S1S1 Answering the Call

In this pilot episode, Lee and Pat discuss the unique experiences that led them to leave behind their civilian lives to become street paramedics.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you're a first responder, you know the chaos that comes with answering the call. Join Lee and Pat now as they share another story of resilience, process the heavy burdens of profession, and rediscover the divine purpose behind the badge and the uniform. It's time to move beyond just surviving the shift. It's time to find peace in the pressure and faith in the chaos.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

So Lee, here we are, man. 35 years later. I can't believe it, Pat. It's 35 years since we started our career. I met you in night.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

I met you in 1990. 1990. I was fresh out of Peace Corps from Africa and coming into the program at that time.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

You had just gotten over a really serious illness, right?

SPEAKER_02 0:41

I was I was really sick. I was I I had um rheumatic fever and malaria, and I was medically discharged from the U.S. Peace Corps in Ghana in 1989, I guess it was.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Yeah, and I remember when I first met you, you were the only other guy on the campus in our EMS program who carried um a Merck manual, like I did. I knew you were serious. Yeah. We were serious about learning, weren't we?

SPEAKER_02 1:05

We were. You know, we we we were really coming from two different places, weren't we? Um I mean, which I think was so unique about um our connection is is is we came from two different places, but then we kind of paralleled our careers.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Our our careers have paralleled for 35 years, and that's why we're doing this.

unknown 1:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Well, listen, this is the first start of our podcast right here. Well, you know, let's introduce ourselves, you know. Okay. Um you know, we um this is Pat Patterson. My name is Lee Whitman. We're the host of Answering the Call. And um, this is our episode one of our first podcast, and uh we're two retired paramedics. And um we'll I'll give you a little introduction here. Pat will give an introduction and I'll give one myself, okay?

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Yeah, sure. So I'm from Raleigh. Um I've worked as a paramedic since 1992. I started in EMS in 1989. I had just come out of a career in photography. I was a professional photographer, and I just honestly found out I wasn't a good businessman. I was miserable. I love photography to this day, but I realized I didn't know how to handle money or clients or anything. So I started looking around for a job change, and I thought, what do you want to do? I want to be a firefighter. And so I contacted a friend of mine who was a firefighter in Raleigh and uh met him at my 10th high school reunion and said, Hey man, uh tell me about being a firefighter. He says, Well, have you considered EMS? I said, What's EMS? He went, paramedic. Uh you know, what's that? So he explained it to me, and he also said, you know, they make a little bit more money, some of them, and it's a pretty cool job. So I took an EMT class at the local community college, and Lee, I was hooked first night. What year was that? Uh 1989. 1989. Yep. And uh then I got my first job as a paramedic. I I started working immediately and became full-time in 1992 as a medic and worked on the street until 2009. I had to get out of it because I had a broken back, literally. I couldn't see anymore to read the medication vials, I couldn't hear the dispatcher over the radio, I couldn't see the signs. You know, it was just time. Yeah. But we we also had segmented or segued into uh an education career at the local community college where I taught as a paramedic instructor for 23 years.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

And I think that's really where our careers kind of paralleled each other is is during that time frame.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Well, you came into the community college in 1990. At the same time, uh you were a class ahead of me, and that's how we met. I actually was a class behind you, I believe. Well, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Yeah. So but um the reason why was um so you're a little bit ahead of me. You got done a little earlier than me. Um but we were we were students together at the community college and um became friends then, but then we went off to um to Durham County um EMS. And um and we worked there for a whole bunch of years.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

We did.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

You know.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

I that's really really where we learned our we didn't run a lot of calls together, but I remember we did run a few shifts, but we were on different shifts. I was on B shift, you were on C shift, and um our we we ran a lot of calls side by side, but not in the same truck.

