by California Casualty | Nurses |
This Guest Blog post is by blogger Keith Carlson, RN, BSN. Nurse Keith, the blogger behind Digital Doorway, is the featured article in our Nurses’ News Resource: Nursing Pulse. To sign up to receive the Nursing Pulse in your inbox once a month, click here!
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Nursing Amidst the Holidays: A Guest blog by blogger Keith Carlson
At this time of year, most people feel the added stress and joy of the holiday season, and nurses are certainly no exception in this regard. Beginning with Thanksgiving, the pressures and expectations begin to mount exponentially, and although there’s often a great deal to celebrate and express gratitude for, some of us can feel like we’re pushed to our limits as we navigate the waters (and snows!) of the season.
Diagnosis: Alteration in Holiday Spirit
If you work in a hospital, there are most likely Christmas decorations everywhere, and other holidays—like Hannukah and Kwaanza, may also be recognized and honored.
Meanwhile, your patients may be forlorn and lonely as they spend the holidays in the hospital, and part of your unofficial nursing duties may be adding “Alteration in Holiday Spirit” to their care plan (along with interventions to assuage their suffering and sadness).
If you’re a homecare nurse, you have the honor and responsibility of visiting patients in their own homes. This type of nursing brings with it various challenges at this time of year, including patients who have no family or are too poor or ill to fully enjoy the holiday season.
Nurses employed in nursing homes and long-term care facilities also face the potential sadness and isolation of their patients, and witnessing residents’ sadness and loneliness can be a psychic burden for the sensitive nurse.
What About Your Spirit?
While you strive to lift the spirits of your patients—whether in the hospital, nursing home, or other milieu—there’s someone who should also be on your list of those in need of support: yourself! This time of year can be difficult enough without potentially carrying the burden of your patients’ loss and grief, and making sure you pay enough attention to your own needs is paramount.
In some workplaces, the high energy of the holiday season can feel very uplifting and cheerful, with office parties, gifts, cards and special treats that brighten one’s day and add a special something to the functions that still need to be accomplished.
However, if the demands of your workplace are generally intense, you may experience a variety of emotional reactions to the “cheer” being spread by the seasonal festivities, and these reactions and feelings are altogether normal.
Keeping yourself balanced and functioning at your best during this time of year is important, so recognizing how you feel and what your individual needs are is something worth paying attention to, whether those needs are emotional, physical or spiritual in nature.
Holiday Self Care for the Nurse
If the stress of the holiday season is impacting you at work or at home, there are ways to “dial down” the stressors so that you prevent illness, overwhelm and burnout.
First, you must pay close attention to the basic aspects of your self-care, and while these are universal at any time of year, they are even more important now.
Nutrition
Sweets and treats abound at holiday time, but overindulgence can lead to a suppressed immune system, gastrointestinal disturbances, weight gain, nutritional deficiencies, and feelings of lethargy and brain fog.
There are temptations around every corner at this time of year, and avoiding (or limiting) your intake of cookies, cakes, candy, alcohol and other special foods may help you to feel better, even though it’s hard to resist when they’re right under your nose.
If you have a friend or colleague who also wants to resist temptation, enlist one another as “accountability partners” and find ways to provide mutual support. Bringing alternative healthy treats to work can help, as well as collaborating on methods for avoiding the nutritional pitfalls that feel good in the moment but come back to haunt you later.
Hydration
Staying hydrated is always important for every physiological function you can think of. Regularly filling your belly with good quality water can also suppress your appetite when faced with those delectable but nutritionally poor treats that seem to be on every desk and nurses station throughout December. Skip the coffee, soda and sugary eggnog and choose water instead! Your brain and other organs will thank you.
Rest and Sleep
You may laugh, but getting enough sleep and rest is not just important, it’s crucial. The quality and quantity of your sleep impacts your ability to maintain or lose weight, function at your best, and keep an even emotional keel as the stressors increase. If you find yourself staying up too late and getting up too early (or waking up in the middle of the night to ruminate over your shopping lists , then you have to take action to get your sleep on track—stat!
