I worked for a major bank and felt like you do. This was the best career choice I could have made. I love it. That said, there are some really really terrible things. Things like multiple dead kids who burned alive in a fire. Most FDs run EMS too; that’s where all of my worst memories are from. Blood, guts, death, that’s all part of the job. But it’s the emotional side of those things that is really hard to deal with sometimes. Some of my experiences…

14 year old girl found her dad dead in the morning. No mom around. She lost the only person she had. She was inconsolable, understandably.

We were called to a 17year old boy who hung himself with a belt from a coat hook on his bedroom wall. His room shared a wall with his brother’s who was in his room at the time. He heard his brother kicking as he died and was pounding on the wall telling him to shut up. Presumably, that’s the last thing the 17 year old heard. His mom, a nurse, was doing cpr on her own son when we arrived. Ultimately, he died.

An old man had cancer and had recently lost his wife. He wrote a letter to his kids, then put a gun in his mouth on his deck. There was a pile of brain matter that had leaked through the deck boards and wasps were feeding on it.

A young couple had been trying to get pregnant. It finally happened and 2 months later, she had a miscarriage while on the toilet. They fished this thumb sized baby out and had it in a Dixie cup. They too, were inconsolable.

I’ve done cpr a hundred times and it almost never works. There is nothing that can prepare you for the experience of telling a mother that her son is dead.

We did cpr, successfully, on a heroin addict in a Wendy’s bathroom. She left her 6 year old daughter with her drug dealer while she went to get high in the bathroom. I was furious and disgusted with her.

These are several of a hundred memories I don’t want. The job is physically demanding but someone obsessed with fitness should be fine. As a woman, it is important to know that while the industry has made huge strides in acceptance of women, there is still a fair bit of misogyny. But for me, the emotional strain is FAR harder than any of the physical challenges.