Matt
“I value life and family because, in the profession I’m in, I see a lot of bad things and I never want to be in that position myself. I try to be the most positive person I can even when I don’t want to be. Always value what you have – because it can always be worse. No matter the position you’re in, if you have a roof over your head, you have some family around you, and you’re in good health, that’s all you need.”
For months at the beginning of COVID, one of the few outside connections people shared with one another, across states and across countries, was a simple nightly ritual of banging pots and pans, clapping hands and yelling out of windows in support of healthcare workers and first responders who were on the front lines of treating an unknown virus that was sweeping across the world. People laid flowers outside of hospital doors and fire stations with notes of gratitude – offering whatever small gesture they could to recognize the actions of those unique individuals who were fighting COVID in ways most others hesitated to imagine.
For many patients going to the hospital, they had made a difficult call to 911 for help. Their situation had become severe enough that an ambulance would bring them to urgent medical care. EMTs and paramedics went into private homes, nursing homes and other care facilities to support and stabilize critical patients before transporting them to full medical teams in hospitals.
Matt had just begun his career as an EMT a year before COVID. As an EMT, he responded to the physical and mental crises that COVID created – and grew firmly into his profession nearly overnight.
This is his story, in his own words.
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I’m an EMT for Albuquerque Ambulance and I have been for about two years now. I’m 22 years-old, born and raised here in Albuquerque. I’ve always been interested in the medical field, just because when I was really young, my sister was diagnosed with diabetes and scoliosis, at the same time. My sister was in and out of the hospital, and I grew to not like hospitals very much because I associated them with my sister being sick. But, I was interested in the medical field – being a little kid, I was always drawn to the lights and the sirens of the ambulances and the firetrucks. So, I thought, maybe that’s the way I can get involved because it wasn’t going to work for me to be in a hospital.
There are three different levels of an EMT. EMT Basic, EMT Intermediate and EMT Paramedic. I’m an EMT Basic right now and I’m almost done with EMT Intermediate school. As a basic, you drive the ambulance, take vital signs – you can take on certain patients, really low acuity patients, who need observation. Then you’re a support for the paramedic. I make sure my partner has her equipment set-up as she needs it, whenever she needs it and in whatever situation. When the paramedic takes a call, I’m driving us to the hospital. If we need lights and sirens, that’s my job.
My whole life I knew I wanted to be a first responder. My ultimate goal is to be in the fire department. Once I finished school at CNM [Central New Mexico Community College], I came to Albuquerque Ambulance to learn medicine. I never thought that COVID would have happened; I got into this field at 19 years-old and I was, and still am, just a young kid, starting to get into my career. I was really enjoying it – I was always excited to go to work. I never had that before, and then COVID hit and that was an “oh, crap moment.”
When COVID started, I really didn’t think it was going to turn into what it did. I just thought it was another thing we had to deal with. At first, our company talked about what we would do to respond – implementing the PPE, which was just a gown and a surgical mask, because we didn’t really know. So, we thought it might just be a gnarly flu. But, then it started progressing so fast. Even before COVID was official, we were getting these calls and we thought, “Man, these people are really sick and we don’t know what to do. Nothing’s helping them.” Then once COVID started really hitting, we thought, “This is probably what’s been going on.”
It escalated really quickly – it just went from zero to sixty. It was kinda scary because, being so young and being so new to the field, I just thought, “I don’t know how to take this on.” I went from being really excited to go to work to still being excited, but having that “what if?” in the back of my mind. I’d think, “Is it on my clothes? Is it on my shoes? Is it on my hair?” At first, we weren’t sure how to decontaminate. It was a learning curve – we had to learn really quickly and on the fly how to manage things.
Our first COVID call was just a normal trouble breathing call. We had the PPE gear in case we needed it, but we didn’t know what it was when we got the call. We walked up to an individual who was just sitting on a bench outside of her apartment. Right away, we could tell she was having a hard time breathing. Then all of a sudden, she had a temperature. She couldn’t breathe. She was coughing. She couldn’t taste anything. That was before all of the symptoms were known – it was just shortness of breath and sore throat. It was weird seeing all of the symptoms that we didn’t know were going to come, but she had all of them. That was the first call I can remember when I thought, “This is probably it. We’re in it now.”