Exercise
This may seem like a joke to many of us, but getting exercise is important in every season, but it’s probably true that the majority of people slack off on their exercise routines during the winter, especially as the holidays approach.
If, like me, you live in a climate where it begins to get cold in November, your summertime exercise regimen may not translate well in winter. Some of us find ourselves confused and stultified as to what to do to stay fit during the colder months, so getting a handle on this can be very important for your health and ability to resist stress and illness.
Your Emotional Well-Being
I mentioned your spirit earlier in this article, and I want to reiterate again how important it is that you pay attention to your own emotional and spiritual needs during the holiday season.
With the recent tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, many of us are feeling grateful for the safety of our families and friends. However, the holidays can also bring up our losses, our grief, and the people who we miss and are no longer with us. Pay close heed to how you’re feeling, and reach out for help and support if you need it. Support can come from friends, mental health professionals, clergy, an Employee Assistance Program at work, or family members.
Remember, your mental and spiritual well-being are important, and if you’re feeling balanced and healthy mentally, emotionally and spiritually, it allows you to be a more effective nurse and caregiver.
Have Fun and Give Thanks
Of course, the holidays can be stressful, but they can also be joyous and celebratory. One way to care for yourself is to make sure you have time and energy for fun, for family and friends, and for giving thanks for all of the blessings in your life.
We nurses often think of others before we think of ourselves, but being a martyr doesn’t serve you or the people you care about. A nurse who practices good self-care sets an example for others around her, so be the one to set the example by paying attention to your own needs. It’s like they tell you on any airplane before the pilot takes the plane into the sky: you need to put on your own oxygen mask before you help someone with theirs. The same applies to caring for your own needs at work and at home.
Go ahead: nurture yourself, pamper yourself, and make this holiday season one that’s healthy, vibrant and balanced. You deserve it.
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Keith Carlson, or Nurse Keith as he’s known to his blog community, has been in the nursing field since 1996. Keith runs a Nursing Blog called Digital Doorway. A Registered Nurse and Certified Professional Coach, Keith says he has equal passion for both, which he uses “to help nurses live the most healthy, balanced and satisfying lives possible.” When Keith isn’t busy nursing, coaching and blogging, he’s working on “RN.FM Radio: Nursing Unleashed.” Keith co-founded the station, which strives to be “a place where nursing thought leaders, entrepreneurs, writers, bloggers and gifted clinicians can make their voices heard.”
To check out Keith’s blog, click here. More information about his coaching can be found here.
To tune in to RN.FM Radio, click here.
To keep up with him on Facebook, click here.
You can find him on Twitter by clicking here!
Check out our Q& A with Nurse Keith, click here.
by California Casualty | Peace Officers |
This Guest Blog post by Suddenly Cop Wife blogger, Stella, is the featured article in our Law Enforcement News Resource: The Blue Bulletin. To sign up to receive the Blue Bulletin in your inbox once a month, click here!
Holly Days | Guest Blog by Stella of Suddenly Cop Wife
I’m a Holiday Person. I love them all, especially Christmas, but I have been known to go a little overboard for random Holidays such as Arbor Day. (You mean you don’t have a Tree Party?) My husband—when he likes me—calls me his little Elf. When he’s annoyed, well…different story for a different time.
Christmas is especially important to me because it is jam-packed with so many memories; some good, some not so good. When I was really young, I had the most fabulous Christmases with my grandparents making the Season bright, and the extended family was all together, carrying on the same traditions year after year. I loved everything from the dawn of Thanksgiving Day to sunset on New Year’s Day: the sights, the smells, the music, the food, the decorations…I could go on, but you get the idea.
