A New Paramedic Explains Call Residue

You can train for fire, trauma, and protocols, but nobody trains you for what stays in your head after the scene is over. We sit down with Jake Braaten, a brand new paramedic, to talk about the quiet weight that builds over time: the “residue” you carry home from EMS calls, hospice moments, and those first critical incidents that change how you sleep, think, and relate to people you love. 

Jake’s path starts far from the ambulance, in IT and cybersecurity, where problem solving was the thrill until the problems became routine. A family crisis during COVID, caring for his grandmother through cancer, and seeing how medics supported not just the patient but the whole family pushed him toward the fire service. We dig into what fire residency looks like, what surprised him about real-world EMS, and why calls inside someone’s home hit different than anything you see in a controlled setting. 

We also get real about first responder mental health: brain fog after a first CPR, the urge to withdraw, and the fear that stress means you are not cut out for the job. We talk peer support, counseling gaps, chaplains, and the difference between crisis-only resources and true preventative care. Jake shares how a supportive marriage, faith, and strong boundaries like turning off alerts and protecting time off help him stay present at work and at home. 

If you work in EMS, fire, law enforcement, dispatch, or you love someone who does, this conversation will feel familiar and useful. Subscribe for weekly episodes, share this with a coworker or partner, and leave a review so more people who need it can find Call Residue Podcast.

Transcript

What Call Residue Is

SPEAKER_02 0:08

You know, you spend enough years uh uh in this job, and it leaves something on you. Not always visible, not always something you can name, but it's there. I'm Jake. I'm a firefighter paramedic, and this is Call It Residue. It's a podcast about what this life actually looks like. The calls you carry home, the stuff nobody briefs you on at the Academy, the ugly, the heavy, and sometimes the beautiful. Let's get to it. Today's

Meeting A Brand New Paramedic

SPEAKER_02 0:42

guest is Jake Bratton. He is a brand new paramedic. The ink is still drying on your cert, I'm pretty sure. Yes. Yeah. And but he's been in the fire service for a couple years now. Started out as a resident and then went full-time fire EMT and then got promoted to paramedic after going through medic school with the same department. He was my partner for a couple years prior to me latterling somewhere else. So welcome. Also known as Catholic Jake. Catholic Jake. Yeah. There's a lot of Jake's. We got Catholic Jake, Catholic Jake, and Italian Jake. That's at the same station. It's actually one of the best shifts I ever worked. We were all in the same car. Jake cubed. That was a really busy shift. It was fun. Well, welcome. Yeah. You know you've heard the the first episode. Thank you for listening. And I think that where we're gonna go with this is have guests on and just talk about their experiences on how they've how they got interested in the fire service, how things were different, and you know, how life is now.

Trading Cybersecurity For Service

SPEAKER_01 1:50

So you know, I I grew up in in Saskatchewan Valley, just like Jake. You know, I didn't grow up like, oh, I want to be a firefighter when I grow up, or you know, or anything like that. It wasn't really on my radar. Like the trucks were cool and that kind of stuff, but like the firefighting aspect of it, I was just like, yeah, okay. I was way more into like military, soldier. I think I was an army guy for like five or six different years as a kid. Just you know, Halloween. Yeah, for Halloween. And so that was definitely kind of my path. Kind of graduated high school and kind of fell into this IT job uh that I was doing. I'd been dishwashing and stuff like that, just kind of your normal teenager jobs and stuff like that. I got an internship out doing IT work, and I was able to kind of just roll that into a pretty sweet gig of kind of part-time, full-time working around school and that kind of stuff. I was going to school for to get a cybersecurity degree, which I got an associate's in. So I was definitely like kind of on the fast track to get into all that. I was in that job doing network stuff and computer stuff, like really getting into it for like four and a half years. You know, I got really good at it. I was really interested, of course, and the main thing that about all that was the problem solving where I was where I worked was a like 24-7 uptime. Like there was no downtime. There could not be downtime. And so that there's a lot more problem solving that goes into, you know, when you push out a Windows update and it destroys all your computers. Uh so I mean a lot of that problem solving and initial kind of outside the box thinking, thinking on your feet, that was what really kind of I found myself being the most happy in that job. And then as things got better in the sense of like our management of the network and the computers and stuff like that, that kind of stuff started happening less. And so I was just kind of like, just became disinterested. I wasn't, you know, I'd seen these problems before, I fixed them before. They came up less and less. And so I was like, well, cool. Now I'm just normal IT guy, desk jockey. You know, I don't stuff breaks sometimes, but like it's not a big deal. I'd gotten my associate's degree and all this stuff, and like I could definitely see the longevity, and I'm kind of just staring down the barrel of that. And so that kind of got me, you know, wistfully, you know, looking out the window. Oh, what else can I do? At the same time, you know, the big COVID was going on and all that stuff. And

