I Need Blue
I turned around to see a masked man pointing a gun at me. It was just the beginning of a series of events, including robbery and abduction, which changed my life forever. I Need Blue, hosted by Jen Lee, is a podcast series featuring lived-experiences from survivors of life events. I NEED BLUE creates space for survivors of trauma to feel they BELONG, are LOVED, UNDERSTOOD and EMPOWERED! I called 9-1-1 and they provided me with life-saving directions to help my customer who was having a medical emergency. Law enforcement rescued us and caught the robber. Our first-responders face unique traumas every day. I NEED BLUE provides space for them too!
I Need Blue
Robbie's Journey: A Paramedic’s Story of Battling COVID-19, Confronting Trauma, and Finding Balance
Explore the incredible journey of Robbie, a paramedic who braved the frontlines during the COVID-19 pandemic, faced unthinkable trauma, and discovered the profound kindness of humankind in moments of crisis.
During the tumultuous COVID-19 pandemic in Tampa, he witnessed the chaos and uncertainty that enveloped the healthcare system, where overwhelmed first responders grappled with fragmented communication and escalating demands. Robbie's experiences highlight the immense pressure and emotional toll on individuals committed to saving lives in such dire circumstances.
His reflections highlight the critical importance of mental health and the need for supportive relationships with both colleagues and friends beyond the job. Robbie shares the unique challenges of balancing family life while constantly living on "alarm time," always ready for the next call. Through heartfelt anecdotes from his experiences in private and government-funded EMS roles, he provides valuable insights into the differences between these environments and their impact on paramedics' lives.
This story is for anyone drawn to this vital work or who wants to understand the dedication of first responders.
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Purchase my book: Why I Survived: How Sharing My Story Helped Me Heal from Dating Abuse, Armed Robbery, Abduction, and Other Forms of Trauma by Jennifer Lee
https://whyisurvived.com/
The background music is written, performed and produced exclusively by Char Good.
https://chargood.com/home
Everyone has a story. They just don't always have a place to share it. Welcome to I Need Blue, the podcast about to take you on an extraordinary journey where profound narratives come to life, one captivating episode at a time. I'm your host, jennifer Lee, and I founded this podcast because I know there is healing and sharing. Each story you will hear shared on this podcast is a testament to our collective strength, innate ability to transform in the incredible power of healing. Please remember you are never alone. Please visit and share my website with those seeking connection and inspiration wwwineedbluenet. Thank you, char Good, for composing and performing the introduction medley for I Need Blue. You can find information about Char on her website, wwwchargoodcom.
Speaker 1:Before starting today's episode, I must provide a trigger warning. I Need Blue features graphic themes including, but not limited to, violence, abuse and murder, and may not be suitable for all listeners. Please take care of yourself and don't hesitate to ask for help if you need it. Now let's get started with today's story.
Speaker 1:Robbie is a former firefighter and current paramedic who, when I asked why do you stay in your line of work? He replied it's in my blood. With decades of service to his communities, he is here to shed light on being a first responder, including what it was like during COVID-19. While serving the community, Paramedics often provide care, as patients are transported to a hospital or clinic via helicopter or ambulance. Unlike EMTs, paramedics can distribute oral and intravenous medication and much more. Robbie shared there are many angles to being a paramedic. We will talk about his journey to becoming a paramedic, the trauma associated with the job servicing during COVID-19, and the difference between working for the private sector versus the government-funded one. This is going to be an informative and intriguing conversation, robbie. Thank you for being my guest today and welcome to the I Need Blue podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and thank you for all you do.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:I think it's important we start with that In our conversation. You initially started out as a firefighter and then transitioned into a paramedic. Can you tell us about your experience as a firefighter, and then what made you shift gears?
Speaker 2:Sure, the way you become a firefighter first is because that's kind of how the structure was. Most people do not go from high school straight into paramedic. You have to have a bridge somehow. So a lot of people can go through school by either going to EMT school and then straight on to paramedic. You have to have a bridge somehow, so a lot of people can go through school by either going to EMT school and then straight on to paramedic after that. But you have to pay for that. Otherwise you could do your fire school for a minimal cost, get into firefighting and then have them pay for the rest of it. You know, that way they can accommodate your schedule and so forth, because if you're trying to work 40 hours and be in paramedic school, that's almost impossible. I knew I wanted to be in paramedics in high school. It was my strongest suit, you know, with the biology and chemistry and such, it just kind of flowed for me. Firefighting was a different beast altogether. That was a challenge.