Then came a very dark period in my life. My mother got remarried, and the man she was married to was an abusive drug addict. My Christmases turned awful; we were no longer allowed to go see my grandparents, and we were always teetering on the edge of poverty, so money was strictly for survival, not to be used for silly things like tinsel and gifts.
I vowed, each year as I recalled the way Christmas could be, I swore to myself, God, and anyone who would listen, that one day I would make Christmas special again. For me. For my future husband. For whoever darkened our door.
I’ve kept my promise. Since I’ve been on my own, I’ve recreated my Grandmother’s gift of an amazing Christmastime as best I could. When I married my husband, I practically drowned him with my traditions. I was determined to make up for all that I had lost; and reclaim the joy I had once known.
Little did I know that my husband would one day choose to become a Cop. For those of you who don’t already know, I write a Blog called Suddenly Cop Wife because one day (or so it seemed) my husband suddenly decided to become a Cop. With that came big changes in our everyday lives and, of course, huge changes to our Holiday festivities.
Since Rocco became a cop, we have had Thanksgiving the day before, the day after, and even the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. This year I found myself alone on Thanksgiving Day, prepping for our celebration on Friday.
As so many of us know, making a great Holiday is a lot of work. Knee-deep in the cleaning, cooking, and setting up, I began wondering at some point if all the work was even worth my while. For most people, the day after Thanksgiving means the kickoff of Christmas; Black Friday shopping for some, a day at home with families for others, catching up on things like reading the paper or watching a football game. For us, it’s Thanksgiving.
My husband got a horrible rotation this year. It’s nothing he’s done and it has absolutely nothing to do with seniority. The NYPD puts people in different Squads, and the Squads rotate the way of the calendar, and this year the calendar is not on our side. He will have to work Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day.
I would be lying if I told you that I was not severely disappointed.
I am. There’s a small part of me that would like to throw my hands up in the air and say screw it, why bother? I am tired of trying to recreate Christmas Eve Dinner on December 29th, or trying like hell to stay awake when he finally rolls through the door at 4:00 AM on New Year’s Eve which has already turned to Day.
When I feel that way, I think of my friends who have husbands in the Military and will end up doing Christmas sometime in July. After I get done feeling sorry for myself, I realize I am lucky. I am able, albeit on a different day, to keep our traditions alive and to bind us together making new ones. It’s important to keep trying, because marriage is about trying a little more each and every day.
I’m also lucky because I have my Holidays back. Maybe they’re celebrated on a different day, but they’re all mine, and my Cop’s. They are what they are, and right now they’re worth fighting for…even if Easter is in June.
I wish you all the Happiest Holidays and some time alone with your Police Officer. May they be safe and may your days be filled with Peace. Oh, and hug your cop.
Trust me…it makes a difference.
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About Stella NYC
Suddenly Cop Wife is authored by the wife of a Police Officer, a blogger who writes under the name ‘Stella New York.’ Stella is a fitness instructor and personal trainer. She is also the loving and supporting wife of a NYPD officer. When Stella isn’t busy working, supporting her husband, and blogging about their experiences, she also hosts a live show all about being a law enforcement wife called ‘Suddenly Cop Wife LIVE!’ Aside from being a great resource for LEOs and their families, Suddenly Cop Wife is honest. It’s a great blog for LEO families that want to hear from someone that shares their struggles, and isn’t afraid to talk about them.
To read our Q&A with Stella NYC, click here.
by California Casualty | Educators, Firefighters, Nominate a Hero, Nurses |
Nominate Your Hero Here!
Congrats to Mark R – our Hero of the Month for December. You can read every finalist’s story below!
Name: Scott D.
Profession: Registered Nurse
Nominated by: Barbara S.