Grandma’s Cancer And A New Mission

SPEAKER_01 4:34

my grandma ended up, this is totally related, I promise. My grandma ended up getting cancer, and they kind of gave her like months to live. So the family couldn't afford to do like a skilled nursing facility and home health care kind of deal or whatever. I actually moved in with her to take care of her. I was basically the night shift. Also helping with, you know, bed and transferring and meds and all of the things in the middle of the night, you know, however that worked, especially as kind of her condition progressed. Well, she ended up living for an extra two years, thanks be to God. But yeah, it was definitely kind of an unexpected deal for us, like family-wise. So during that kind of two-year time, my grandma ended up having like two different episodes of some sort of ventricular rhythm. I can't remember if it was a VTAC or B fib, but she had a pacemaker in and her pace would just it would just go, go, go, go, you know, and she kind of like you're starting your car and you're hoping it turns over. It's kind of the same deal with her. And so the fire department actually came, you know, the medics came, took care of her. But I think the biggest thing, obviously, I mean, they took care of my grandma, which is awesome. But the other thing was that they took care of my family. You know, my mom watching her mom be really sick in that aspect of it, and they were able to kind of pull her aside, explain what's going on, like the hospital's right over there, it'll be okay. You know, we got her on the right track now, that kind of stuff. And just kind of hearing about that experience and having that experience for myself and my family was such a unique and I think just really inspirational kind of thing for me. And so, you know, being a young man, 24 years old, kind of looking for a bigger mission or whatever, that kind of stuff stood out to me a lot. Started asking around, was gonna about how to get in the fire service, more and more stuff kind of coming up. I had some other people, some family friends who were already medics and kind of adjacent counties kind of explaining to me. I started asking more questions, that kind of stuff. Uh, I was gonna go into wildland, and then a family friend of mine's like, no, man, that's that's prison work. He's like, Yeah, you can't transfer to medic or anything like that. Because that's what I want to be a paramedic. I want to be the guys that came in to help, you know. And so he's like, No, that's prison work, bro. That's not what you want. He's like, You want to be, I'll get you set up, being a resident here or in our fire department. And that's how I got my foot in the door to go sit down with my chief. And it was like, and my pitch to him, it's funny, we always go back to it, but my pitch to him was, you know, chief, I'm 24 years old. I got a good attitude, I got a good work ethic, and I won't be a medic. It was like, yeah, okay, kid. Like, you know, cool. Well, like, let's start out, you know, resident, EMT, fire school, you know, and we'll kind of see where that goes. It was one of those things where it wasn't like a hard cutoff. I was doing EMT school, fire school, working full time, and then it was one of those where once I was still still living in still living in residency. Yep. And so I guess I should break that down. So

Fire Residency And Getting In

SPEAKER_01 7:47

residency, not everybody has them, but usually residency for fire departments is where you basically it's a it's a barter. You you go to the fire department and you say, I'm willing to work and sleep here and respond to calls, you know, as long as I'm here and willing and able. And in exchange, you know, you give me a place to sleep and some training, and you know, you pay for some certs, and I get to go rent some cool calls.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Pay for your certs, but do you have to pay anything in?

SPEAKER_01 8:16

I was making at the time at my last tax statement before I got married. I was working a shitload, but my last I made $26,000 or $29,000 in a year, but I didn't feel like it because all my I mean, my only outgoing was car insurance and and food. We live in the barracks and military.

SPEAKER_03 8:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

You know, where it's just like, hey, you know, all this stuff is taken care of for you. You just gotta show up and do your job. So it's a pretty sweet gig. It was kind of something out of left field even for myself, just kind of chasing down that opportunity. So it's it's I mean, and some places are gonna run it different, and that's kind of where you get into the whole politics of departments and how much money they have and where they want to spend it as a resident. I mean, I did not know my fucking astronaut hold the ground. And I mean my pitch to chief was like that was what I had.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

Which is different from when I started, right? I literally tried to become a resident and a few of the other departments in the county that have a residence. I had left a you know full-time job. I was 24 and went like moved home and applied. I had no certs, and at that time, they laughed at me. You know, the very chief that I talked to all the time was an assistant chief, and he looked at my application and goes, You don't have any certs? He goes, Come, come, come talk to me when you have certs. And I was like, I went the volunteer route, right? Right. We have a similar experience, but not similar experience at the total time.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

I was there the very first night uh I was on the insurance to go ride on the Metac ring. So for me, like it was dope.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

I've I've been fortunate enough to see you at your very beginning, get to see you where you're at right now, and it's been pretty cool to

The Job Is Human Up Close

SPEAKER_02 10:18

see. And what type of expectations did you have coming into this? Like, what did you think the fire and EMS service was like?

SPEAKER_01 10:27

I didn't really understand the different aspects of like combo, you know, like fire and EMS, or like EMS is a third service, or those kinds of things. And so I just kind of thought it was all fire, and so and then all fire was the same. Then come to find out, a lot of places, especially on like the West Coast, it's a lot of you know, dual service fire, totally that kind of stuff. And then I kind of thought that like, you know, going back to the whole military thing, you know, I really wanted to be in the military. You know, a couple of my family members pulled me aside who were in the military, and like, hey, bud, that's not always cracked out up to be, you know, like we're not going over, it's not World War II, bro.

