Post-rescue depression???

[Crass3000]

I don't want to go into where this was as I don't want anybody to read it or put more of a black eye on a lake I dive. The main shop really stresses safe diving as incidents affect his business, etc according to him.

To make a long story short (I'll try but it will be a blog) I had jumped in the lake with only my wetsuit on to cool off (no fins, BCD, tank, etc) and seconds later a person was in full panick at the surface. They had no air (I guess their partner accidentally shut it off). She was in double steels and a backplate and looked to have the energy to make one or two more shots to the surface before TOTALLY sinking. I swam over, grabbed her, and tried my hardest to get her to shore in good form. Given she was SOOOO negative and I had no BCD or fins I was able to get her head out of the water long enough for her to take a breath and then when I tried to kick to get her to shore I had to let her head under the water. Basically this went on until I got her to shore and I think she understood after a while that I was gonna get her up enough to breath but couldn't keep her up if we were gonna get her to shore. I ended up getting her to shore and she was fine. She went to the hospital but was fine.

Unknown to me at the time, her husband had been trying to help her underwater. I guess this is when he shut her air off (not sure how that works with doubles -- he didn't turn off the manifold). They were buddy breathing and it appears he may have had a heart attack so he left her there and tried to make it to shore. I thought he just had no idea what was happening with her. He got to a point where he could kneel and just sat there breathing from his regulator above the water. I pulled him up further and tried to remove his BP/W but had a hard time with his but strap and he quickly told me to leave him alone. I had his head just about on shore so he was able to breathe above water. We put his head on our inner tube dive float and left him as he told us specifically to leave him alone. His respirations were about 2 every three seconds as he was hyperventilating. I called 911 and he decided he was gonna breathe from his snorkel and put his head underwater (plus he was probably just rebreathing his CO2). At that point I took it upon myself to drag him up a little further as I could hear water in his snorkel. He was stable with the high respirations until the paramedics came. They took them both to the hospital. I think the paramedics took him to a helicopter.

In any case the lady was fine and would have died had I not been there. The man seems to be stable in the hospital and would have died had we not been there too.

Even though there was a positive outcome the experience was really a trip and I can't get it out of my mind or sleep. It just seems like I'm in some sort of depressing haze which to me even seems strange. I know that's normal if the patient doesn't make it but we saved them both. Is it normal to feel this way? Has anybody had a similar experience and had the same feelings. I had no fear of diving after -- not at all. But just don't understand why I would feel this way with a positive outcome. Is that normal?

 

[tracydr]

This happens to paramedics and other first responders. You have acute stress disorder. If this happens for longer than a month, it technically becomes PTSD. It can be very helpful to see a counselor who is trained in a technique called EMDR. ( eye movement desensitization and reprocessing)
There are some medications that can also be helpful, antidepressants and high blood pressure medication in the "alpha-blocker" class sunch as clonidine or prazosin.
Counseling is the main treatment but the EMDR treatment seems to be the most effective. Guided Imagery can also be helpful. I recommend Belle-Ruth Naperstak's CD for trauma.
Good job in the rescue and please seek some professional help to process your feelings.

 

[fisheater]

Everyone's different. But LOTS of rescuers, even in totally positive outcomes, have such feelings. In the PADI Rescue Diver Manual (AFAIR) there's a discussion about rescuer debriefing and counseling.

You did very well at the time, but it WAS a traumatic event - even for you - and it's normal to experience a form of stress and disorientation afterwards.

Don't bear yourself up. Pat yourself on the back. If you can, talk to a pro.

And, on behalf of all divers, THANKS!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - now Free

 

[toddthecat]

Yes, it is normal. I'll share with you a personal experience. (For some background, I have a degree in Psychology and am former law enforcement)...

After I finished college I went to the police academy and joined up with a municipal police department. I knew the risks involved and had been a volunteer EMT before that. I was 17 the first time I watched someone die in front of me. It sucks, but part of life is death. Growing up on a ranch you see it all the time. Doesn't make it easier, but it certainly helps that after-the-fact feeling.