Described as an inspiration to all who know him, Scott is a Registered Nurse working as a home visitor with a hospice unit. Before going into nursing, Scott saved lives as a combat engineer & infantryman with the US Army, jump master, parachute trainer, rescue scuba diver and former Fire Chief. Scott also frequently volunteers to work with the homeless, buying them food and helping them find services and resources. He has also worked with the Veterans Association, attending military funerals and visiting homebound veterans. In his role as a hospice nurse, Scott often brings his beloved dogs with him on home visits. He even volunteered to adopt a veteran’s dog when the owner moved into an assisted living facility. Scott’s nominator, Barbara, describes him as ‘a true hero to his neighbors and friends’ who ‘has been there to help when no one else stepped up.’
Scott D. and his nominator, Barbara
Name: Mark R.
Profession: Firefighter & EMT
Nominated by: Jessica M., a former patient
Mark and Jessica met under the worst of circumstances. A driver crashed into a car carrying Jessica and her daughter, Kendra, on a backwoods rural road. Mark and his team responded to the scene. As responders worked on freeing Jessica from the vehicle, she remembers Mark crawling into the car beside her, assessing her medical state and updating her on Kendra’s condition. “He not only took care of me that day, he held my hand, made me human not just a patient,” remembers Jessica. Following the accident, Mark traveled to check on Jessica’s daughter after she underwent brain surgery. Even now, Mark continues to keep tabs on Kendra, responding whenever she has a medical emergency, even if he’s off-duty, and organizing fellow firefighters to help build a wheelchair ramp for her home. Seven years after their fateful meeting, the three remain close friends.
From Left to Right: Kendra, Mark, Jessica, Willy and Bill. Mark, Willy and Bill all responded to the accident.
Name: Marilyn M.
Profession: Educator
Nominated by: Kendra N.
Marilyn has dedicated more than 40 years of her life to Education. She got her start in the early 70’s, teaching deaf and blind students in one of the first programs developed specifically for these children. Marilyn then moved to a small Alaskan village to teach Special Education. For years, she traveled around Alaska evaluating and writing programs for severely handicapped children and teaching Special Education and Kindergarten. After 30 years of teaching, Marilyn retired to Oregon and began working as a Reading Teacher. Motivated by her own struggles as a young student, she has a passion for helping students learn to read and write. Her successful reading program has helped countless young students over the course of her career. Marilyn retired from teaching in 2002, but continued to pursue her passion for education by working as a teacher’s aide, reading assistant and librarian. She is still actively working and volunteering in the Oregon school system, where ‘her excellence in teaching and working with young kids has always been apparent to the kids, the parents, other staff, and administration.’
Marilyn and one of her students in Alaska in the 1980’s
Name: John B.
Profession: Firefighter & Paramedic
Nominated by: Lori B., his wife
The son of a Chief of Police and Registered Nurse, John knew he wanted to be a Fireman at age 2. John started his Firefighting career roughly 38 years ago and launched his nonprofit, Firefighters for Fun, just 8 years later. He now travels the country educating children with his fire truck and ambulance classrooms, passing out extensive resources and spreading his ‘If you can be Heard, you can be Rescued’ motto. The life-saving potential of John’s mission was proved just a few weeks ago, when a wheelchair-bound man was saved from a dangerous house fire after his neighbors were able to find and rescue him thanks to a whistle John had given the man just months earlier. John uses all his spare time, including vacations, raising money for Firefighters for Fun, even converting another old fire truck into a mobile restaurant serving up food and fire knowledge at state fairs to help raise funds.
John teaching children CPR using his HOTS (Helping Others to Survive) Ambulance Classroom
by California Casualty | Nurses |
It was almost nine o’clock on Sunday morning and Joyce DeZutti was running late. Along with her daughters Giovanna and Antoinette and her friend Andrea Skillman, Joyce had just enjoyed a weekend of pampering at the spa and was headed back to the airport. Suddenly, her limo slowed and swung out to the side, veering out of the way to drive around a car accident. Out the window, the women saw two vehicles, one looking banged up and the other flipped over completely. Joyce turned to her daughter and asked if she’d seen an ambulance at the scene. As Giovanna responded that she had not, Joyce immediately yelled, “Stop now!” to the limo driver, lunging toward the partition to get his attention.