Speaker 1:In your experience. What surprised you the most being a firefighter?
Speaker 2:Actually just learning how the world works. When you're a kid, you're growing up and you're told where to go, what to do, what to do so forth You're not really calling the shots of your environment. When you become a firefighter and a paramedic, often you're in a scene and you've got to be the one to tell everybody what to do. So without those kinds of life experiences, being hit with all these different kinds of new situations. That was surprising, but not so much in a positive way. It was very stressful.
Speaker 1:How old were you when you became a firefighter, if I can ask I was right after my 21st birthday. Wow, and how long were you in that career?
Speaker 2:I was only a firefighter for four years four and a half years and I did medic continuously after that.
Speaker 1:Okay, great. One of the things we touched upon in the introduction was you were servicing the Tampa community during COVID-19. Can you explain how that was different before COVID-19?
Speaker 2:Sure, before COVID everybody was kind of complacent in a way of saying, well, this is how we do healthcare, it's the same old thing. Go here, do this, wait for that. You kind of had a rhythm. When COVID hit, everybody had no idea what to do. There was no coordinated response in Tampa and you're talking six different agencies, maybe more. So when you had a call or something, you were going from one place to another. It was not uncommon to be in a whole new situation when you got to the new hospital. You didn't know if they could take you or if you had to sit there and wait. Or they were telling you don't come here at all. It was kind of wait, or they were telling you don't come here at all. It was kind of I don't want to say disorganized, but it was every man for himself which led to a mass disorganization.
Speaker 1:I think that people in general felt like it was every man for himself and like you, trying to figure out you know which way to go. I never thought about what it was like for the first responders and how you get that organization there in such an intense situation.
Speaker 2:Protocol was always the same. You have a script you've got to follow for the most part. If you have anything you'd like to do, you could always call, get medical direction to do something a little out of protocol, but you wouldn't go rogue or anything like that out of protocol, but you wouldn't go rogue or anything like that. But there was definitely times when you had to get really creative because the situations you had whether you were running out of oxygen you had to do all kinds of different things. There was times when you had a lot of helicopter flights. You'd have patients that would be better off with helicopters but if they weren't flying because of COVID or because they had too many patients.
Speaker 2:I was introduced to a lot of new procedures, like one was called ECMO, where they basically take your blood out of your body and then put oxygen in it and then put the blood back into you. I was introduced to all these new procedures and with COVID, that was the last line treatment. That was the most important. Everybody was just shorthanded. You couldn't call to the hospital and say, hey, guys, give me a hand, I need this over here, I need this over here. And then came down the PPE issue. We couldn't get gowns, we couldn't get masks and things like this. So we were trying to do all this and what our agency started using as spacesuits because they couldn't get anything else. You were constantly having to adjust to different situations and different challenges. You know, to say the least.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and did the, let's say symptoms of a person that you would pick up change as far as something became more common now when you had a 911 call? To respond to.
Speaker 2:Like, did I see an uptick in things Like the same kind of symptoms With COVID? For sure, you know, at first everybody was calling it pneumonia. You know it was coming in the hospitals this has got pneumonia, this has got pneumonia. And it didn't exactly act like pneumonia in a lot of ways. So the doctors were looking at it constantly and then they would start to pull it up on the, on the x-rays and stuff and try to piece it out. And we were all trying to figure it out as we went to like, what are we seeing? What are we doing?
Speaker 2:You know, the biggest problem was when we learned COVID stops the transition of oxygen from your alveoli into your bloodstream. So it didn't matter how much I was putting air in your lungs, how much oxygen I was putting in there, it wasn't going into your blood. That's when you have to do the ECMO treatment Learning. That was tough because we're, you know, we're trying to ventilate these people and trying to keep their oxygen saturations as best we can. But here we are not understanding that it doesn't matter how much we put in there. It's really we're fighting an uphill battle.
