Column: Gallows Humor Necessary for EMS Crews to Cope

My job is serious. There are those days of comic relief, of course, comments and jibes thrown back and forth between crew members. There's always a class clown somewhere.

Every once in a while, however, we see something that is very much not funny -- and we laugh.

It's unnatural, but so are the images that elicit such odd behavior. A recent letter to the editor in The Bee ("Train death no laughing matter," Jan. 20) mentions a comment the letter writer overheard at an emergency scene.

The writer was absolutely correct about two things: One, the issue isn't funny -- a person died. Two, the fact the comment and its humorous response were overheard by the writer made it inappropriate.

What the writer, and others, might not understand is that comments such as these get people like me through the day.

Let me be clear: I was not at this particular emergency scene and I'm not the person the writer overheard. On the other hand, I'm guilty of thinking -- and saying -- just the kind of thing that folks not in my line of work might consider insensitive.

Despite the reaction we get from those not familiar with our daily duties, I doubt that we in emergency medical services are so different from anyone else. Every day, someone in an ambulance is asked the same question:

"What's the worst thing you've ever seen?"

When people ask it, they are usually expecting something involving major trauma and possibly even death. They are curious, looking for a story that relates the best and worst in what we do.

For those who've been in this career a while, it's a hard question to answer. There really isn't a worst thing -- more like a top 10 list of disturbing images that never really leaves the mind. People don't want to hear the worst of it when they ask their favorite question. No, they want to hear something rated PG-13, preferably with proper reverence and respect to the departed.

From my colleagues who don't ignore the question as I do, the public gets the least of the worst. A story of interest that is easily retold, complete with a happy ending of heroic proportions. Usually, it is something appropriate for polite discussion or even the dinner table.

The public doesn't get the worst of it because those stories can't be told in complete seriousness.

The worst things we see are no longer human -- our minds just won't allow it. We reserve those stories for each other in humorous retellings that everyone we tell understands is not out of disrespect.

Our comments sometimes come out involuntarily, which is most definitely what the letter writer overheard. It's a coping mechanism, and though it should not be overheard, sometimes even we are surprised by what we see.

Nearly everyone who spends his or her days in an ambulance eventually adopts what's often called gallows humor as a coping mechanism. It's unfortunate when the public hears and does not understand our need for release.

We either laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh.

Brouhard is a paramedic in Modesto.

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