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What have you witnessed that shook you up?

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TheSiege said:
A friend shot another friend with a sawed off shot gun in the summer between 5th and 6th grade. I came in right after I heard the shot. It was an accident. Its a more vivid memory then something that happened yesterday.
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you had to deal with much more than just a gruesome scene :thumbsdown:.
That is unfortunate.
 
The only repressed memory I have is one I mentioned before. At some family reunion, I saved my younger cousin from drowning. He jumped into a hotel pool and didn't know how to swim. Evidently I jumped in, clothes and all, and hauled him up. To this day I don't remember it, I don't remember changing out of my wet clothes, I remember NOTHING of that day. My cousin does, he remembers me reaching him underwater and saving him. I don't know why the memory is repressed, but I guess it shook me to the core?
 
When I was 9 I was riding my bike through some trails behind my house that was in a wooded area between our house and Interstate 57 North. I heard a loud boom on the highway and a bunch of trees being crushed. I went to investigate and a semi-tractor trailer had fishtailed somehow and the trailer which was loaded with grain smashed into the side of an overpass. The tractor ran off the road and mowed down a swath of several trees into the windbreak.

I dropped my bike and ran over to the crashed semi and climbed up the side to look inside. The driver was crushed over the steering wheel unconscious and a lot of blood inside the cab. I ran home and dialed 911 to report the accident. I then went back to the scene and by the time I got there there were police, fire trucks, and paramedics there. I stayed back in the trees a bit where I was hidden but could see.

I watched the paramedics remove the guy from the truck and try to administer first aid. It was obvious to me that the man was dead at that time.. It gave me nightmares and I still think of it from time to time. That was the first time I'd ever seen anyone dead.

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On a related note when I was in high school one of my friends had a job with the local paper and would take photos of different things. We came up on an accident scene on I-57 South one night between Mt. Vernon and Ina and a red Pontiac Grand Am had run off the road into some trees. He wanted to stop and get the story and take some pictures of the accident.

It was in the fall, cold outside and drizzling rain. They were still cleaning up the accident site and the victim was gone but the car was still there. They had cut it open with the jaws of life to get the guy out and there was blood in the interior. Cops reported the man was dead when they arrived. The car's wasn't running but the ignition was still on and there was some country song I still playing on the radio. Just the absolute reality of that... the mangled car with headlights still on, the flashing police lights and road flairs leading up to the scene, the music still playing on the radio.. it was a pretty surreal moment.
 
tcsenter said:
The hallucinations, before I realized they were just hallucinations.
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about 13 years ago, I went back to work too early from spinal meningitis. I was in Irvine for a deposition when I realized I was in a bad way, so I got in the car to drive the 60 miles back to the Valley.

On the way, all the other cars turned into multi-colored elephants. I just had to keep telling myself to not hit any of the elephants so I could get into my own bed.

It was weird to be hallucinating, but knowing I was hallucinating.

MotionMan
 
I was in line at a salad bar behind a lady and her 8 year old boy. As we were walking through the salad line the little boy grabbed an olive. Something didn't appear right. I mentioned to the lady that her little boy didn't look good (he was turning purple). She just ignored me. After 3 or 4 more steps, the little boy colapsed. She tried to slap him to revive him. I told her that I believe he is choking on an olive and would she like to me perform the Heimlich. She kept slapping the boy to try and revive him. I told her I'm going to call 911 and again he is choking on an olive and it won't matter how hard you slap him. After another minute, she pleaded with me to perform the Heimlich. The olive popped right out and he started breathing immediately. A paramedic came by and he was OK, but didn't have much of an appetite. I thought she would have bought my lunch, but she didn't. I only got a wave as she left.
 
15 years of Fire/Rescue/EMS lots of things...

Honestly, the ones that are obviously dead when I get there bother me, but only somewhat. The early fatal scenes stick with me a little more. I regularly drive by a cross on the side of the road that marks the first fatal I ever responded to. I think from time to time about seeing a young man that was almost my same age, with his neck snapped from hitting a utility pole at high speed. The shame of it was, the pole was on the edge of a cornfield. If he hadn't hit it just the way he did, he would have walked (maybe even driven) away fine. There have been many more gruesome, such as industrial accidents, pedestrian versus vehicle, train, fire, long falls, but that was one I always remember.

The ones that really bother me, are the ones that I found alive, but mortally injured. Working my best to save them, talk to them, sometimes listening to their begging "Please don't let me die!" Unfortunately this has happened more than I care to remember. Despite my best efforts, and close access to the home of trauma medicine, I have watched numerous people die in front of me. You never get used to that.

I will say that treating friends and family has also taken a toll. One of the first shooting victims I ever treated was a high school friend of mine. Mutual friends were there, again pleading to save him. That one actually turned out well, though others haven't. Another one was working a medic unit close to home, and I walked in and was greeted with "Good it's you! Mom-Mom isn't acting right." I immediately recognized symptoms of a hemorrhagic stroke, and knew there was a large chance that this event was going to be fatal. I have to put aside personal feelings and act, but those feelings don't disappear they simply are delayed.

