"Stay with me. Help is coming," I told my 9-1-1 caller as we maneuvered through medical questions to assist her father who was suffering from chest pain.
I disconnected the line and out of curiousity looked at prior calls at the address. Two other rescue squad runs in the last month. Silently I thought to myself - "check the newspaper in a couple of days". If we don't check, we rarely know. We move onto the next call; the next person. I've been doing this for 16 years and the cycle remains the same. "A" months are violent and we all know it.
As I prepare for what will surely be the next series of calls, I can hear newspapers shuffling in different corners of the communications center. One co-worker is shaking her head as I glance over. Two days before we had a person jump from the 7th floor of a building at a local university. She's reading the person's obit. For the sake of this blog, I can't tell you the person's name, not even the first name. But I can tell you he's real. He had a life and for whatever reason he decided to end it and he did it with success. There is little chance of survival from seven floors up.
"Here's the other one," quips out another coworker as I take a noise complaint and then a three-car accident call with unknown injuries. "Which one?" I ask my comrade.
She was however briefly reading the obit of a male found shot in the head on a local trail. An early morning walker found him less than 24 hours after the jumper. He had made a plan and left a note. We were looking for him when we got the call that a male had been found shot on the trail. It was self-inflicted.
These were not young people. They were established community members who just couldn't continue with life. Tunnel vision; the sense of no other option. It is happening more and more in our current economic climate. I rotate off 9-1-1 calltake and move to dispatch - at the helm of the city. I'm sitting no more than 10 minutes and here we go. A welfare check comes in for a female. A local utility company called to report a customer distraught over the disconnection of services. She was threatening to end her life.
Made a save on that one. Officers arrived and the woman got the help she needed; at least temporarily.
August and April are the most deadly months of the year. They are the suicide months. The psychology of it goes something like this. Many people will suffer through depression in the winter months and the holidays but somehow they make it through. Especially in the northern regions of the country, it doesn't seem especially unusual to be cloistered away. It's cold.
If you live in a warmer climate, it is still so busy that time of year that the hustle almost keeps you going. Those with depression press on with the hope that it will subside. March comes and it is no better. By April, normal activity is taking place. If you're depressed and hidden in your house, you watch outside and see happy people coming and going. It is an unbearable sight when you're clinically depressed. So we lose people in April. Lots of people.
August is a month of change. Kids and young adults (and now older adults more than ever) are returning to school. It's a stressful time and it can be a scary time. I don't like August from a work standpoint. I always end up with suicidal callers and suicidal reporters. It's just not good. I would rather work a choking person rescue call than a suicidal caller. That choker didn't choose to end life. They want to breathe. If someone calls me soon enough, we've got a chance.
With suicidal callers we go around in a circle. It is a dance. I step forward and I hope they step forward. If I step in and they step out, I have to go in after them. If they run, I give chase. Only I'm blind. I can't see if they have a gun or if they have indeed swallowed pills while we're on the phone. I must operate with gut instinct and fine-tuned hearing --- hearing not only the words but how they're said.
These calls are career-enders and I've known that from the beginning of my journey as a police and fire dispatcher/calltaker. My original trainer left the profession shortly after having a man blow his head off while he was still on the phone with him.
We "dance" as well as we can at the time. Sometimes we win. Sometimes we lose. In the end, humor saves us so that we can save "them" - perhaps "you".
The psychology of how people try or successfully take their own lives has always been interesting to me. I'm a professional and our job is to intervene in crisis; save lives when given the opportunity; and direct resources to those in need. Men tend to pick violent ways such as shooting themselves or hanging. Women tend to overdose and attempt to poison. I've tried to learn as much as I can about suicide so that I hopefully have the best chance of intervening and protecting my police and fire partners who will be responding after I have already arrived by voice.
I'll never forget a suicidal caller I had a decade ago. We spoke for about 40 minutes. This was before we had enhanced-911 that gave us locations. We didn't know where he was but he was serious. When I asked him how he planned to kill himself, he said by egg-poisoning. I asked him to repeat. He said it again. He was allergic to eggs. Had made a bunch of hard-boiled ones to do the job. Try to find that on a poison control list somewhere!
Yes. The call came in August.
Eventually we found him. He was sick from the eggs but no compromise to his breathing and he got the help he needed.
A week later I received a call from headquarters to come down to the station. There was a bouquet of flowers waiting for me. It was from my suicidal caller who had tried to take his life with eggs.
Attached was a note thanking me for having the courage to first ask if he was suicidal and then not to laugh when he said it was eggs. He said he was indeed serious at the time and probably would have eaten more had I laughed.
It is ok to laugh in a communications center, even in the face of destruction and loss because that's how we survive. And I did laugh that night when I got done helping him. Right after I cried. I lost a 16-yr-old to overdose two hours later.
Three years later I received a wedding invitation from my egg caller. I didn't attend but the note attached said - "You asked me at a critical time; so now I ask (invite) you at an important time. My life is good now. I'm glad we made it through that night and I mean "we".
If you think someone you know is suicidal.
Ask.
When I first started working 9-1-1, I was afraid to ask people if they were suicidal for fear I would plant the idea if they were not.
Suicidal people are suicidal before you ask them.