We started to get a lot of respiratory distress calls. When COVID first hit, people were really scared to call 911 or to go to the hospital, so people wound up calling when it was too late – when we couldn’t help them. Loved ones started calling when someone wasn’t breathing or when they didn’t know if someone was alive, so there were a lot of very critical moments.
The nursing homes got hit really hard throughout the city. A lot of those residents, even before COVID, were going to the hospital just for their health issues. With residents going in and out of the hospital, COVID started spreading like crazy through those facilities. We got one call at a nursing home – it had gotten hit really hard and there were a lot of issues with COVID – and we got a regular trouble breathing call. It was unfortunate because we’d go into those places and no matter what the complaint was, we’d think someone probably had COVID.
We got to the nursing home and the individual was very, very sick. We had to start moving fast – it was one of the worst COVID cases we had seen. We knew it wasn’t good. Me and my partner were training a new paramedic, so there were two paramedics in the back of the ambulance. Me and my partner have that kind of chemistry where she tells me to go and I go. It was one of those times when I could see it in her face that she knew it was bad and she just said, “We need to go.” About 30 seconds into the transport, the man went into cardiac arrest.
Just seeing that transition from life to death – how quick it is. He didn’t have COVID a week prior to us being there and then two days into having COVID, he just died – like that. Seeing that transition was just intense. You don’t know what to do and you kind of feel helpless. We got him to the hospital, but unfortunately, that individual just couldn’t come back from it.
When it was really bad around May and June, I wasn’t sure what to do. I wondered if I even wanted to do this work. I worried about bringing COVID home to my family. There was a lot of self-motivation before work and trying to hype myself up for the day because being in the medical field, if I’m in a bad mood, the patient knows I’m in a bad mood. When someone is calling 911, it’s probably one of the worst days of their lives, and if I show up in a bad mood and I’m grouchy then what’s the point? I had to have a positive attitude.
I think COVID affected everyone in some way or another, whether you got it or not. It affected people mentally, physically and emotionally. The second wave of COVID – towards November and December – was when the suicides started going up. It got to that point when people started thinking, “When is this going to end?” Unfortunately, some people just thought, “I can’t do this anymore.” We had those times when we responded to a call and we wished the person would have called – or called sooner. We could have helped them. That’s when I would feel helpless and think, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to handle this. This is heavy.” There was a lot of self-doubt sometimes – questioning if I could even help these people just because I am young. But, you figure it out.
I’m really blessed to have the partner I have at work – we make a great team and communication is super important. I’m pretty open about things I’ve seen. A lot of people have to be in the medical field. It’s OK to be open about the things you’ve seen or feelings you have, as much as I might not want to. There’s a stigma that if you talk about your feelings then there’s something wrong with you, but that’s not the case at all. Talking to family is one thing, but having that person who really understands, like your partner, who’s really in the moment with you, just to say, “That sucked.” Then you fall back on your family for the comforting aspect. Sometimes you just want to sit in silence, but having those people around you, you feel safe.
I still look back on the year and I don’t know how I did it. It was just a year ago when COVID started, but it feels so long ago. I feel like two completely different people – totally different from who I was just a year ago. The me back then – I was super young, really new to the field. I was so excited to be doing what I was and I wanted to be in those “Oh, crap” situations because I hadn’t experienced those yet. I was kind of immature in the field – not in an unprofessional way. I was just so new and I wanted to experience everything. Now, I feel like I’ve done it and I’ve seen it. I had to grow up fast. I had to learn how to do my job really well, really fast. It made me grow up, and matured me.
People always call us heroes or whatever and I don’t feel like it. This is what I do; this is what I want to do. We’re just regular people. There’s no difference from anyone else. If you call 911, there’s going to be a first responder there. Someone’s going to show up, willing to help you, no matter what else is going on. If you have COVID, we’ll show up. There’s always someone out there to help. Sometimes I feel like it’s a dream, that I’m in this field. I’ve always envisioned myself going into this work, but actually doing it, it doesn’t feel real. Even with COVID, I’m blessed at such a young age to have a career set for myself.
I’ve thrown around so many different career paths in my head, thinking “Do I still want to be in medicine?” But this is where I’m supposed to be. I like to help – I like to think I’m helping someone. This is only the beginning. The fire department is still in my future, but right now I’m just enjoying where I am, and being the best I can be in the moment.