unknown 4:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Very busy system, a lot of trauma. Yeah, a lot of a lot of so I I came a little bit differently. I I I was uh a Peace Corps volunteer in in Ghana, West Africa. I I entered Peace Corps um 1988. Um I was in a very rural village in West Africa. I was in the town of Garu, which is the upper east region of Ghana. Um I was living by myself in a mud hut, no running water, no electricity. It was very um very remote and very um primitive, and um is where I was really trying to do my my work and and and working with uh communities to develop communities, and that's when I got sick. And you know my story, Pat. I I got so sick while I was there. I um I had malaria followed by rheumatic fever, and I was eventually medically evacuated out. It was to me at the time, I it was devastating. I thought, you know, something that I worked so hard for was cut short, but it was more revealing to me. I I think at that time I was in the medical hut. I felt a calling. I felt a calling to to go in the EMS and then to bring um emergency medical services back to Africa. And for me, that's been the goal. And that's when it starts to kind of pull together for us together.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Well, it is because you and I worked as paramedics in Durham together for a number of years, and then I had an opportunity for a full-time teaching job there, and I went on staff full-time as an educator, teaching paramedic classes at day, working in Durham part-time at night. It was a hard time. It was a real hard time. But at some point I remember another position came open and I mentioned it to you, and you applied, and you came on board as a full-time instructor. We eventually became both became professors there. Uh we worked side by side uh for a number of years. Was that part of the plan was to go into education, or was that something that it was never part of my plan. I had no plan. I jumped into it just uh without a plan.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

I I think it was the same for me. If anything, I thought being an educator was last on my list of things of wanting to do. And and really it became uh truly a part of our life, career, and a love for us that is teaching others.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Well, we had a uh we worked really well together. We tag team well in the classroom and we did we learned, we actually introduced simulation um at our college and turned it into uh a pretty successful educational tool. Um, and that's one of the things that um I think has really taken off in America in the EMS world as a teaching tool.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

Well, absolutely. You know, um just looking over the past 35 years, the amount of change that we have seen within the EMS community system treatment modalities and protocols has been quite remarkable. That's certainly in the educational field, simulation probably is one of the largest um or or fastest growing modes of education.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

At least at some point during our career, I remember this was funny, they put us in another building on campus just to kind of get us out of the way. But it was right on the ambulance bay. And we would sit in that office of ours between classes and just talk. We had so many discussions about the future. Your goal was to get back to Africa and introduce simulation. And we would actually sit in that room and pray together about our future. Uh I gotta introduce my faith here, man, because it's everything to me. And at that point, it it it really led where we ended up. We prayed for years that God would use us in this bit in this business. And then we ended up going to Africa into missions, uh medical missions. And yeah. It started there in in the college.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

Huge part of our story, isn't it? So, yeah, we um were students together at the community college. We went off to work at the um uh Durham County um EMS. We worked there for uh well over a do uh a dozen years or so. Um and then we went into education at the same time as well. But even in our retirement now, we're starting to see that we also have some similarities and paths that are kind of going to be.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Well, and one of the path similarities we have, Lee, is that we both came out of EMS kind of broken.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

I I I dealt with a lot of well, I'm just gonna be right up front with this. I've dealt with some depression. And um I've realized that a lot of other people in our business deal with that as well. And some people never come out of it. And one of the things I want to achieve with this podcast over the next few months is just help people understand how to deal with that, how to how to overcome that, maybe even how to prevent it. One of the things I found about EMS that really kind of led me down the wrong path, Lee, was I was always trying to find myself. I I was I got kind of lost in EMS. If you've seen that movie called Code 3, uh, and I know Lee and I laughed because we watched this last night, uh the one with Rain Wilson, he was just kind of a lost medic, wasn't he?

SPEAKER_02 9:01

You know, I it really I had a it certainly an emotional reaction to that. I did too. I you know, I think um, you know, just looking at it from a perspective of somebody struggling within the EMS uh field, you know, and and it wasn't like we were having difficulty doing our jobs at all. I mean it was just it's a cumulation of trauma, I think, that kind of adds up and it's kind of kind of insidious in that way, it kind of sneaks up on you.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Well, one of the guys that I worked with um told me once, when you get to work, you know, it's like putting up put on a raincoat, and you're gonna deal with all this this bad stuff during the day, but when the shifts in, if the shift ends, you take off that raincoat and hang it up and leave it here. Don't take it home. But that's impossible.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

It's it's easier said than done.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

I mean, you see a lot of you see a lot of death, you see a lot of of pain, you see a lot of people hurting, and it has a cumulative effect on your soul. Not just your mind, but your soul.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