“There was no way that limo was going by that accident,” says DeZutti. “Even if I had to go through that partition, we were stopping. There was no question. We were supposed to be there.”
A series of very fateful events brought Joyce DeZutti to that Hershey highway that morning. Joyce, a psychiatric nurse at Linden Oaks Hospital, was more than 700 miles away from where she lives and works in Naperville, Illinois. About two months earlier, she was randomly picked out of more than 6,700 entrants as the winner of the California Casualty ‘Give a Nurse a Break Getaway.’ The grand prize was a two-day trip to the Hershey Hotel and Spa in Pennsylvania, a relaxing reward and much-deserved break from the daily grind of nursing. That morning, Joyce was headed back to the airport after a weekend of pampering and relaxation. If things had gone according to plan, Joyce would have missed the accident altogether.
“We wanted to get an early start. So we were really trying to leave. But my friend Andrea does Florence Nightingale presentations and she had her full costume with her and wanted to have pictures taken before we left,” remembers DeZutti. “So we got the pictures and got delayed by quite a bit. By the time we got in the limo, we had been rushed a bit and I was a little upset.”
As it turns out, Joyce DeZutti was exactly where she needed to be at exactly the right time. First responders had yet to arrive at the scene when the limo pulled up to the accident. Joyce, who was supposed to be getting a break from nursing life, suddenly felt herself thrust right back into the action.
“I threw my purse at my older daughter and said, ‘Get my kit out.’ And I ran to the scene, hollering out ‘I’m a nurse and my friend is too,’” says Joyce. After double-checking that someone had already called 911, she ran over to the flipped car. “I could see there was a woman hanging upside-down by her seatbelt. She was awake. I talked to her and said, ‘I’m Joyce and I’m a nurse.’”
The driver, an elderly woman, told Joyce she was having trouble breathing. The car smashed in around her and glass littering the asphalt, her seatbelt and coat making it difficult to breathe. So Joyce crawled in beside her.
“I had no problem getting in to her. I was laying on the ground next to the car with my hand reaching to her. She said she couldn’t breathe, which was no surprise with the angle her head was at,” recalls Joyce. “She had a big, heavy down pink coat, so I unzipped that and pulled her clothes away from her neck and put my hand on her chest and lifted up so she could lift her chin and she could breathe. I held her like that and just talked to her, holding her hand.”
While Joyce was worried about the patient, her daughter Giovanna was standing nearby worrying about her mother. Joyce had severely injured her arms while working with the horses she uses as therapy for her patients. Surgeries over the years had left pins and plates in her arms.
“I knew she could get hurt, too,” says Giovanna. “I have no doubt that if my mom didn’t have this problem with her arm, she could do it just fine because she’s a strong lady- mentally and physically. But I was concerned about her hurting herself and her being home and being in a lot of pain.”
But the adrenaline kept Joyce’s attention away from her own pain and focused on the patient. The woman asked Joyce to call her niece and asked if anyone else was hurt. As Joyce’s daughter Giovanna called the victim’s niece, firemen arrived at the scene. Meanwhile, Skillman, who works as nurse at the VA, explained to Joyce what was unfolding around her.
“It was like a Code Blue situation. Everyone has a job. I look back at what Joyce and I ended up doing, and it was sort of the same thing,” says Skillman. “She was doing the direct care and I was scoping out of the area and letting her know what the firemen were doing.”
A firefighter took Joyce’s place supporting the woman and Joyce slipped back out of the mangled car. But she wasn’t leaving.
“I said ‘I’m going to stay until they get her out of there,’’ remembers DeZutti. “I couldn’t leave not knowing. So I stayed.”
As firefighters used the “Jaws of Life” to cut away the passenger side of the car, a man in his fifties or sixties walked up to Andrea.