Speaker 2:From beginning it got better as time went on, you know, as treatments got better, but it was. It was something else. And the hardest part too was also that we really believed that people were asymptomatic and still had COVID. When we got people that were testing positive for COVID at the beginning, they were all kinds of ways. You had them laid out in critical condition or you had them where they were running around playing games. So people were confused, and so were we. We didn't know how seriously to take it at first and what to do, and people panicked too. People didn't want any part of it, so they left and left, you know, a few of us hanging. But I did not see a mass exodus of EMS workers. Where I was I didn't see a lot of that. People just they just got through it.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, you're dedicated to service. That's why you are where you are was for the betterment of people and to help them. Let's talk about how you help yourself. Being a paramedic, I can't imagine the things that you must see the loss of life how are you coping with?
Speaker 2:that you think about it sometimes like a SIDS death back in the day. That was a little tough. It's also if you're in your community or not. I had no ties to Tampa so when I worked there I didn't know anyone and it was very I could be very objective. When I was working in my hometown it was a different story completely. As a paramedic it's much easier to work objectively than it is to be affected, but at the same time you can get certain patients who just hit you right in the heartstrings. There's nothing you can do about it, and then I think it also helps to get a healthy picture on life itself. You know and understand death is part of the cycle and it needs to be treated with respect, even objectified. It needs to be treated with respect each time.
Speaker 1:And they also say you know, when it comes to first responders, it's important to have friends that are not first responders. Do you find that to be true as well and helpful?
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, you know, like I said, I didn't have any ties in Tampa. So the friends that I met there, I never hung out with anybody at the Avalos company matter of fact. I mean, I was their partners in such a close personal way and we were very good friends and I really enjoyed their company, you know, but it wasn't the people I hung out with on my days off. The people I hung out with did completely different jobs and I enjoyed it. But I also found it kind of hard to just only talk about their job. You know, they don't understand mine, I don't understand theirs. So you couldn't really talk about work that much, even when you had a crazy day.
Speaker 2:But I played a lot of golf if I could. That's what kept me going most of the time. As long as I was doing something, I was fine. I wouldn't feel any like PTSD from earlier, but I did many years going from the fire department on and I think it wasn't necessarily the PTSD from the calls themselves but the actual transition of being in those environments, feeling all that stress that I've never felt before. So that was kind of rough. But other than that I pretty much had a good balance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Can I ask, just in case somebody is listening and maybe they're a first responder experiencing you know different symptoms, different reactions, your PTSD symptoms. How would you describe them?
Speaker 2:people, friends of mine, that have much more severe. Mine was more of just a cringe moment and just a negative feeling, maybe, of self-confidence, you know, like where you just is shaken to the point to where you don't have a clue, you don't know what to do. So I found myself seeking a lot of approval and not really growing into my own person because of that, and once I kind of was able to work in Tampa, I finally started to feel like, oh yeah, I can do this just fine. And then that healing helped those symptoms.
Speaker 2:Anxiety was very prevalent, I would go into the fire department and everything and my body just turned on itself because I was so stressed out all the time I had endocrine issues and the sleep cycle. Time I had endocrine issues and the sleep cycle. I'm 44, almost 45, and I'm just starting to realize what it's like to sleep every night and get into that rhythm. And, man, it's like you're so much more in control of your life on the daily. You're always on alarm phase, you're always ready for the next thing to happen, so your anxiety's up. You're always got your eyes on, your ears on. You're looking around, waiting for something A peaceful life. You know what is that.
Speaker 1:That's a really great point, and so I'm going to ask what does peace look like for you?
Speaker 2:Everything's balanced. That's the thing I very much like to work in goal-oriented things, like many missions, so to say. So if I have a project that I'm working on or something I like to do that accomplish that, just those little feelings of accomplishment. A lot of it is artistic expression as well. You know, it's not necessarily about the finished product, it's just about doing it, whether it's playing music or whether it's cutting the grass, it's just something that I do, that I pay attention to and I enjoy while I'm doing it, the Zen kind of moments. I need those as much as I need excitement, I need solitude as much as I need to be in a bar or something. I need people, and I need everything in 50-50. The closer I can keep my work to life balance, my sleep to party ratio or whatever. If I can keep it level, I'm in good shape.