Yeah, I think for Pat for me, the the real catalyst for me in my career is before the Peace Corps for me, um, I had an incident happen while I was in college. I was a um I was a social work student getting ready to graduate about a week before graduation. And um my roommate and and and and brother um made a mistake. He was drinking heavily and decided to go for a swim on the Pamako River down in North Carolina. We were a week from graduating and um we decided just to get out of town and uh have some fun time together. We did some water skiing, and about three o'clock in the morning after a lot of tequila, um Chad decided to go for a swim. And about that time some friends of ours found him face down in the in in the river. We pulled him out and um he was in cardiac arrest. He was cyanodic. Um and uh the only training that I had at the time was when I was in Boy Scouts back in 1974. And um, but I did it. I I I started doing CPR and um and breathing for him, and it was it was really tough. I I did CPR for 40 minutes because we didn't know the location we were at, and we had the ambulance coming in from a local town. And uh Chad survived that day. And um what I learned was this was not a drowning situation or near drowning, but it was a catastrophic spinal cord injury. And when he hit it just snapped his uh spinal cord, took out his um his his cord at C34, and um and um it was a difficult road for him. He survived it, and but it changed him and it changed me to realize I could do this. But as you were discussing him on a moment ago, those are traumas that are kind of deep inside, you know. Um I'm just realizing now in my retirement that that still affects me.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

You know, well I can I can see it in your face right now, I can hear it your voice. And that was how many years ago?

SPEAKER_02 11:47

It was 30 plus years ago. Um it was eight 1988. Um and Chad um died in uh in 2018. So it was almost 30 years he lived as a quadriplegic. But it was a miracle though. I mean, there was blessings there, there really were. For him, it was very difficult being a quadriplegic for 30 years, but he did get married. Um he adopted um a child as and a parent as a as a quadaplegic. Um there were certainly blessings there. For me, it was clarity on what I can do.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Um and that was when you really decided that maybe this is something you wanted to dedicate your life to.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

Well, yeah, that was certainly for me my burning bush moment, you know. And um and then I went to the Peace Corps and um and as I uh there it was really confirmation for me that EMS was a an option. It was it was a calling, you know. A as we say in in our title, yeah. It was a calling um for us to find this profession and and the ability to serve in that kind of way.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Well, most of the people who have the calling that we have, Lee, most paramedics, EMTs, firefighters, police officers, we we have a certain need that we're trying to fill. And that's uh that's part of finding your identity is determining what is it that will fill that need. And there's something about the streets, there's something about the lights and sirens and the action of it that does give us a rush. I'll be honest. I think we get addicted to it. We like to say, nah, I'm not addicted. But every time we got a call to a gunshot wound, my heart rate would go up and I'd be so excited. And we we had tons of those, didn't we?

SPEAKER_02 13:22

Yeah, and we that's where we became good, right? We we learned our profession in a busy urban setting.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

I mean, you show up on the scene and the police officers make everybody get out of the way so that you can get in there and do your job. I mean, that that's a powerful feeling. And it's something that I was looking for, I think, without even knowing that.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

You you're looking for it, um, but also it affects you as well, right? I mean, um there are times that I drive through that community now and all I can see is past calls.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Well, and there's times where I just I feel kind of bored because I miss I miss the lights and sirens. But there is life after this. And uh one of the things it's done for me, Lee, was I actually have an active street ministry right now. I spend a lot of time in in my hometown sharing the gospel with people on the street, and people say, You're so bold. How do you do that? You know, I would I couldn't do that. And I'm like, it's just natural. You we have some innate skills now that we developed on the street dealing with people. Becoming streetwise, right? Exactly. Yeah. We touched a lot of people, a lot of people touched us, and we learned a lot about human nature. Now, I want to make sure everybody understands from the outset, too, that this answer in the call podcast is not just about EMS. Um when we s we're dealing really with first responders across the board. The firefighters out there, the police officers out there. The good Samaritans of the world. Good Samaritans. Run with that for a minute. What do you mean?

SPEAKER_02 14:45

Those who are serving others, right? There's always, you know, um there's difficulty in serving others. There's there's there's a there's something that you're giving of yourself. Sacrifice. There's a sacrifice serving others, right? And which means that you can become injured. Um it could be physically, which I know both of us are going through kind of physical changes in in our retirement because of what our bodies have been through. But also there's an emotional and spiritual aspects to these as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Do you think there's any th any truth to this PTSD thing for EMS personnel?