“He hands me a card of phone numbers to call and I grabbed the card, thinking they must be the patient’s phone numbers. He said they were and walked away,” says Skillman.
The man was the driver’s son. At the time, no one realized he had actually been in the car at the time of the accident.
“I asked if that was his mother and he said yes and that he was in there. He told me he had a seatbelt on. And a bystander confirmed he had helped get the man out of the car,” says DeZutti. So she went back into nurse mode. “I started talking to him really gently and I told him I was a nurse and wanted to check him. I did a head-to-toe and didn’t find anything tender and everything seemed fine.”
Firefighters put both occupants of the rolled car, the woman and her son, in C-collars on backboards and loaded them into the ambulance. But not before Joyce offered her final words of comfort.
“Joyce said she wanted to talk to her now that she was out of the car,” says Skillman. “But this patient was what my husband, a fireman, calls a ‘load and go.’ You don’t stick around. You put them in the ambulance and take off.”
So Joyce seized her moment, captured in this picture…
Photo Courtesy of Giovanna DeZutti, 2012
“I went to her and told her that her son was okay and that he was going to the hospital also to be checked over,” says DeZutti. “I said we had left messages with her family of where she was going to be.”
Joyce was the perfect person to pull up to the scene. A nurse for more than 30 years, she put herself through school by teaching taught EMTs and worked in a Trauma 1 Center and ICU. But to her daughter, Giovanna, up until that day she’d just been Mom.
“I’ve never seen my mom like that. My mom is my mom. My mom’s not a nurse to me,” says Giovanna. “But it was exciting watching her do it, because I’d never seen her doing anything like that. I’d seen maybe a call or two for a patient who was out of control, but this was totally different. It was a ‘bringing her back to the Emergency Room’ type of thing. She knew exactly what to do and what she was going to do ahead of time if this wasn’t working or that wasn’t working. It all came to her so fast. I could never do that. It was amazing. I see her more of a hero, now that I’ve seen her in action.”
But for Joyce, heroic action like this is the norm. This isn’t even the first time she’s stepped in to help an accident victim. When her kids were young, Joyce stopped to help another woman who was trapped upside-down in a rolled vehicle. She once witnessed a police officer get struck by a vehicle while directing traffic. She stopped to help him, too.
This story says something about nurses. We can try to give them a ‘break’ from their jobs. But stepping in and taking action to save lives is not just a part of their jobs. It’s a part of who they are.
Here’s where we need your help. When Joyce told us her story, we told her we would help her find out what happened to the woman and her son. But without knowing even the woman’s full name, although we believe her first name might be Jane, we’ve been unable to find her and check on her. If you know anyone in Pennsylvania, please pass Joyce’s story along and help us help this hero. After all, we figure it’s the least we can do to say ‘Thank You’ to this heroic nurse, Joyce DeZutti.
Do YOU know a Nurse, Firefighter, EMT, Peace Officer, or Educator Hero? Tell us about them!
To learn more about the Give a Nurse a Break Giveaway, click here.
Pictures from the Accident, The Hershey Spa, and the women in Washington D.C.:
All photos courtesy of Andrea Skillman and Giovanna DeZutti, 2012.
by California Casualty | Firefighters |
It was weird watching Hurricane Sandy through my front window rather than through the windshield of Rescue 5. It seems as though every major storm that passed through New England over the last twenty some odd years waited for me to start my tour. Sad truth is, I liked that just fine. It’s easy being alone during bad weather, even if the job you are doing is hard. This time, things were different; I had to ride it out at home.
Being home and helpless is difficult. As the winds picked up velocity and the branches of the trees, and the trees themselves shook, and shattered and fell to the ground I could do nothing but watch. My window was as close to the action as I would get, and I was not all that crazy about standing too close to that window! I found it difficult to sit still and watch things go flying by, but there was nothing I could do to change what was happening.