Speaker 1:So if somebody was contemplating gosh, I think I want to be a paramedic, but I'm not really sure what advice would you give them?
Speaker 2:I say he's just as dumb as I am. That's a joke we have, because it's like you know what you're getting into. You know what I mean. Nobody says, well, you know what, I'm just going to be a peddler. No, you kind of know what you're going to get into. If you're thinking about it. If you're thinking about it, you've already got an idea of who you are and say you know what I like to do. This people, I think I might have this. And thank God you can't just jump in, you can't just go all the way deep too quick. You're going to start taking classes and start doing your ride alongs and your things like this. So if it's not for you, you're going to find out really fast. And then, if it is for you that's what I mean by being dumb as I am because now you're going to be paid less, you're going to be working longer, you're going to be doing all these things. It's stressing you out.
Speaker 1:So that's what I mean. Welcome to the show. Here's your seatbelt. Yes, I can't imagine. But again, I am thankful for you and I love that you laugh. You know, even in our first conversation there was humor and a lot of times that's a great, healthy coping system.
Speaker 2:Healthcare workers are funny and witty and clever. You need to be sharp, you need to know what you're saying. You need to be able to back it up. If you've already got an idea of what kind of people person you are and if you can really talk to people, you'll be fine.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Another topic we wanted to discuss, in reference to how you said there are long hours, you don't get paid enough and all of these other things, something that was important to you was talking about the private sector versus the government funded sector. Honestly, didn't know there was a difference, so I'm learning right along with you. So if there's any information or experience of yours that you would like to share, let's educate the audience.
Speaker 2:Right. I don't think most people are aware that there are privately run companies in your city governments or local governments, whichever. Sometimes, like we were speaking about earlier in Pinellas County, that's run by Sunstar, which is a private ambulance company, but they don't get the same kind of state retirements or the same loan benefits that the person doing the same job over in West Palm Beach gets. It's just not exactly the same across the board. But also there's usually a stigma when it comes to the public paid firefighters. You know that's our boys, that's our first responders. It's not the other people that are in the private ambulances that are also doing different things behind the scenes that you may not be so aware of. But when it's your turn, you're like oh, thank you, You're here. I don't know how to really frame it better than that.
Speaker 1:No worries. So for me, when I see an ambulance to me, they all look the same. The color might be different. One might be red, one might be white, so I had no idea that it's different. Now, have you worked for both? Have you worked for one that was in private sector and one that was government funded?
Speaker 2:Yes, I have, and the thing is it also depends if you're doing like first response to people's houses or to car wrecks and things. I don't want to speak like I, cause I really don't know exactly what it's called. I think it's called like a certificate of need, where they have to say that this is our group and this is who we cover. So your tax dollars are covering this area as a private company. You can't go into that territory and help them run calls. They want the whole territory for themselves. That's their business.
Speaker 2:In Tampa we were helping out the local governments, but we were doing calls that they're considered easy ones. I think that's part of the stigma too. It's like you know, if a person just falls down, they would send us to go pick them up or take them to the hospital if they wanted to go. But if it was a car wreck or something, heart attack or something, then the fire department would go. That's interesting. But let's say we're going from hospital to hospital. Right, that's not something the fire department can do. They can't go from one city to another, so we would At that point that's when it could run everything from this person just as healthy as you and I, or somebody who really needed a ventilator, the whole for five hours or longer. It changes multiple times as far as like what types of calls you would do for inner facilities. But you know that's that's predominantly private.
Speaker 1:Can you give a couple positives to working for the private sector and a couple negatives?
Speaker 2:positives to working for the private sector. And a couple negatives. Sure, positive wise you get time. You can focus on the relationships because you're going in and out of the same hospitals all the time. So you're getting to know the nurses, you're getting to know the doctors and when you get that kind of rapport going you can really dial it in on your patient much easier. I can communicate easier. The positive was definitely getting to know the people a little better. Also, you learn the treatments as they go progress down the line.