SPEAKER_02 15:18

Well, I obviously, you know, uh you know, I think if you talk to any medic, you'll know somebody who has been suffering from this. And and you know, it's not just in one field or another, but it's it's it's a very kind of wide uh scope that um PTSD can affect, you know, certainly our military, but also our first responders and and and our patients and um our patients' families are experiencing uh these types of traumas as well. Um dealing and handling trauma is a big part of being a paramedic, right? How we handle this long-term uh pain and and and and difficulty. Do you think you handle it well? You know, it's in some ways, some days you can say, yeah, hey, I know how to handle it. I've been taught how to handle it. You know, things like um expressing it to the people we love and and opening up and not bottling it up and being open is is certainly one way. And in some ways I think, uh no, I'm not doing very well at it. I think there's that always that dichotomy of one or the other. It could be a little confusing at times.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Well, it can be real confusing. One of the things I've learned over the years, and I've been off the street now for 19 years. We've been in a classroom ever since, though. So we've been NEMS the whole time. Uh one of the things I've learned is how to control my my emotions. In other words, I can kind of see uh the dark times coming and I've learned how to battle those and to push them away. One of the ways is is through my my faith, um prayer, uh talking with other people, hanging out with friends like you, but not suppressing it and not giving in oxygen, as my wife would say.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Yeah. I I think you're right. I I um for me I I had a tough time moving from that uh that that clinical setting, working on the streets, into an full-time education setting. At first I kind of felt like I was kind of failing a little bit. I'm not participating in that care and active care. But I think one of the b biggest things we learned over the last 20 years of teaching is that we can reach so many more people through the process of teaching others how to care for others. And uh maybe that's the strength, maybe that's where we're really able to excel.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Well, like I said before, we use simulation. Uh I think we kind of started it in our hometown and have seen it really boosted uh into all areas of EMS. In fact, my my wife was telling me about a podcast she heard yesterday about the nursing, uh, how they were starting to use it heavily in their education. Well, for some folks who may not know, what what do you mean by simulation? Simulation. So we have what we call um what do you call high fidelity mannequins? Um and every EMS person out there knows what I'm talking about, but these things can talk, we they can breathe, and we can start IVs on them with push medications, we can shock them with our defibrillators, we can control their airways just like we're gonna real person. So we can experiment in real-life scenarios uh that have no consequences if we made a mistake.

unknown 18:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

And so the students don't hit the the street for the first time trying to intubate something. They've innovated this mannequin many times, and then when they get into the field on their job, they have to innovate a real person several times before they can get turned loose. But they're well practiced by that point.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

I think the military had a a term used for that. They train, train like you fight. And that's kind of the model we take, right? We're not fighting against, you know, a battle like that, but we're battling a patient who is having a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Well, difficulty. And one of the neat things about it, Lee, the way we used to run scenarios at our campus was we would use a real ambulance, we would have them respond using real radios. Uh they would we would drive them up, they would get out, they would assess the patient, they would be sweating. I mean, we pushed them. And some of them hated us for it. I've had I've had several students come back and tell me, I hated you when you were my instructor, but I understand it now. And when I'm on a code, I can hear you shouting in my ear, but it worked. And they were actually thanking me. I know others still probably hate me, but that's okay.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

Well, the whole simulation, we can go and talk about that for days. We can well we'll do we need to do an episode on that. Yeah, uh you know, it's such an important part of the new learning tool in EMS.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

In fact, we didn't we recently take a uh a simulation mannequin to Ethiopia? Absolutely. Train the nurses.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

That's the next step. You know, what happens beyond EMS and when you retire? And um so um Pat and I have had the opportunity to um to do a couple trips to Africa and particularly to Ethiopia, and we're working in a community called Hawasa, where we received um three U.S. State Department grants to train 200 nurses in Ethiopia to work on their first modern EMS system for the country. We're working with um Dr. Emmy, who is in charge of this country's EMS system, and what we're doing is we're training individuals to be working on an ambulance. These are healthcare professionals, mostly nurses, they're now going to be working on those ambulances.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

And they were so excited. Excited, but scared, too, right? Oh, they were terrified. But in one scenario we ran, I was the patient, and they threw me in the back of one of their ambulances, which is really just a glorified SUV with a dirty stretcher in the back. In fact, this one had blood on it. But uh I was a chest pain victim, and they put me on a stretcher, put me in the back of that ambulance, drove me around a couple miles around campus while they were working on me, checking my blood pressure. You looked a little ill after that. I was sick. I was I was physically nauseated by the time we got back. So it was a it became a real scenario.

