Both Sides of the Story

Submitted by: Lynn Walker

Hi Dave,

I live in your home town, and know quite a few of the people you know.
Let me start by saying thank you for this song, it’s beautiful and moving to those in our profession and it truly takes being in this profession to understand that powerful feeling of helping someone in need.
I am a 911 emergency services dispatcher. Based out of the Timmins Police building, we respond to 911 calls through various communities in the north, as we dispatch police, fire and ambulance.

Here is my story:

I was on a set off a week after Thanksgiving, and I get a call from my mom, frantic on the other end of the phone. In such a state that the only thing i could understand is ambulance, I tell her I’m on my way and drop the phone. My husband drives me over (and later tells me he didn’t remember stopping at stop signs or traffic lights) and once we arrive, I see my step dad, unconscious on the front lawn, intubate and medics performing cpr. He had been down for 10 minutes, and (i can’t remember but i think) 5 shocks later with no heartbeat, all the while comforting my mom and telling her that they are doing their best. They loaded him into the ambulance with things looking very grim, we get ourselves to the hospital expecting the worse when a medic who is a personal friend approaches me and tells me that they “got him back”! WOW, we couldn’t believe it, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet…Without my on duty partners in our dispatch center things could have turned out differently. An ambulance in the vicinity, that has a patient already on board, was dispatched as first response, so they can assess and tend to the emergency at hand until the other rig got there. Without going into further detail, suffice it to say that my step dad, made it through and is completely normal with only memory loss of that incident. It has been a long recovery with surgery to implant a pacemaker/defibulator but he is doing very well coming up on the one year anniversary of his “death”.
So a big thank you to everyone involved, from fellow dispatcher, to medics to the hospital staff…from the bottom of our hearts~