SPEAKER_03 11:08

Like we're not a little bit different.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

So, you know, I kind of it shifted gears over, but I was always interested in doing like combat medic type stuff. You know, kind of, you know, sexy, you know, like needle D's and intubation and IOs and and IO. Yeah, but yeah, crazy, crazy, you know. And I was always kind of really interested in kind of that combat emergency medicine kind of deal, but I just didn't realize that like it was a thing here stateside as well. I didn't, I don't know why I just never gave it a thought. But kind of finding out that like, no, there is a way to do all that that you think is cool and interesting, you know, it really it kind of trips my trigger. That's the the stereotypical medic combo right there. You know, it but it's just so interesting. I had no idea really that there was really any medical besides just like a BLS car or anything like that, you know, in pre-hospital meds, like I think you know, I'm still stuck in like the emergency days.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

We have very progressive protocols here and especially Washington State, which is nice, you know. But yeah, I think I think uh what your view getting into it, and this is where I wanted to go with the podcast, right, is getting different views of how we all got into it. Right. Right. Yeah. So that being said, in the first few months or first few weeks, how did you know it was different?

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Well, for me, I finally I got back into that fix of problem solving and thinking on your feet. It's all brand new, so the world was full of color and everything was super exciting. I was asked to go on ground level falls.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

You know, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Like I just so, so pumped. I think the I I think the what really stood out is that sounds so cliche, but like you're never gonna run the same call twice, which kinda. And it it's crazy how that lines up. But but no, it's it was the the how human the job is, how just different thy dynamic is of you know, I step in an office and you know, I'm out here doing my thing versus like I'm going to somebody's house to lift them up to perform whatever, you know, like BLS, airway stuff, you know, meds, whatever we need to do. And people are willing and able and kind of bending over backwards to get you there. You know, you talk about it's like people literally throw their kids at us, right? It's every confidence that we're gonna do something. And just having that kind of own ownership over that, you know, it's a big role to play. Kind of the that's what we train for. That's what we train, that's the standard. Well, the the worst possible situation and the fact that you as a public servant are going to step into this role and make whatever is happening that much better. Whether

Hospice, DNRs, And Family Needs

SPEAKER_01 14:29

it be, you know, doing treatments and stuff like that or assisting the family, like a huge, huge, huge topic that I'm super passionate about is like assisting with hospice and that kind of stuff. Go figure, right? Yeah. Weird. And just explaining that process to people, answering questions, and really just kind of taking. There's there's not another job that I feel like is as vulnerable not only yourself, but for the people that you go and work with, whether it be your patients or you know, I mean, and then you know, fire service culture and stuff like that too, right? Like it's its own, that's its own beast in itself.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

The personal parts that really connect us are the hospice calls, the ones where we're not talking with the patient. The patient has a set list of in their life expectancy. At that point, your patients become sons, husbands, nieces, the rest of the family that's like, well, what are you gonna do? Well, this is what is written out. Did you guys agree to this? Right. Because this is what the patient wants. And a lot of times when they're like, no, pull the DNR and you gotta do CPR on 98-year-old grandma, and you're like, Well, I mean, it's it's more of continue the CPR for the family's sake while you try and talk to the family of saying, hey, these were her, her, her requests. And so that's where it becomes tough, you know, yeah, aspect. You know, and for for you that have gone through that, you have a little more understanding. I finally went through it, right, with with my grandfather and the expectations and stuff like that, and trying to walk the rest of my family through some of the, you know, I was on a call the other day where the patient had a hospice bag, but it was just literally a bag that the place that they were there was using to keep his stuff in. And I ran to the to the nurse and was like, hospice? And they're like, no. And I was like, because there's a bag. They're like, oh, we were just keeping this stuff in there. Okay. Because that's a whole different process of how we transport a patient. And for it's what the patient wants, right? Fantastic. That they have great care, right? And but yeah, it's just not something that we run.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

The difference is that every call, in a sense, means something to someone. You know, I can go and do updates on the computers or fix network stuff, and that's cool. But like, you know, lifting up Mima, you know, we know each other on a first name basis now. You know, I know that they don't want to go to the hospital or whatever, right? Or but that's just as important, if not, you know, the on the same level as being there for the hospice patient or being there for the DNR patient, or, you know, running a code, or you know, a loved one found somebody else down because they're struggling with mental health issues that, you know, drove them to suicide. I think, and this is my you know, bleeding heart opened up, but like I think a lot of people put a lot of emphasis on the more critical stuff. And, you know, it's kind of every single one of those med calls that you go on or your fire calls, you know, that you go on is like it's it is it is important, and that work means something to you know, more profound, you know, than than any one of us individually.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