SPEAKER_02 20:51

Well, you know, these these trips to Ethiopia, it's it's not an easy place to go to. It isn't. It's very difficult to get there. Um, and and sometimes it can be difficult to uh avoid sickness ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yeah, but Lee, to finish that last thought, they were so excited, they were laughing, they were they were having a ball, because this is the first time they'd ever done anything like this. Here's another thing that amazed them. We would actually I would actually get on the floor and let them assess me. And they're looking at me like, what's he doing? What you know, what's this American doing on the floor asking us to I mean they they were impressed by that, but that's the whole point. If we can't be part of it, it's not gonna be realistic. I I agree. You again train like you fight, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:32

Train like you fight, yeah, yeah. I and well what I think was really unique about that particular trip, the first one we took, is we also brought on uh a nursing educator with us, Rebecca. And um and she uh her specialty is in um in nursing mental health. And um she brought to the table I think was something really unique for starting an EMS system and it's how to manage tra yourself trauma. How do you manage the difficult times in EMS? How do you How do you avoid being overburdened by um anxiety um in this field? And that's a real problem for that movie.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Well, burnout is a real problem.

SPEAKER_02 22:09

You know, that was the whole theme of that movie, Code 3. Yeah. Yeah. You know, early on in EMS here in the United States, the the primary um demographic they went after to try and get EMTs and and and paramedics were the the fire service, you know, the fire departments. I mean they already had the services there and the infrastructure and the communications. But Ethiopia doesn't have a fire department and they don't have rescue. And if there is a MCI or a large incident where a lot of people are injured, it's on the public to get them to the front doors of that hospital, which makes things very difficult. So instead of looking at a fire service as a as a demographic to pull from, they're going straight to the nurses. And not all these nurses are prepared for these streets. You know, they're they may they most of them have never even considered that as a career option. So it can be difficult. It can be difficult for um to manage some of the stressors.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Well, I'd go as far as to say, just bringing it back to American EMS, um everything about this job is difficult. Uh one of the things that I found very difficult was nobody around me understood what we do.

unknown 23:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

You know, what uh are you are are you an EMS? Are you an EMT? What are I'd have to explain to them what EMS is, what an EMT is, what a paramedic is. And uh it it led me into writing short stories, which led me into writing novels, which has actually been a real outlet for me. One of the reasons I started writing was to get rid of some of that that pain that was building up inside of me. I didn't realize that. So you're writing as part of that process of letting go? It's it absolutely was. Um but one of the things I wanted to get at from that, Lee, was there's a lot and I want to I want to approach a pretty hard subject. There's a lot of people out there in EMS, firefighting, uh police, who deal with some pretty severe emotional problems. And I'm gonna go ahead and say a bad word. Suicide is is really the rate is pretty high in EMS, isn't it?

unknown 24:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

And all those who are suffering under these.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

And and I'm I look, this is exactly why I want to do this podcast called Answering the Call. I want to make sure that everybody understands that there's hope. And and this is not something that you have to carry alone, that there are people out there who care, and I have made it through to another side where I'm at that point where I feel hope again. Yeah. I I I cannot say this again without mentioning that a lot of it has to do with my faith in Jesus Christ. But um, you know, it's it's also the people around me who support me. When you and I talk, it builds me up, you know. Meeting with other people who've also answered the call and and hashing it out and and getting to the the core of the problem. And there's a lot of depression and and um anger out there.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

Yeah. You know, um both of us have really gone through some transitions over the last couple of years, and um, you know, changing, getting out of um a career in EMS and and looking at what is next for us, you know, what what direction do we go? And um I think that we're kind of in in that kind of mode now. I I know for me, um I retired on January 1st of uh 2025, so I'm a little bit less than a year from full retirement. But boy, did I have a year, didn't I? I mean, it it really rocked me.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Well, I mean, it was a year ago that you actually had a pretty serious surgery, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:31

