I can tell you exactly when I messed up. I was in recruit school when I tore a muscle in my back. We were past the halfway point, so I simply saw my own doctor and stayed quiet. It eventually healed, but to this day it’s a mess that frequently turns into a nasty knot and makes part of my hand go numb.
One day while at work, I felt the craziest pain in my shoulder. Like it had fallen. There was a pop, and suddenly my arm was a length it had never been before and I couldn’t find much strength in my hand. I got it to “pop” back in and thought, “well, that was bizarre,” and went about my day. A day that involved throwing a ladder and taking a line over a balcony. Want to guess what happened? There’s a term about a monkey and a football that applied to my performance.
Being the almighty firefighter who can fix anything that I am, I sat down to plan on fixing whatever this weird thing was with my shoulder. It was fine for a few days. Probably because I was on my four-day break. Want to guess what happened when I had to throw a ladder when we came back to work? This time, though, the pop was kind enough to occur right then and there. My hand could barely pull a hoseline. My arm had no strength to throw a ladder. After all was said and done, I sat there, an utter failure, embarrassed by my horrifying performance and in a lot of pain.
Did I go see a doctor?
Of course not. I came up with a new theory of what had to be wrong and went full charge with that. And it worked. Until it didn’t. My shoulder stayed in the socket, but the pain kept me up at night. Finally, after one more pop and more pain than I’ve ever felt, I called my physical therapy doc.
The problem with that? My doc has known me since we were kids. This meant she knows enough of my thick-skulled personality to track this problem back through all the signs and symptoms I had ignored for years that led to this ridiculousness.
We like to think we can fix ourselves. Until we can’t. We ignore the red flags. We have a certain built-in image of our own invincibility and immortality, and we blaze past the point where maybe we should have paused and done something different. Frankly, we kind of have to in order to focus on the tenser moments of the job.
I can look back at that injury and point to the exact moment that it all started. The exact moment where pain let me know something was wrong. I didn’t think I’d fail. In fact, each time I came up with a plan to fix the issue and went full steam ahead with it.
How often do we do something similar with our health in the fire service? We have a nagging symptom and we ignore it. We have soot on our skin for longer than we need to because, “eh.” We won’t get cancer. It’s just a fluke that so many have. But we won’t…right?
January is Firefighter Cancer Awareness month. I’m not going to lecture you about showers, wearing your mask, or any of that stuff. You’ve heard it all already. I’m just going to say that, despite our belief otherwise, our bodies, too, obey nature’s laws. We break our bodies? They’ll keep breaking more until we fix the problem. We ignore a symptom? We risk the chance of potentially catching something in time. We expose ourselves to carcinogens and let them sit? You do the math. Our mind is the thing that enables us to push through pain and limitations that others can’t. Our bodies, however, will break down like any other piece of machinery if we don’t give them the care they need. So don’t ignore a symptom, and don’t ignore a chance to reduce your risks. Don’t set yourself up to look back one day and think, “I can tell you exactly when I messed up,” by ignoring a problem.
Because apparently the chances of your arm falling off? They’re never zero.
mind.
Stephanie White is a 21-year veteran of the fire service. She started her journey as a volunteer, and has been a career firefighter/paramedic in Virginia for the past 19 years.
Over her career she’s been actively involved in firefighter health and wellness while being assigned to some pretty great companies. She is currently enjoying the challenge that is spelling and writing while living the shift-work life.
Stephanie is the managing editor of Firefighter Nation.