I do, I do feel that that's that's what is a part and what's so special about the fire service, you know, public service, right? Is that we're called upon when you you know, they uh I was talking with somebody and they were like, yeah, you know, when when things catch on fire, I just went away and you literally go towards it. And I was like, that I mean sure. Like that's part of my job. But I also go to, you know, if you spill something, if you um, you know, like I'm I'm supposed to be trained in everything across the board. You know, that's why we train for the high risk, low frequencies, right, you know, even when it comes to EMS calls, right? It seems like we're going to more motor vehicle collisions recently, and I don't know if it's because the weather's getting better.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

I don't know. I mean it's just like 911 utilization across the board, and you know, we're not fucking tapping into any new ground here as far as like just stress on systems, and you know, I'm not not here to to bitch and moan about that because I have a great job because of it.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

You know, but but it's just it's a totally different ballgame where we're at now versus where the fire service was 10 years ago. What

First CPR And The Stress After

SPEAKER_01 19:38

do you wish someone had told you before starting? I guess for me, I had uh I mean I was only 24, but I had a lot of growing up to do. Getting my own kind of shit squared away mentally, emotionally. I didn't really know what it was like to kind of come down off of the stress of a call or anything like that. Um I don't know what it is for you guys, but the for me, it's only happened a couple times, but first was after my first CPR was is the one that sticks out. I was I came out of it, like brain fog, difficulty sleeping, like all of the normal like stress or uh or you know, like kind of big stress signs and symptoms, you know, that you just went on a pretty a critical incident and you stress the fuck out. Wanted to be antisocial and just kind of lay in bed. Like what does be despondent. Yeah, all of the normal kind of just withdrawal. I guess nobody I didn't really know that that was a thing before. And so when it happened, I thought that there was something wrong with me or that maybe I wasn't fucking hacked out for it. You know, I wasn't cut out for this job, even though I love it. And just being a resident. But now, granted, I wasn't even EMT yet. I wasn't even done with fire school yet. But yeah, I really wish that I had known that like some of these things are natural, they're gonna happen, you're gonna be stressed, you know, you're not gonna know what the fuck's going on because you're brand new and whatever. And like I was a pretty anxious guy to begin with, just super perfectionist, very like goal-oriented to a fault kind of deal. And so I just wish that I was already told from from from a young age as a kid, like, you know, if you're gonna fail, fail greatly. I'm you know, own it, get after it, grow. And so I had heard that already, but I never had any application in real life, basically. Because I was able to think my way through most things and And you know, my way out of other things and you know and that kind of stuff. So I always made it work. But then stepping into like EMS and that kind of stuff, it was just a totally different fucking ballgame. And I just so did not have any frame of reference. Oh, and then that time, and I can't even brought it up already, but I met my beautiful wife as well in there too, like and tried to manage a relationship in the middle of doing residency and pulling extra shifts and doing all that stuff. Yeah, dedicated and motivated. I was a resident all the way up until the week or two weeks before I got married. And then I got married and moved out because I'm a big kid. You're going back to being Catholic. It's a big deal. You know, it's a big deal getting married and being Catholic, you know. And and I was not about to put my beautiful fiance and brand new wife through me still living in residency. She was already putting up with enough. She she she'd done a great job. So she's supported me. She's my uh sugar mama while I was making that 27 grand a year.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

And working 48 to 96 hours a week plus going to school. Doing doing you know, your hospital time and your ride times, and yeah, somehow we kept them home. I guess. They like us. So let's talk a little bit about those calls that stay stayed with you at the beginning and now how you process

Marriage, Support, And Talking It Out

SPEAKER_02 23:28

them. Like what like what do you do now compared to what you did before, right? Where you were withdrawing, you were trying to be quiet, you know, basically doing everything that we all do, and we all think we're the special ones.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

And so we'll we'll go back to so we're withdrawing, all the kind of classic stress coping thing now, and this is kind of why I brought that up or whatever. My I am so, so, so blessed, so fortunate to have a my wife grew up in a first responder household. So my father-in-law is a is a sheriff's deputy. And so she grew up understanding that. And luckily, my father-in-law is very well adjusted. He comes from the army, he's, you know, sergeant there. And so he kind of had some exposure to that before going into the going into law enforcement. And so he did a really good job of not only kind of managing his own issues, but also kind of passing along to her the understanding of a little bit of what it's like stepping into those scenarios, you know, the mindset things a little bit, mental emotional things. But, you know, that's where my wife fills in the gaps with that. And so she's been just a huge, huge, huge, huge proponent of my mental health. You know, I can talk to her about things that bug me at work. I can talk to her about, you know, whatever it is that is getting under my skin. Whether it be, you know, for me personally, I'm not a the blood and the guts and the gore and the whatever, not really my my bag. It's the stress of the scenario. Whether it be that, you know, just being camped for however long, right? That's what gets after me. That's what drains me. That's what makes me want to withdraw. And so for and so for me, having that person in my corner who I can be vulnerable with and who is understanding, and she is on board for if I need to talk, she's on board for if I don't need to talk and we just need to hang out. You know, she is super flexible in that regard and is amazing at keeping her own stuff out of it in a sense where it's like, oh, I need you to tell me, you know, what's either what's bothering you or what the call was or whatever, blah blah blah. She's like, yeah, like when we get home, there's not like on a normal shift or whatever, we don't really talk about what I did or what I do or whatever, unless it was like fun. You know, or or like I almost almost burned down the hospital again because they tried to put me in the waiting room. Like, whatever. But you know, most of the time we don't talk like we don't gotta talk. She's like, if you don't want to talk about it, we don't gotta fucking talk. I don't care. She's like, whatever you do at work, that's what you do at work. Good to go. But at the same time, if I'm like, hey, you know, something's bothering me, or you know, I went on this and I just kind of need to talk about it, or I want to, you know, I'm a little fucked up and here's why, or whatever, she's also all ears and all in on it. Not everybody is fortunate for that. And I will admit that I probably lean on that a lot. Maybe too much. Did