Yeah, you know, I I uh my anticipation was my plan was um finishing up my 30 years in uh in EMS was I was going to retire. Um my wife Kelly and I bought a piece of property in the Appalachian Mountains Retreat Center, and I just thought what a great opportunity for uh a medic who experienced a lot of trauma in their career to be able to relax and to and to share with others in a retreat type setting. So we we we purchased a retreat center and we started getting ready to open it, and then we got first got hit by uh Hurricane Helene and uh just a couple months after buying it. And and um matter of fact, this the interesting story is Pat and I were getting ready to go. We were getting ready to go to um Ethiopia, and then Hurricane Helene hit, and we were trapped. Well, you called me and said, I can't get out.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

We were trapped. This is two days before we're supposed to leave.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Yeah. Uh I said a prayer that morning uh that we got rescued, and um and a family came with an excavator and cleared the path. It was really remarkable. Be be honest for me, it was very emotional because I've never I mean I've been a part of a lot of rescues in the But you've never been rescued yourself. And seeing that from that other side was very enlightening to me, you know. So um, you know, Kelly and I uh were planning this retirement, and I retired on January 1st, so super excited. But I was having some medical problems, and um, we had gone to Ethiopia and I was I was sick I was a little sick. I was having some neurological problems, and uh four days after I retired, I had an MRI and they found a massive uh meningioma uh brain tumor on the on the um the top of my head. Wow, yeah, it was pretty scary. Honestly, I I thought it was a death sentence. I they didn't tell me mengioma at first. Um I just heard brain tumor, and um it took a few days to find out that it's probably benign. Um I had um I had open brain surgery on February first of this year. Um immediately following surgery, I woke up and I was paralyzed on my left side for uh about a week before I started getting it back. Um it's been now about ten months, and I I've really had a remarkable Well, you told me you play your guitar better now than you did before. It's it's really remarkable. Um, the the uh uh recovery that I've had from this and the blessings that have come from it. I I tell people this often, it's been a tough year. I feel extremely blessed, but also a little beat up.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Yeah. Well, you're doing great, man. I'm proud of you. I know it's been a hard road.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

Well, um I'm getting ready to unfortunately. Pat, you're gonna have to have surgery coming up here. Yeah, it's simple though. I have a knee surgery. I know, but it's but it's gonna prevent you from going to Ethiopia this time, yeah. Yeah. But um I'm I'm going on January 14th uh to head back up to uh the town of Jarami to um to meet our friends in Ethiopia, and and to there's a service on top of the mountain that they have there that has a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand people come. And um, we're gonna go and be the first responders. You're gonna hike up the mountain, that's why I can go with you. And and then we're gonna serve by being first responders. Right. Yeah. Really excited about that.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Well, Lee, I guess we're probably close to the end of this podcast. Um one of the things that um I just wanted to get across was I I have this picture in my mind of when we started back in the early 90s, going to work, pulling out your badge, going up to the time clock, and waiting in line with everybody else, and swiping in for the shift. Swipe and move, swipe and move, Billy used to say. And then we'd go clean our trucks, then we'd go run our calls, and then we'd swipe out in the morning and go home. Exhausted, sometimes angry, sometimes sad, sometimes frustrated. Uh, never bored. Because we never, I had one night of sleep in 20 years in EMS. And then most of us went to another job. Yeah. So we were tired. But one of the things that I've I've picked up on after this was that every time I went to work, I put on a different face. It's like a mask. I like Billy Joel sang about in his song The Stranger. We all wear a mask. And we would put on a mask when we got there. And then when we clocked out to go home, we take that mask off and leave it. We've tried to be different people. We tried to be tough. We tried to know it all. We tried to, that doesn't bother me. It bothers you. And I hate it, it had a cumulative effect on me, and it it really messed up my soul for a long time.

unknown 29:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

But God has been faithful in pulling me back out of that and helping me to find my way. And I just want everybody out there to know whatever shift you've got, whatever you're going through, there really is hope on the other side. That's one of the things I wanted to get across here.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

Well, I mean, that's the purpose of for this podcast, right? Is is to share some of our experiences and um what we learned over the last 35 years.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

And maybe over some of the next episodes, what are some of the ideas you have maybe we could discuss?

