People not Helping themselves

On the volunteer fire department that I am on we also take care of ambulance service for our town. Even though it is in a city of less than five thousand people, being on the ambulance has proved to be interesting through the years. I have seen things that I never thought that I would. Going through EMT and Paramedic class some of things that we would study, I would sit there and think to myself I am never going to have to deal with that. Wow, have I been wrong.



One of the things that really bothers me is when we deal with people that will not take care of themselves. Recently I had to go to a house that I had been to before, and the last time that I went there the conditions in the house were absolutely horrible and that was about seven years ago. The most recent call was for a person that had fell. When we arrived at the house the person was laying outside near the steps. The door to the house was open, and the smell from inside the house was so bad that we had to close the door.



It was pretty obvious that it had been quite some time since the person had last bathed. The smell of body odor was terrible. The person's skin was so dirty that he was almost black with dirt and and he was a white man. As we were putting the person onto the backboard, I happened to notice a cockroach crawling across the front of his pants. The person's skin and clothes were so dirty that when we moved him onto the cot on the backboard our white sheet on the cot turned black.



It is pretty obvious that this person does not have a lot of money. I can understand when someone does not have a lot of money, but a person can at least try to take care of themselves and keep themselves clean.



I think that the most frustrating aspect of this situation and other situations that I have dealt with is that nothing gets done to correct the situation. In our state as well as most others all police officers, firefighters, and paramedics are mandatory reporters. This means that if we see an abusive or a dangerous situation, or even a situation where someone is not capable of taking care of themselves we are required by law to report the situation to the Department of Human Services. To me it seems like almost every time that we report something to the Department it comes back as unfounded.



There is another situation that comes to mind involving people not taking care of themselves. We were called to a residence for a girl that was not feeling well. This was a two bedroom mobile home and there were 2 adults and 5 children living in the home. The house was filthy. There was garbage piled up in the living room and in hallway. As a matter of fact we had to move garbage out of the way in the hallway to be able to get our equipment through. The furnace vents were on the floor however, none of them were covered with grates. We had to be careful to not step in one of the vents and break an ankle. In the bedroom that the five kids shared there was a bunk bed that was in horrible shape. The top mattress was held to the top frame with rope that was frayed. Once we got the girl out of the house and into the ambulance she admitted to us that she was faking because she wanted to get out of the house. I could not blame the poor girl. We transported her to the hospital and called the proper authorities. In this situation human services did do something they threatened to take the kids away if the conditions did not get better. Through talking to some of the police officers it did get better. However, we were at the residence again a few months later and the conditions were bad again, not at all like the first time but still bad. A short time later the family moved out and no one knows what happened to them.



Situations like those mentioned above make me feel horrible. I know that I and other people on the police and fire departments want to help people like this, but there is not a whole that you can do when a person will do nothing to help them self. I guess this is all in a day's unpaid work, as a volunteer firefighter.