Counseling Gaps And Peer Support

SPEAKER_01 27:03

you ever try counseling? My experience with counseling has been is that there is ample resources at your disposal if you want to kill yourself.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

Yes, they have code green, they have you know text.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

You got the helplines, you got specific first responder, certified, bona fide, we will take care of everything and fly you places to go and get you help. Like we will pull out all the stops. But before that, there's kind of fuck all, which is really interesting. I was doing some counselor kind of shopping, you know, and I tried a couple different ones, and I think they were all jazzed because my pitch to them was like, hey, like I don't have any big outstanding things, but I kind of feel like I don't have the appropriate tools to do what I need to do on a day-to-day. Basically, I I the way I pitched it was like preventative maintenance for mental health kind of deal. It's like, you know, my the shit's really good right now, but I am four years into the fire service. And one of those years being full times, I don't have kids yet. Like, you know, I'm Catholic, I'm probably gonna want a lot of kids. It's just the wife and I, and things are relatively simple, as simple as life can be, right? And shit's it's good. It's good, life's good. But what I don't want to rely on that 100%. It's not always gonna be good. And there's gonna be shit. You know, I my wife and I, we had a miscarriage, and like that wasn't on the like dance card. I wasn't expecting that. Not we weren't expecting that, and then trying to navigate that.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Yeah, you're not alone. Like, you definitely like that's that's the biggest part of this whole thing is right, you're not alone. There are some services, some departments have emerging resources such as peer-to-peer. You can contact your chaplains. There's also some other resources that have started to come out. They're not like strong in every department, but and I think that's where we're lacking a lot. Just like you said, there's I can have you call that number if you're starting, but I'd rather you call me first, right? And and I think just being open up about it on shift with your fellow coworkers of like you're not alone. Yeah. And I think that's a lot of departments where, you know, we're not just there for like we spend more time with than with our own family. But it's about that actually using this other people's experience of saying, hey, we can do this together. We can get it.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

And I think that's what I was looking for. I was kind of like right in between like peer support, yeah. Right, which is which is really good, and especially kind of like in an initial, like, you know, for my very first kind of stressful scenes and that kind of stuff where I was being affected, peer support was money. Yeah. So because they were like, yep, here's a sheet, it's totally normal, these are the things, like you're gonna feel this, and then you're gonna feel this, and then it's gonna be a thing. And I'm like, wow, this is great. You know, right, yeah, right. Like that was awesome, just as a like an awareness level. And I think now as I'm kind of maturing a little bit in my career and kind of just actually starting to get my feet underneath me, not medically, I'm still learning, but but you know, getting my feet under me in kind of a mental, emotional, and maturity sort of aspect, you know, having some of those tools to be able to recognize, put names to things, recognize and kind of be able to manage that on my own, know when it's know when it's time to call in extra resources and do this, that, and the other. That would that would be really cool. Me personally, and I'm probably looking in the wrong places or not asking the right questions, which is people that you're talking to don't know the resources that are out there. Right.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

Just the fire service in general, especially in this area, is chaining. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen it, yeah, where we don't talk about it, where the critical incident scene management people come in and don't really talk. Yes, it's there. And it's just part of the protocol that after this hard call, we do this. But this hard call, we didn't do that. Well, because a kid was involved or a member of the community was involved. It's like but all of us experience different things in different spots, right? It's just like now how they're inviting tow truck drivers to all out of those critical incident scenes. Yeah, because they're finding that tow truck drivers show up and they just see the scene. Right. And sometimes they actually, if we can't get to a victim, we still have to remove that victim from the car. Right. And so they're seeing it too, right? You know, sometimes they actually have to get in the car to find stuff, and you know, everyone gets brought in. Dispatchers, stuff like that. And those are great. I've I've enjoyed the ones that I've been a part of. And I I don't know if you have been a part of many. I thought you were a part of a couple. A few. What has helped you cope?