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Well, certainly, you know, um we we're gonna talk a little bit about some of our work in Africa that we've been doing in the in the past few times that we've traveled. I'd we'd love to talk to you about your your newest book, um Eyewitness. That'd be fine. Um, and um and and what a great story that is. Well that's probably gonna be one of the next episodes.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Well, the reason I'm excited about that, Lee, is not to market my book. Um I wrote this book for people that like the ones we're talking to right now, also wrote it for inmates that I'm I'm serving a lot in the prison fellowship here locally. Um and I I wanted them to see the hope. And it's about a guy who goes back and he has a near-death experience and wakes up in Jerusalem at the time where Christ was was uh tortured and crucified. But it's to help people see exactly what he went through for us, and and we're talking about true trauma here, the physiological side of it plus the emotional and spiritual side of it. But he wakes up to a different world, a new person. And my whole point in writing that book was to show people what what Jesus Christ did for us.

SPEAKER_02 31:20

And Pat, I know your heart. Um this is not for you. No, you've given it away. Um this this is what you're doing with it. This is the to serve others. This is not for self-promotion. I know I I know that. And I encourage you, um, if you're interested in this, where can they go to the what website can they go to?

SPEAKER_01 31:36

Well, I mean, everybody can go to Amazon and look up eyewitness Pat Patterson. But I again I'm I promise you I'm not trying to sell this book. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 31:43

We're gonna talk we're gonna talk more about that. We also have a couple of other episodes in the working as well. Um we're gonna be looking at uh future. So, you know, um we want to talk about your do we want to talk about your surgery and what you went through there? Yeah, we'll certainly talk a little bit about that and um as we get into these next episodes. But I think that's the whole point of this is there is hope. There's hope in and the next step in life.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

And what is the change and one of the things that I'm hoping too, Lee, is that we can actually have some guests. I'd like to have a I'd like to have some law enforcement in here to talk to us about what they go through that's similar to ours. And and firefighters as well.

SPEAKER_02 32:19

Yeah, even military, too. Military.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

I have a good friend whose son was a sniper, and it had some some pretty deep psychological effects. Yeah. Um so there's a whole gamut of people out there we would call first responders and uh servants, public servants, really. Yeah. This is for everybody. This isn't just for paramedics.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

It's not so much about the clinical aspect of it. Right. I mean, uh obviously, you know, the patient care stuff is really important to us and something that we really enjoy a lot of. Um, but it's more than that. This is a little bit deeper. Um we'll look into what is is there hope is if you're struggling? Um what is is there life after EMS?

SPEAKER_01 32:58

There is life after EMS. Right. I mean, yeah you know I'm happier now than I've ever been.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

Well, think about the freedom.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

But it took a while to get there.

SPEAKER_02 33:05

Well we have we have freedom now that we didn't have. We're not completely out of it. We're still teaching here and there. And we're just not in that full-time mode anymore.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right. And there it's peace. There's more peace. It took me a file a while to find peace, though, Lee. It took me a long time.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

Only being a year out, I'm still looking for it, to be honest, especially post-brain surgery. I I I yeah, I did again I feel beat up, but uh very blessed. But no, you're right. I think uh the the excitement of what's potential there. Yeah. What can you do with what we have learned and experiences that we have had in order to share with others? We've had this conversation last time we were in Ethiopia together. Um what we're doing now, we only have a limited time left. You know, how many times have can we go off and do the the adventures that we want to do and we are doing? How much time do we have left with that? We need to find that next generation and then mentor them. Allow them to learn from our mistakes.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

That's why we're doing this. That's why we're doing this. Pass the torch, encourage people. Yeah. Let everybody know there's hope.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

Well, Pat, I'm excited about this journey. Um we've been on the journey for 35 years. I I don't know how many years we have left. But let's shoot for 10 more. Let's go. And and um, you know, obviously without the support of our wives, our families, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be here either. They're the ones who are the really the ones who are probably the heroes of the uh of the relationship. Amen to that. They had to deal with uh with all of our issues over the years. I don't know. Well, Pat, I'm so excited about this this journey.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Me too, brother.

SPEAKER_02 34:33

All right, we're gonna do it. Thank you all for listening, and uh, please join us again for our next episode. And uh thank you.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Thank you for listening to Answering the Call Podcast, Finding Faith in the Chaos. Please join Pat and Lee for future episodes and engage with them and other listeners on Facebook and other platforms. Be sure to like and subscribe so you don't miss what's next. This episode may elicit strong emotions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, and suicidal ideation. We are not mental health professionals, and the stories or advice shared here should not replace professional medical help. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out for help. You can call or text the nine eight eight Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at nine eight eight in the US and Canada, or contact your local emergency services.