Nature’s fury is a little less intimidating thanks to advances in technology. By pressing a button we are able to track a storm, know when it’s coming, when it’s going, how much rain to expect, how strong the winds will be, and a whole bunch of other information like barometric pressure and things like that that mean absolutely nothing to me. What did matter was the fact that I knew that this too would pass, and the lights will come on, and hopefully stay on, and life will return to normal. This confidence in our ability to weather a storm is a luxury only afforded the most recent generation, prior to us people hunkered down when the wind blew, hopeful it would end, but not knowing if things would get worse before they got better.
Maybe things were better that way, and some fear was instilled in humanity. Humility and appreciation seem much more appetizing when not sure if at the next moment everything could end, or be forever changed. Alas, humility has never been my strength, and as I watched the chaos outside of my window I knew it would all be over soon. The TV told me so.
I’ve often said that it’s our families that deserve the credit when we are out doing our thing, but I never really believed it. I thought I believed it, and if questioned would vociferously defend that statement, but as the windows shook, and more branches fell, and another tree succumbed to the eighty mile an hour gusts, and my heart pounded a little harder than I thought possible, and I contemplated calling 911 to report trees in the wires, I realized just how much I had taken the family I left behind for granted. I was nervous, and worried, and it was not a feeling that I’m used to. My family was used to it, having been left alone during emergencies for years.
I enjoy nothing more that being called to action, and braving the elements while responding to some emergency or other. It’s an adrenaline rush like no other, fighting natures wrath on the way to save some poor soul from whatever predicament they find themselves in. Even the most wildly lived lives consist mostly of boring routine, and the chance to challenge the elements and make a difference and break the monotony is one I live for. Losing myself in an emergency is easy, and life affirming, and an enormous ego boost.
It’s a wonder I can even fit my head through the doorway of our home, where I weathered this storm, miserable, knowing that I was missing all of the fun.
And my wife stood by, busy with her routine, comfortable in her place, batteries ready, candles where they needed to be, dinner for days prepared, ice in the cooler, crossword puzzle books and some games next to the battery operated radio.
She was prepared. I was not. Somewhere in my thick skull the notion that I was above commoners in terms of severe weather readiness resided. Let the hurricanes, blizzards, heat waves, tornadoes and earthquakes come; I am ready, willing and able to respond to those emergencies! But prepare for them? Not even close. Preparation is dull, part of that 90% monotony called life. Preparation for things that “might” happen is far different than responding to things that “did” happen.
In my arrogance I failed to allow myself to live a moment in my families shoes. It is frightening enough to be at the mercy of the elements, hoping that the walls keep the weather out, and the basement stays dry, and the roof remains in place. Hunkering down during a storm is highly underrated. It takes more courage than I ever imagined, and I cannot begin to imagine one of us being out during the worst of it. I honestly don’t think I have what it takes to keep the home together, and stocked, and prepared. Sure, I can put beer in the fridge, and get cans of tuna and a manual opener, but can I keep my emotions in check when the house is shaking and the person I love is not there?
Being prepared is harder than responding. True strength of character is necessary, as well as leadership, courage, and faith. Anybody can take care of things after they happen, waiting for and being ready for anything that might happen, and doing so when you are terrified and your other half is gone takes a special person.
Storms will come, and storms will go, and each one is different in its intensity and potential for inflicting damage. Hurricane Sandy was a doozy, blazing a path of death and destruction through the eastern states. Truly heroic acts were performed by our first responders, and I watched the events over and over on my TV, proud to be part of that world, all the while humbled and awed by the heroes under my own roof.
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Captain Michael Morse is a Rescue Captain in the Providence Fire Department’s rescue unit and author of two books: “Rescuing Providence” and “Responding.” His blog was voted the winner of the 2012 CalCas Battle of the Blogs ‘Top Firefighter & EMT Blog.’ Cpt. Morses’s books & blog are great resources for EMTs and Firefighters- full of advice, news briefs, and day-to-day insider stories. To learn more about Captain Morse, check out our interview with him!