SPEAKER_01 32:20

Hmm years. Is my big one and I and Ari Gushed about she's I mean, she is my rock, and I know not everybody is fortunate enough to be in that situation. So,

Faith As A Coping Framework

SPEAKER_01 32:32

you know, another aspect is for me personally is my faith. Well, I'm I'm called Catholic Jake because I'm Catholic. You know, and that was another thing that I kind of chose to be on the team. You know, I wasn't raised Catholic. I was looking for some very mission, looking for something a little bit bigger than myself. And I've really enjoyed the church, what it offers, the stability, the, you know, the rich history and tradition. And so for me, being able to look at things from a more from an outside perspective, or of so kind of going back to like what I was talking about earlier, where it's like the ground level fall is just as important as the MNCPR is just as important as a diabetic issue versus this, this, that, and the other. And like, yeah, people abuse the 911 and that kind of stuff, but it's like people abuse 911 because they're human and they got issues. And and so it's like, you know, you can be pissed off about it and you can be, you know, whatever, but at the end of the day, I mean, humans gonna be humans, and that's really our job is to, you know, humans helping humans. And again, I and maybe this is my own internalized stigma or whatever, because like it all sounds really mushy and really like fire interview-esque. I've got a passion for helping people, but like that's how I fucking cope with it though. You know, I believe in the mission. I drank that fucking Kool-Aid where I'm just I'm here to help and sacrifice and get after it and and take care of whoever calls me. And obviously, that lines up great with the Christian message, you know, and and that kind of denying and dying to yourself for the benefit of other people, right? Like that just lines up in lockstep. And that's something that I found a lot of peace with and a lot of understanding and willingness to accept certain situations, whether it be the person who calls just want to talk at 3 a.m. And you're like, I have been doing XYZ all day. I've been doing, you know, whatever. We ran however many calls, and you know, goddammit, I really want to sleep. There's a reason I'm Catholic is because I'm practicing. And so, and so you know, I still I still get pissed off when the tones go off. But, you know, when I get on scene and you encounter that person, it's different. Like, I just I have a whole a whole different mindset. You have to switch it off, and and I'm able to kind of step into these places and and turn off my own kind of selfish, whiny, you know, me, always me. Blah blah blah blah blah. It's like, bro, you have a fucking dope job with dope time off and benefits and pay, and you get to spend a lot of time with your wife, and eventually, like your kids shut the fuck up. You work for 24 hours, just go do your 24-hour job. Not a big fucking deal. Also,

Shift Work And Provider Health

SPEAKER_01 35:43

yeah, we're gonna talk about provider health. We gotta end the modified Detroit or whatever the hell other departments are doing the one-on-one off, one-on-one off, one on five off, or whatever. Whatever you want to call that. Yeah, that's it. Dupe on schedules, all that shit. That fucking shifts schedule work or whatever. That's what's killing people. That's what's getting people the fucking suck start revolvers and fucking all that shit. You gotta have that decompression time. I mean, like, I come home and this is just me. When I was a resident, I was working 48, one off, and then work another 48, and then maybe like two off. And I I mean consistently doing 48s all the fuck time.

SPEAKER_03 36:24

And I became a giant fucking pussy when I got full time.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

Because I'm like, eh, I have a debit day. I have to work three days this week instead of two, like, ah, damn it, you know, whatever. Oh, this is a 48. I'm a giant pussy now. But I do believe that in order to be sustainable for the career or whatever, that that's also got to be a piece. So, I mean on my faith in it really, I feel like arms me. And I feel like a lot of stuff does not affect me because I'm able to already see the calls and see the things that are happening through a different lens and willing to accept that there is shit that is going to be out of my control. There is stuff that, you know, no matter what, people are gonna fucking die, right? Like that's this is inevitable. We are the we are the uh uh uh the prolongers of the inevitable, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:19

I think what really sticks with me is something my father said because I asked him, why don't you have the same like PTSD that like I have? Because back when I was drinking, I was I was really drunk when I asked him this question, but I do remember, and it was him saying that because I don't know how they lived, you bring them packaged to me. I don't know their dog's name, I don't know their I don't know that they have a cat or a bird, or that their you know, house is you know overlooking a bluff or is extremely, you know, cluttered. You don't bring me all that stuff. Pulling them from a car, pulling them from a lake, or like anywhere where we pull them from, right? Right or going by that spot, you know, even on a drive, you know, I can't go from here to the neighboring town without thinking of at least three major.

SPEAKER_01 38:19

Encountering a patient in an ER where everything is very versus stepping into their house. It sticks with you.

SPEAKER_02 38:25

It's the stuff that sticks with you. That's why you know there's outlets. You and I are in a position where we want to talk about it and we can talk about it, and it's good for us. And hopefully that somebody's uh that's that's listening, that has been trying to compartmentalize the just the stresses over the years, you know. And I understand that there's guys that have been on the job for 20, 30 years that have never talked about this stuff. Right. Because they're you know, their spouse or their former spouse or like whatever whatever they've experienced through their life, they don't talk about it. But now they're maybe they want to talk about it. Maybe they're they're they're finally like, how do I repair this? And that's that's kind of like why I started this whole thing. I very fortunate that you came and thank you so so much for for you know coming here and taking away.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

But this is what I'm talking about though, is it's like, okay, yeah, so I just got off, but like life doesn't stop, bro. And like you got kids. Like I think about that all the time. Like, what am I gonna do when what am I gonna do, you know, when I got kids and right, because I'm I'm fortunate right now where you know I get off and my wife's at work. So like a lot of the time I get to go home and I just get to chill.

