

TOLEDO (13abc Action News) - You've no doubt seen service dogs providing all kinds of help to people around the community. But Star is probably the first of her kind in our region She rides around in a ProMedica ambulance, helping her owner as he battles Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD.

Star is a one-year-old Golden Retriever, Labrador mix. She's only been on the job for a few weeks but she has already had a big impact on the man she was trained to help.

Louis Belluomini is a ProMedica paramedic. Before this career, he was in the Army for nine years. He served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, "I think the majority of veterans have PTSD to some extent."

Louis says he was diagnosed with PTSD after his first tour. Medicine is what helped him at first, now it's Star, "She's woken me up from nightmares sometimes two and three times a night. She senses when something is off, when it's not right."

Louis says one of the other important things Star does is protect his personal perimeter, "As members of the military we are trained to watch our back and our partner's back. By having her I don't have to ever worry that someone is behind me because she is always watching behind me."
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Study Shows 3rd of Paramedics Considered Suicide in Canada

Survey shows paramedics in need of more mental health help 
News 1130
by RENEE BERNARD
Posted Aug 14, 2015

“We are being told that ‘You should be able to see this stuff. It’s a normal part of your job’ when it really isn’t.”

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Just a few days after an organization highlighted the number of police officers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, BC’s paramedics have released results of a survey revealing the extent of the disorder among their members.

Among the findings, about a third of respondents have considered suicide. More than 90 per cent need support for the cumulative impact of multiple traumatic calls over their careers.

“This was a real eye-opener for us. It’s sad,” remarks Bronwyn Barter, president of the Ambulance Paramedics of BC.
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Vietnam Veteran/Paramedic finally receiving Silver Star

Vietnam veteran from Rye Brook to get long-overdue Silver Star
Jul 31, 2012
Written by
Richard Liebson

RYE BROOK — Thomas Giorgi spent his career saving lives as a New York City paramedic, but it was the first one he ever tried to save, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, that has finally earned him the Silver Star.

The 67-year-old Port Chester native got word last week from Rep. Nita Lowey’s office that he’d been approved for the nation’s third-highest award for military valor, which will be presented during a ceremony early in August.

“I started to cry when they told me, it was so overwhelming,” he said. “I felt it would never happen. It’s just lifted me up so much.”

Giorgi, a 1963 graduate of Port Chester High School, was making good money as an X-ray technician, driving a Corvette and playing drums in a local rock ’n’roll band when he was drafted in August 1965.

Less than a year later, on July 3, 1966, Pfc. Giorgi and 17 other members of his squad from the Army’s 25th Infantry Division were on a patrol near the Cambodian border when they came across a deserted enemy base camp. Already hot, sticky and wet from the monsoon rains, the squad was made more uneasy by the eerie silence.
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NY Paramedic Night Shift

October 7, 2008, 5:02 pm
Night Shift Medics
By The New York Times

Photograph by Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

The turning point in the life of Vito Barravecchio, center, came in the summer of 1994, when he was called upon to save the life of an aunt who was suffering from a buildup of fluid in her lungs. The next year he became an emergency medical technician, and later, a paramedic. He has been working the late-night shift at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn for six years, and he loves it.

“At night,” said Mr. Barravecchio, 36, “you hardly ever get the nonsense calls you get during the day. Eight out of 10 911 calls are life-threatening situations.” In addition, “Traffic is less hectic and the bosses are sleeping.”

Jeff Spencer, standing, says he decided at age 5 that he wanted to be a paramedic. His inspiration: the television show “Emergency.” At 18, he became a basic emergency medical technician and started working at St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was on the night shift, and he loved it.
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http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/night-shift-medics/?ref=nyregion

Firefighter of the year for 2002, PTSD got him fired

May 13, 2008 10:46

Firefighter, Paramedic Sues University Park
Reporting
Jack Fink UNIVERSITY PARK (CBS 11 News) ― A former firefighter-paramedic is suing University Park, claiming the city fired him because of his disability.

Jason Salisbury said the department let him go after a doctor diagnosed him with post traumatic stress disorder. He said he filed the lawsuit in the hopes of getting his job back.

Salisbury said since starting on the job back in 1998, he witnessed a murder and various suicides and other horrific situations while responding to emergency medical calls.

He said like many other emergency responders, he had nightmares, even years later.

So when he mentioned that to the department in 2006, he said they sent him for therapy, and he was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder.

He said the doctor cleared him to continue as a firefighter, but not a paramedic.

Salisbury, named Firefighter of the Year by the department back in 2002, said not long after that, the city told him not to come back to work.

"I've seen some horrific situations, and they bothered me... And I think anyone normal - if you see little kids dead, murders - it's going to bother you, and it bothered me," Salisbury said. "I talked to them about it, and they fired me for it."

Officials with the city said it has a great deal of sympathy, but they were concerned he would face traumatic situations if he returned. http://cbs11tv.com/local/firefighter.sues.UP.2.723509.html

When will people learn? When will they understand that PTSD is a wound? Do they fire firefighters for being wounded responding to fires? Do they fire them for doing their jobs? The why would they fire this firefighter because of what his job did to him?

He did the right thing. He went for help. Instead of giving him time to let the medical care for his wound help him heal, they fired him. This happens in the police force. It happens in the fire departments. It happens with other emergency responders. I have a feeling that it happens in the FBI and the CIA as well but we'll never hear about it. It happens in the military and we all know that.

There are different levels of PTSD just as their are different wounds from bullets and bombs. There are times when they can still do their jobs while being treated. It is not a one size fits all wound. There are times when they can no longer do their jobs and that is when they are on the high end of the scale. On the low end, they are still able to do their jobs. The responsibility of those in charge is to be able to determine if they are medically able to do their jobs. In this case, Jason Salisbury was still able to be a firefighter. So why was he fired? Couldn't they make some kind of arrangement for this firefighter who was so good at his job he was named firefighter of the year for 2002? How can they just ignore the kind of work he did all of a sudden because of a diagnosis of PTSD? PTSD is not a crime. PTSD is not illegal. It is not something to be ashamed of. So why is it that over and over again the wounded are being treated as if they are to blame for any of it?

Senior Chaplain Kathie Costos

Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington