On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 1:01 PM, Jim Eggeman <ok4a56@...> wrote:
>
>
> My name is Jim, and I have been in Public Safety for just over 20 years. I
> started out young, as I am now only 38. I have done FD, EMS as a
> Volunteer/Part Time, and have been a full time dispatcher for the last 20
> years. It was not until I became my departments Training Coordinator, and
> doing research on a class on stress, that I seen that I had all the classic
> symptoms for PTSD. I have yet to be officially told I have PTSD, but my
> family Dr, who gave me some self tests thinks I have PTSD. Over the next few
> weeks I will be working with my insurance company to find the right person
> for me to start seeing.


Jim,

Welcome. Until I got involved in CISM, I really didn't appreciate how
stressful it can be to be a dispatchers. Given that feeling helpless is the
most stressful part of being any sort of first responder, I quickly realized
that call-taking or dispatching is a recipe for stress, since you often
don't really know what's happening and you can't physically intervene.

I'm not at all sure how helpful an on-line community can be, but I'm here to
see if it can be. I'm a former paramedic and currently part of the Bay Area
CISM team. I got involved four years ago after my niece's husband was KIA
in Iraq. Today, I'm feeling a lot of that pain again... just found out that
the son of an acquaintance of mine was KIA in Samarra on Saturday, almost
the same way. I talked to him for a little bit this morning. I hate to
know that another family is going through this.

Nick


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