Speaker 2:So first response you would take them from the hospital, drop them off at the ER. That'd be it Well for us. We would go from the ER to the cath lab, to the ICU unit, to another hospital with another ICU unit and you can see how the patient would develop on their charts and see how the treatments would change. Understanding of chemistries, you know things like this and how it affects your patient over the long term and what drugs do what, for how long do they take them and even things like hospice. You know you dealt with hospice a lot and you could really see how far patient care has come for people with cancer. It's been. You know it's been huge. It really brought up a new positive outlook for me to be over there at that in Tampa that way.
Speaker 1:And what were the drawbacks then?
Speaker 2:The drawbacks were you didn't have a union or anything. You didn't have a lot of push. Then you know if somebody calls out now they're asking you to work overnight. Your schedule was much more dynamic. My company was good, but there are so many that you don't know what kind of equipment you're even going to use. That's not the best equipment. I mean. Even your trucks break down half the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a problem yeah it can be sure. So then, the government funded. What did you find to be the positives?
Speaker 2:You know what I did Like. We did a lot of training. We would do a lot more getting out there into different situations and different areas, different buildings and things, and learn about how to control different situations and how is it having a family when you're a first responder?
Speaker 2:I think having the family was the hardest when you had to work holidays. That's when it was your turn. Sometimes, if you're working early shifts or late shifts, there was a long time where I wouldn't get home until 2 or 3 in the morning. Well, it wasn't fair for me to go in. My wife and my kid know my kid are sleeping, you know wake them all up and everything. So I took a little room and you know it was for like a year. I had to sleep, you know, on my own because of my hours were so crazy. You miss out on that, you know, in that time. But other than that, it really supported your family when you were working, when nobody else was.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. What do you think has been the hardest part for your wife?
Speaker 2:Probably dealing with me developing and growing, healing, and you know that whole struggle because it's work that you put in and it's hard. It's hard on the other person because you know you're twisted up so that untwisting, you know she's still going to get a lot of flack from that. Not to mention if you've been up for too long and you're too tired and you had to do something the next day for her. You couldn't do it. Things like this, or what if you got held over late and you couldn't take your kid to school like you were supposed to, and now she's got to call grandma or whichever?
Speaker 1:So it goes from everything from the emotional to the logistics of it. Is your way of dealing with it all to kind of internalize it, or do you find, if you come home and talk a little bit about your day, that that helps you?
Speaker 2:It's both, because I can talk about it, but all that's really doing is just helping you process it. A lot of times, too, it was just you just need time, you just need quiet. You really need to know what you're feeling, and that's not exactly easy. My wife was able to help me do that. So, talking it out, we could actually get to the root of the problem. But then again, so what? You found the root, now what are you going to do? So then you know. Then there comes the other part.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and have you sought help outside of your own, talking with your wife and trying to understand yourself?
Speaker 2:as best you can. But also I was surrounded by some amazing people who had very much insight into who I was and you know what we were all going through, and to be able to talk it out with those kinds of people really helped a lot too, Not to mention your partners that you're with, because that is your first line of therapy. All the time it would turn into a therapy session, you know, but these are really smart people and they can help you really see it from a different perspective. Yeah, you talked a lot. You definitely did.
Speaker 1:Okay, how are you today?
Speaker 2:I'm better every day. I think it's part of its maturity. I think part of it is not actively working on the ambulance right now, so that's really good. I'm trying to take a transition right now actually to go to work in an OR instead. So just to get off the truck to get that steady cycle. Because, let's face it, if you're not sleeping and eating right, you're not really giving yourself a chance to be healthy and eating is almost impossible on those trucks. You're going to stop at Wawa all the time. You can bring a cooler if you want. Most people do. You bring your own food and snacks and stuff, but it's not the healthiest diet regimen at all.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm glad that you are looking to transition into something that also excites you, and a new challenge and all of that. So I'm going to pray for you.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I wish you good luck. Is there anything that I have missed that you would like to add to the conversation?
Speaker 2:And how it relates to which part.
Speaker 1:You can pick whichever part you want. I wanted to make sure I covered it all. I have my list in front of me, but that doesn't mean I didn't forget something.