SPEAKER_03 39:55

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

My wife's amazing because you know, she's got the house all set up because she, you know, she wants it to be good to go for me. I don't gotta worry about anything. You know, I come home and I and I crash and it's awesome. Like there's other days too where it's like, what are you gonna do? You know, life don't stop. You're gonna hang out with buddies, you know. Cause for me, something that's really been I've had just since a kid was like a really, really crippling fear of death. I get like panic attacks, anxiety attacks, and I feel my stomach drop out from under me, and I just like freak the fuck out, you know, heavy breathing, that kind of stuff. I you know, I can talk myself out of it, but you know, I had that ever since I was a kid. And then, you know, you go and work this job and it makes you think about death a lot. There's a really obvious dichotomy. Um I don't pretend to be a big philosopher here at all. There's a really big dichotomy between like how you live your life and what that's gonna mean. You know, I don't want to be a lot of my own mental health stuff and those benefits and stuff like that. Part of that is like a motive definitely a motivation to be like, okay, cool, but like what are you gonna fucking do when you're dead, bro? Like, cool, you're gonna sleep. Like just keeping going. Yeah. It's like like today, you know, I'm go to the EMS office, take my brand new introductory medic test, and that's like come here, do this, go home, finish my honeydew list, you know, wife will come home, it'd be great, hang out, that kind of stuff. But I got a week off because I took the vacation. But so I'm definitely looking forward to that. Book that I haven't read yet, but I picked it up from a coworker of my good buddy. It comes from he was a corpsman in the Navy and then got out, got his medic cert, and all that stuff. Really good dude. But he's really big on just living your life to the to the fullest. Get as much as you can out of it. But you know, his big thing uh comes from the book is surf what you can.

SPEAKER_03 42:06

Just get out there and experience what you can and and and be a part of it. Being human. And so because you live life you're full. You live, you know, you're like yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:23

I am you're you're very fortunate to have found a very supportive wife on your first time around. Yeah. Struck that lottery, and I think that, you know, I I've struck that lottery with with my wife, and you know, we're it's a very high statistic of divorce, and that, and I think a lot of that has to do with kind of working through the stuff that we work through. Right. And home life and bringing it home.

Turning Off Alerts And Being Present

SPEAKER_02 42:56

And, you know, like we talked about before the podcast of you know, turning off our alerts. Yeah. You know, because it's now going to our phones, right? You know, back when I first started, we had a page, we could just click it off. You know, you were gonna go out of town, click off that pager. Now I have to turn off an actual app so it doesn't send me the stuff. Don't try and contact me, you know. We've got we've got uh the time away. Because they can away is just as important.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

I'm just like, I am if I'm gone, I'm unreachable. Yeah. Don't talk to me. And that's the and that's I think that's the biggest thing. That's really is if I had to sum up kind of what we just rambled on about a little bit, is that it's just being present in whatever you're doing right there. I'm at work, I'm committed to work. Obviously, I'm still a husband, you know, my family, and I keep up with them as I can or whatever, but it's like if I'm going on this med call, I'm going on this med call and I'm gonna be the like, I'm gonna do the best that I can. You know, if I'm they're Or doing training or writing a report, like I'm gonna do the best that I can, right? I'm committing to that. When my when I'm on my time off, I'm gonna do the best that I can. I'm gonna be the best husband I can and and be the most present. It's all about how you want to spend that time. And that's and that's really that's kind of this whole call residue thing, right? Is it's like, how do you you get clean? How do you, you know, get that shit off so that you can be the best husband that you can, the best dad that you can, the brother, whatever, you know, however you want to be, you know, as big as this job is and as big as this mission is or whatever, it, you know, it's not, it's not everything. And I think people, I think a lot of people lose that. I think of my own kind of faith and values and stuff like that kind of shape this a lot. But like my my beliefs in this is it's like, you know, I don't live to work, I work to live. I have this job, and that one of the huge reasons why I got into the fire service is because not only is it fucking cool as shit, but I got good benefits, I got good pay, and I get good time off. I get to hang out with my family. So it's a little bit different instead of going to the office every day, but being home every night is different than not being home every night, but being there for three days.

SPEAKER_03 45:15

You know, that's that's a little bit different.

SPEAKER_02 45:21

I try not to work Christmas as much now that I've got kids, but you know, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, you know, all the family holidays. It's all good. You just you just kind of plan it a different way. So, but yeah, no, I I I think that you're right. I think that uh we all have that stuff that doesn't come off and we've got to have some sort of outlet to, you know, whether it's working out, whether it's spending time with your family, whether it's turning off your just turn off your alerts, be present in now. You know, we're constantly bombarded by everything in this world because now it's right in our pocket. And that's I think that the growth of everyone in the fire service, from those that were here well before cell phones, they're still there's still a few of them still around. And those are bad asses because they've worked more fires than we ever will. And they're they're still working shift work, some of them. But yeah, it's it's it's an amazing career to be a part of.