Anyway, I graduated the academy and had been hired on by a police department a few weeks prior to that. I had two days after graduation before going in for my first day with the department. Our PD, like many, ran a 4/10 schedule. Well day 4 rolled around. The nervousness of being on FTO (field training) is hard enough. I remember that night like it was last night. It was in June of 2007. The county fair was in town and we were checking on the two extra guys assigned to it. Suddenly we get a call for a structure fire...

We fly across town and find a mobile home partially engulfed. There is a frantic woman and her family there saying that they had called it in. They were driving by and saw flames. She said she had heard people inside screaming for help. Mobile homes go up quick and we couldn't anything on one half of it. We swung around to the other side and I opened a window. The room was filled with smoke and as it cleared out I could see a small TV that had partially melted. I knew anyone inside would be dead. As the smoke continued out I saw an arm hanging off the bed.

Fire showed up and they started to put it out but at that point it was fully engulfed and there were no survivors. When they hit the house with the hose they hit the front door first. When they did it blew out a 6 foot wide section and exposed a body in a fetal position that had been right at the door. This person was literally inches from being outside.

Two people died in that fire. After the scene cleared I went home (it lasted past my shift). 4th day on the job and I watched two people die in a fire. I wondered what could have been done differently. If there was a way we could have done something different. The answer is in the end is no. But still, it is normal to question yourself. When you have a million options but only one you can choose then you will always question that choice in the end.

Fact of the matter is that you did what you could do. I've intervened in a lot of deaths and it takes quite a few before you can feel good about your decision but you will ALWAYS question yourself. I know from experience that it's easier to say than do but don't beat yourself up over it. It could have been much worse.

 

[boulderjohn]

Congratulations on the rescue. You should feel good about what you did, and I think in time that feeling will replace the feeling you have now.

I have a theory about the feeling you have now, one that might be totally off base. During moments like the rescue, everything in your system is going full bore. You are totally focused on what you are doing and adrenalin is pumping.

And then it is over.

I think there is a reaction to it being over on multiple levels, including the biological level. I even think that in a sense you are on a kind of high during the experience, and its being over can be something akin to coming down from a drug-induced high.

I experienced something like it when I was in the central administration of a school district, and we had a shooting disaster at one of our high schools (Columbine--you may remember the name). This led to weeks of intense activity for our offices, with many people (including me) working 16 hour days. (You can't believe how much there was to do.) When things tapered off, my crash was quite significant.

 

[toddthecat]

Definitely agree with that. Get a massive output from the adrenal gland paired with traumatic experience and it takes the brain a while to normalize.

 

[Nwcid]

I have been in EMS/Fire/Rescue since 1997. One of the big things you have to be able to do in this job (not that you are in job) is to be able to let things go and move on. Yes over the years I have had a few calls "hit close to home" for one reason or another. Lucky for me even on those "bad" days I have either been able to focus on the positive and/or go to bed and wake up to a "new" day. I have known several people who do this job because they are compassionate, but to a fault. They can not seem to let things go, they do not last long in this job.

As the others have said while it was all a positive out come it was still a stressful situation. These are referred to as CISD/CISM, Critical incident stress management - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and can be very helpful. As others have stated talking to someone that specializes in this can be helpful. I am sure you can look online to find one but I bet your local hospital/ambulance/Fire Department could suggest one also.

So as pointed out, has this just been a day or two and getting better, or has it been longer? If it persists get help sooner then later! I could be completely off base here but I wonder if some of the reason you feel the way you do is not knowing for sure what happened afterward. It is often hard to settle something when you don't have all the details. There are lots of privacy laws so finding out is often hard. It might be wroth you time to go down to the Fire/EMS station and see if you can talk to the guys on the crew that were there. They maybe able to help too. If you came knocking on my station door I would give you as much info as I was legally allowed to.

 

[toddthecat]

Whatever you do don't go numbing it with alcohol or drugs. I've seen plenty of good cops/firefighters/EMTs completely throw their lives away doing that.