Speaker 2:I think that it is an increasingly complex environment to work in. As time goes on, the legislation changes and treatments change and so forth. The legalities of it all and who's suing who is starting to make it really difficult as far as how comfortable you feel to act. How do you navigate this land of policy and law and trying to make all the customers happy? It's challenging. There's so much more to being a paramedic or a fireman or first responder than just simply going on these calls. It's a whole world you have to learn to navigate. My wife does not understand my world and I do not understand hers. We just don't. But I think that is also the other trade-off. You go do this work. You're going to help a lot of people, but you're going to see a side of life that you can't take back and that can jade you, because you can think the world's all is terrible, because that's all you see all the time. If you work in something positive, that's what you will see all the time. You won't see the negative.
Speaker 1:So there's definitely that trade-off for sure and out of curiosity, when you said people get sued, do emts get sued or?
Speaker 2:sure, yeah, they will tell you, like when I tell you, when you go to school, they'll tell you to keep a million dollars worth of malpractice insurance if you're really in a heavy district, you know, because anybody can sue you for anything. Now, does that mean they're going to win? No, you go to court a lot.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, somebody gets in a car wreck. They want your testimony. Or if this person says that you did this or this person happened, I mean you have to be able to go.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, I mean, you are so right. There is so much more to your job than what we realize. We think what we see on TV, which is you drive the ambulance fast with the lights on, you got somebody inside, you're helping, and then you take them to the hospital, you drop them off, the doctors are there waiting and boom, that's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in a nutshell, that is it. If that goes right, it's cake. But it doesn't always go right. It can be the weirdest things, from just a piece of plastic that pops off, you know, or if the driver hits a curb by accident, or if he gets hit by a car. Things happen all the time Rain weather, traffic, you name it. So, yeah, it can be quite challenging, because it is not an easy job by any means, but it is so different in the things that you think about and the things that you have to deal with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure you work different shifts. So let's say you have the day shift, let's say nine to five, and then you have the evening shift. Were the nature of the calls different?
Speaker 2:Not typically. Yes, you're going to see more alcohol related things later on. You know when people are typically going out. You know drug ingestions, things like that will be later. But no, no, most of the time it was. Anytime you never knew what you were going to get. Anytime you couldn't really say that it's all going to be this one day, you're all going to be that, or this time of day it should be these. No, you never know.
Speaker 1:Have you ever arrived on a scene and you were in danger?
Speaker 2:I had a gun pulled on me once, for sure. Yeah, the thing was people always say, well, if I get a gun pulled on me, I'm going to do this Well. Well, if I get a gun pulled at me, I'm gonna do this. Well, I know what I'm doing, I'm running, didn't even have time to think he pulled the gun. I ran poop out the door, you know, and I was yelling gun, gun, gun. My partner got out too, but it was like, yeah, I mean that's just didn't expect that. I mean you will see people agitated and angry, you know. Or the ones that hurt you the most are the ones you're not thinking about, like the old guy with Alzheimer's. They can get really strong, you know, when somebody's having some kind of like neurological problem or diabetes problem and they're big and they're throwing you around like ragdolls. You can get hurt seriously those ways. So it's not always just a violent or scary situation. It could be just every day. One minute he's fine, next minute he's flying off the rails. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, you're welcome.
Speaker 1:Do you have any final thoughts?
Speaker 2:No, I just appreciate what you're doing. You know. Let everybody know what it's like. I think that people that do these jobs they're nurses and paramedics and stuff they really do have a compassion and a lot of times people will forget about that and they'll feel like they're in their the worst day of their life. Really, you know, when you see the human element, it really brings it all home. I would like people to think that don't, don't lose that human element, whether you're the patient or you're the caregiver, because that's really what makes it all better.
Speaker 1:Beautiful message, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:And Robbie, thank you for being my guest on the I Need Blue podcast.
Speaker 2:I enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:You're so welcome, and this is Jen Lee. Thank you for spending time with us today. If you would like to learn anything and everything about I Need Blue, visit my website, wwwinadebluenet. And remember you are stronger than you think. Until next time, thank you.