Advice: Stay Humble, Stay Human

SPEAKER_01 46:23

What would you say to somebody who is wanting or thinking for me to just kind of try to peddle my own kind of personal mission and that kind of stuff is like don't forget to be human. It's the most, I mean, you know, you go to academy, you get the you get the attitude and you get the attention to detail and you get the whole being squared away and kind of that whole paramilitary thing going on, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's it's not just that shit for its own sake. It goes into a whole bunch of shit, right? The tradition of all of those that came before us, right? All of those that have made the job what it is today, whether it be, you know, firefighters, medics, cops, that all that stuff, right? Like talk about Tony Stark doing it in a cave, you know, with a box of scraps type shit, right? Like we got some dudes there that were there, uh, you know, one of our medics was around with Life Pack 5. Yeah. You know, right? Like, and had the didn't even have a 12 lead readout, but like the the the shit that you could get done. And so so a lot of it is respecting that aspect of it too. Being invited into somebody's home, being trusted, just kind of like on the spot just because of the fads that you wear and the uniform. But that's that's what some people say, you know. We're I oh, you're not a cop, cool, come in. Like you skip the skip the development rope, you know, here you can. Yeah. And so it's there's a lot of honor and respect that goes into that. And so it's our job to recognize that and to bring that with us when we when we show up, when we do the job, right? That's why when you load hose, you load it this way, right? And uh yes, obviously it's the same way every time. Yeah, right. It's so that we can be better. That's why we train. That's why we you take it seriously. You know, don't pussy foot around, be serious about it. And if you're gonna do it, be all in. You know, and understand that. And and don't forget to be human. You know, don't forget to smile. And I I still remember, you know, when I was going back and forth, because I want, you know, I wasn't getting the fired job. I still remember I came out to you coming out of the closet.

SPEAKER_00 48:23

I was like, well, I play to be a cop. Hey, hey, hey, no, no, hey, no, hey, I just I don't think I can do it.

SPEAKER_01 48:29

I'm way too soft. We're driving down the street, and you know, you let it rip, honk the horn in the engine or whatever, like all the kids in school are like running alongside us, you know, chasing us out, that kind of stuff. Like, that's the fucking coolest shit. That's what you're there for. That's you're we're there to help. We're there to be that friendly face. You know, I can't tell you how many times when somebody feels like shit and you know, setting the case down, sitting on it and going, like, hey, my name is Jake, you know, paramedic. What's going on today? What are we doing? How are you feeling? I have XYZ going on. Okay. You know, I'm here to help. How can I help? And that's and that's what that's what's gonna get you there. I mean, it's important to be human and be humble and bring that to the table. Not every culture is gonna be like that. That's definitely kind of me and my own thing, but I definitely think just having that attitude and wanting to get after it that way and just being all in on it or whatever is gonna get you so far anywhere you go. And you gotta buy in. And like getting also to trying to figure out your your fire department and where you want to be. I heard my uncle talking about because he's uh he's a senior chief in the Navy. So talking about like the chief's panel and that kind of stuff and for your like kind of promotional board. And so you gotta you gotta not only be squared away, but you got you also have to you have to be able to articulate yourself in a way. And it's and it's the same way. But that department also has to buy in on what you're about, you know, our department and sitting down with the chief and whatever, he's like, I like what you do. I like that you're you know, you advocate for your for your people, and talking about some of those guys that were that would embody that same thing and and did it a million times better than me, you know, and talking about that and hearing those stories, you know, has gone on past them. And it's it's that kind of attitude that will allow you to kind of leave it better than you found it. But but your department gotta be all in on that. You know, testing sucks, being a proby sucks, being a part-timer sucks when you're a volunteer and you're testing everywhere, it blows. Understanding that and kind of ha you know, really buying off on that kind of mission or having your mission, whatever that's gonna be for you, being a new guy and what you want to do and get out there and change the world, like that's that's ultimately what's gonna make it worth it in the end. And that's that's that's how you're going to be the same person when you get off probation as the same person you're gonna be five years down the road.

SPEAKER_02 51:11

Like when you have those people that you also work with that can have those, you know, strong conversations. And when you have people that keep the checks and balances, you you don't have that like, you know, sense of like resentment towards towards stuff, right? Like you're doing your job and we are human. Everyone is human. And I think that that's that's huge and you know, being in that human context is how we survive this. I'm very fortunate that you came and thank you so so much for for uh you know coming here and taking time out of your day.

Closing Thoughts And Share It

SPEAKER_02 51:53

Well, that's a wrap on this one. If something we talked about hits home, share it with somebody who needs to take care of it. You probably already know who that is. New episodes drop every week. I'm Jake. This is Paul Cresidou. Stay safe out there, and if you're not okay, that's okay too. We'll talk about it.