 

[Tigerman]

Ok, Im gonna tell you something that kinda dont make any sense to most people.
Bare with me for the long introduction, but its kinda relevant to how this dont make any sense.

I have a background from the military. I have been deployed in warzones. I have had teammates missing in action and Ive had people in my unit get injured and killed. I worked in private security, monitoring alarms (burglary, assistance, b&e), assisting people getting murder threats (from people who really was capable of killing them) and other fairly stressful tasks. I now work at a resort where we have both a hotel and a fairly large ammount of cabins.
With something like 35 000 stayovers in the hotel alone and who knows how much at the cabins (my main responsibility is the hotel) we do have a fair ammount of medical situation arising. I normally dont even get an elevated heart rate if people tell me their mate is in the room with heart problems and such. We all know that wether or not someone dies while were working, its happened before and it'll happen again.
To make matters worse, the nearest ambulance will use about 30 minutes to get to us, the nearest helicopter about the same.
We did however have one incident at the cabins that got to me and it was largely due to how the ambulance personell handled the case themselves.

One late evening we get a call from one of the cabins and the dutch lady whos making it is clearly upset. Her housband has just collapsed and the floor and hes unconcious. I tell her to call the local emergency number but for whatever reason she cant, so I call them for her. I am the only one at work and cant leave the hotel. I call her back and ask her if anythings changed - its not. Ask her if hes breathing - she dont know. I tell her again to call the emergency services, which she will. I then hang up to let her make the call and I also call the emergency services back with the update. At this point I realize that this guy wont make it and I call the owner whos away on business just to let him know that a person is likely dead or dieing in our cabins.
At this point the night manager arrive for work and he runs to the nearest intersection to meet the ambulance with a map to the cabin as well as a keycard for the gated road up to the cabin. He turn on their cabin light, shows them on the map the exact way to the cabin and get them to repeat what he said to them to make sure they've got it (theres about 250 cabins in the area).

The next day I get the expected news that the guy didnt make it, but we also got another bit of news - the ambulance personell had spent AN HOUR not finding the cabin after we gave them the directions - it shoul have been maximum 5-6 minutes. They where trying to blame us for their long response time.
Right up to that point, I was fine with the person person passing away up to this point, but hearing that the ambulance spent over an hour not finding the cabin and WITHOUT EVEN CALLING US BACK pissed me off big time at first and triggered a stress reaction that I never expected.
Fortunately mine and the night managers stories matched (cause it was the truth) and we never heard anything more about the fact that the ambulance tried to blame us (nor wether they got any flak from it), but we did hear back after a while that the guy did infact have a serious heart attack, and was probably dead the second he hit the floor and wouldnt have survived if the ambulance was parked on the doorstep.

What got me out of the stress of the situation was talking to the nightmanager and my boss about it. It still rile me up BIG TIME thinking of the way the ambulance personell acted though..

EDIT: Let me make it clear that it was the fact that the ambulance tried to blame us that was the trigger and the real stresser. The fact that the person died and I could do nothing about it (directly) other than trying to get the ambulance there ASAP and getting the lady in contact with "911" I was and still am fine with. I didnt even lose any sleep over it the night when it happened. I did lose most of 2 nights sleep over what the ambulance personell "did to us" though. They are the pros and they try to blame us for not finding the way when they could have just given us a call.

I've also had several incidents when people need to go by ambulance (or medevaced by chopper to the nearest hospital) where its been fine and one of the things that bug me about it is the not knowing for sure what happened, but we have always gotten word if it doesn't go well. Guess its the upside to having their stuff in the rooms or cabins versus helping as a random passer by like in the OPs case. Makes it easier to let it go and sometimes we even get to find out what caused the event (i.e. mixing certain "recreationally used tablets" and alcohol - which can give fun results untill you pass out).

 

[toddthecat]

the ambulance personell had spent AN HOUR not finding the cabin after we gave them the directions - it shoul have been maximum 5-6 minutes.

This happens WAY more often than anyone would like to know...