As with many, the kids are hard to deal with. Seeing children whose death/serious injury was at the hands of their parents was particularly hard. I have done CPR on patients small enough to use a single finger... I will leave it at that.

All in all, I would say it's not one event, but the cumulative effects of all the deaths I have seen that live with me today. I would say at least weekly, if not daily I am reminded of one or more of those incidents.
 
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A long time ago I was an EMT. Saw some crazy things. Lots of car accidents. Some involving kids. Bad, bad stuff. Not sharing more than that because it took so goddamn long to push that stuff outside of my head I do not want it to creep back in. I will say that those experiences gave me the ability to act when others cannot or will not, even if its my own family. I'm simply numb to it all.
 
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Saving my dad's life. There's not a lot that can shake you more than walking into the living room, seeing your mother shaking your father who's laying out on the floor and not breathing, and pleading with him to wake up, while your sister cries in the corner. His heart stopped beating and he fell and hit his head on the table. He still doesn't remember that night, which happened November of last year.

I thank God every day that I took those emergency medical aid courses all those years ago.

I've also seen a few nasty accidents on the highway and roads, including an SUV that flipped several times in an "unprotected left turn" intersection trying to avoid a car turning left, and a car that fell off a highway overpass into a busy intersection.
 
When I was in college I was working construction in this newly built condominium. I started work early at 7 am and happen to look at the window and saw two hot lesbian making out. They got into it before going to work right after they started making out. I almost put a hole on the drywall. I got so excited that I opened the window some more and it made a lot of noise. The girls look up and saw me. They gave me a dirty look and got really angry.
 
In person:

April 27th 2011 -- Tornadoes in Alabama. Way too much to mention.
Summer, 1991 -- Small plane crashed into our neighbor's house. December of 1991 my father dies in a plane crash.

Internet crap:

Thief having his arm hand cutoff in Colombia for stealing. I felt sick for days... I think it was compounded by the fact that he already had the other hand cut off for the same thing. I've actually been to Colombia dozens of times. I'm married to a Colombian and our wedding was in Bogota.

Budd Dwyer Suicide -- Why? Wish I'd have never seen this.
 
I'm going to take another day before I read everyone's. I know some of you must have experienced and/or seen some wicked things.
 
Surprisingly, nothing I experienced working in surgery at trauma centers ever affected me that much. Brain matter, self-inflicted GSW, train-car interactions, people shoving all sorts of things up their rear-ends that got stuck, blah blah blah. Well, except for the six year-old boy who came in for routine surgery and died on the table. That one messed me up for a bit.

He was starting to sob a little because he was so scared. I had a minute free so I spoke to him. He reached his hand out for me, I went over and grabbed his hand and talked to him while anesthesia was getting ready. I reassured him everything was going to be OK, that we were going to fix him and he would soon be home. And he never made it home.
 
tcsenter said:
Surprisingly, nothing I experienced working in surgery at trauma centers ever affected me that much. Brain matter, self-inflicted GSW, train-car interactions, people shoving all sorts of things up their rear-ends that got stuck, blah blah blah. Well, except for the six year-old boy who came in for routine surgery and died on the table. That one messed me up for a bit.

He was starting to sob a little because he was so scared. I had a minute free so I spoke to him. He reached his hand out for me, I went over and grabbed his hand and talked to him while anesthesia was getting ready. I reassured him everything was going to be OK, that we were going to fix him and he would soon be home. And he never made it home.
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What happened if you dont mind me asking? Im only curious because thats almost what happened to my 5 year old Niece a couple weeks ago. She went in to have some cauterization done in her nose for frequent nose bleeds and her heart stopped twice on the table. They brought her back, but still pretty scary.
 
cant talk about the worst thing.


Something I can talk about is a dead body me and a buddy found riding our motorcycles on some fire trails near chicago in the early 80s. Most disgusting thing I have ever smelled. The smell still gets to me. Thinking about it affects me. Looked worse than it smelled but smells seem to stay with you for some reason.

Third worst was a landslide in a slum that my church went to help with when I was a kid.
The favelas in Brazil were in those days only allowed on land that was not desirable so mountainsides that experienced landslides were one of them.

In 1979 there was a really bad rainstorm outside Curitiba where one of these favelas were. When we arrived about two hours after the storm not one building was standing and the entire village was washed down to the bottom of the mountain. Took two days to get the people screaming out from under the debris. I will never forget pile of dead.
Not a thing I would take my 10 year old to but the church was all these people had. No first responders or any governmental help.
 
The event that I witnessed that shook me up the most was an earthquake.

GET IT??? GET IT??? SHOOK UP??? EARTHQUAKE???

images
 
Mother effer....

I was pulling into the gas station today and saw some cops with their lights on in the middle of the road. There was a pickup and a mini van that met head on in the center lane. Sitting between them was a motorcycle.

fack
 
Lots. One of the worst was the seven year old who caught a stray bullet watching Saturday morning cartoons, that one really really sucked. Car wrecks still get to me. The gruesome results of car wrecks are just horrible. I've gotten used to seeing a lot of things but mangled people in wrecks isn't one of them.
 
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