Kevin WhitsellKevin Whitsell is a 20-year veteran paramedic and firefighter and the founder and host of “A Silent War Within,” a podcast dedicated to confronting and destigmatizing mental health challenges among first responders and healthcare professionals. A Mississippi native, Whitsell spent years in critical care transport, including pediatric and neonatal patients, before moving into supervisory roles. His advocacy is rooted in his own journey through the mental health struggles that come with the job. He can be reached at [email protected] or at asilentwarwithin.com.
By Kevin Whitsell
When you are a twenty-year-old kid in emergency services, the job still feels like a movie. You can go from being completely reclined on a station couch watching television to slamming into action in less than sixty seconds. I was a newer EMT, full of that youthful adrenaline, when the station speakers blared a call for mutual aid (a system where neighboring counties request outside ambulances when their own local resources are completely maxed out).
We were being sent thirty-five miles out of our usual response area into a rural county covered under our company umbrella. I remember jumping into the rig and hitting the highway, pushing through traffic with the lights, sirens, and air horn clearing every car out of our path. At twenty years old, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
As we closed the distance and switched our radio channels, the background chatter grew tense. The units already on scene were calling for heavy extrication (the mechanical process of using hydraulic tools to cut away crumpled metal and free trapped victims), but no one was giving specifics. When we finally pulled up, the adrenaline abruptly curdled. Down in a steep ditch was a car, partially submerged in a murky body of water. Sitting on the muddy shoulder of the road was a little girl, no older than ten, wrapped in a police officer’s heavy jacket to shield her from the cold.
We guided her into the warm back of our ambulance to assess her. Remarkably, she had no physical injuries to speak of, but as we sat her on the cot, the questions started coming. She looked up at us and asked where her family was. She wanted to know how her mom and dad were doing, and when she could see them. My partner stepped outside the doors to get an update from the scene commander. When he climbed back in, his face told me everything before he even opened his mouth. Her mother, her father, and her grandparents were all still trapped in that submerged car, and none of them were viable. They were all gone.
I sat in the back of that ambulance staring at that little girl, and my heart broke into a thousand pieces. I was internally grieving for a child I had met five minutes prior, paralyzed by a single, terrifying question: how do you tell a child that everything she knows, loves, and depends on in this world was wiped away in a single second? In an instant, the high-octane excitement of driving thirty-five miles code with sirens blaring was ripped away, replaced by the crushing reality of human mortality. It was the first time I truly understood the weight of what I had signed up for.
That night taught me that in this line of work, your fight or flight response is constantly triggered. You exist in a state of perpetual activation, moving directly from calm rest into the middle of someone else’s living nightmare. Every person who steps onto an ambulance eventually hits that exact fork in the road. You come face to face with the heartache and turmoil of the job, and you have to make a choice: do you stay, or do you walk away?
I chose to stay. I stayed for twenty years, and even now, it boggles my mind that so many of us look into the dark, knowing we will see things that nightmares are made of, and still choose to stand our ground. We do not stay because we want to experience pain or trauma. We stay because of the heart that most paramedics and EMTs share. It is a servant’s heart, a deep desire to stand beside a fellow human being on the absolute worst day of their life and say, “I am here with you.” That is the most admirable quality in EMS, and it is the foundation of the silent war we talk about so often on our podcast, A Silent War Within. When the thrill of the lights fades, the only thing left holding you to the job is the love you have for the people sitting in the back of your truck.
