Child Emergencies

This Blog Post was originally published on the platform "writelier" (formerly "co-writers" and "200wordsaday"). Sadly the blogging platform was discontinued. I downloaded all my blog posts and prepared them to be republish them here.

Since I'm going to duty this night again, I thought I write about another topic I find really hard to come over and work with. Children.

I'll have to knock on wood, that I did not have a child emergency recently. If I remember correctly the last one was a few months ago where the child pulled hot water from a teacup over itself. Gratefully, nothing really bad happened to the child. Just some mild burnings on its chest.

Every time when we are called to a child emergency it puts another level on stress on us. An 89-year-old with a heart attack? Bad, but at least we know they live, or should have lived there live until now. Sure, we treat all with the same respect and with the best thing we can do for them.

But when it comes to children there is always another layer you have to keep in mind.

The parent's and or other relatives close by. If you're reanimating an 89-year-old, most of the times the relatives are shocked enough so they don't interfere with us and we can "work" uninterrupted.

With children, that's another story. Every tried to take a 3-month-old from her mother while the baby is crying?

Almost impossible. But to do all we can do, we have to be demanding. It's not always easy to "trick" the relatives and parents, but it's a challenge we have to go through in order to help the child as best as possible.

Child emergencies are also way harder to forget. I know a colleague who still remembers a child found dead on a Monday morning. They did and tried everything to bring back this small wonder to live but it didn't come back. Sadly.

I wasn't at that emergency as it was long before I turned paramedic, but it still comes to my head when we are getting a child emergency dispatched. And yes, that also adds to our invisible scars.