Owning My Crazy

By Kim Savige

Most of us are just trying to get through the day, but paramedics are often 
extremely harsh on themselves. We have high expectations and feel a pressure to have all the answers. 

Add to this the training we receive from day one, to respond quickly, to be ever-vigilant, to ‘switch on’ without notice, and then ma

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tightrope Publishing
• Release date: Dec 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9780646854212

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

THE BEGINNING AND THE DECLINE.

Most stories have a beginning and an end that are mildly predictable and introduce then tidy up the story. That’s not how the real world works, and certainly not how things work when you are struggling with mental illness. My life can go from seemingly normal to manic in no time at all and I constantly feel like I am starting everything in the middle, so don’t be surprised to find this book does the same.

If you are hoping to find a story along the lines of woman gets mental illness, woman gets support, woman gets better and learns to live her best life, or any kind of Eat, Pray, Love bullshit, then please stop reading. Same deal if you are offended by swearing. I am sweary – it’s me and I’d be being dishonest in this book if I was otherwise. The following is not pretty. It’s not in any particular order and it’s definitely not a nice, educational walk in the panic park. It’s raw, honest and messy. It’s my experience and thoughts. It was written for purely selfish and cathartic reasons, but my hope is that anyone else who may find themselves sailing towards insanity at a great rate, as I did, will find useful information and some solace, knowing that they are not alone. I am not the first and I will definitely not be the last. I am also under no illusion that my story is any better / more important / awful than yours. It simply is what it is.

I have tried to keep any stories low-key. If you believe you are at risk of being triggered by talk of ambulance cases, maybe ensure you are currently already receiving some assistance and have insight and awareness into when you are not travelling well. I have no intention of glorifying this work, nor of telling the biggest and best stories as we tend to do when together in numbers. I use them purely as illustration of the type of thing that contributed over time to where I am now. I have tried to keep them generic and a bit vague where possible to reduce the risk of vicarious trauma, but I felt they needed to be included to compliment the story. I have included a list of contact details at the end should anyone feel they need to talk about stuff.

I’m sure if I sat with a group of professionals, peers and friends, we could all come up with myriad reasons for my current state. Everyone would have their own hypothesis and suggestions; in fact, I’ve had so many suggestions thrown at me lately that if they were bricks I would already have a new palatial home. Ideally, this home would have a huge electric fence to stop anyone coming in without an invitation, and a very nice, secluded room with lovely off-white padded walls and a coffee machine. The Cheshire Cat was onto something when he told Alice that we are all mad, and that she’d have to be mad too or she ‘wouldn’t have come here’, and I wonder if he ever worked in emergency services…

My decline into my ‘quirky personality challenge’ (let’s call it that for the sake of sounding more windswept and interesting than I really am), happened over time, in full stealth mode and without my permission. It leapt out at me when I least expected it, crash tackling my sanity, dignity and self-worth in one fell swoop. I was completely blind-sided and found myself parked on the side of the road, phone in hand, blubbering my way through a stilted conversation punctuated by me stopping to inhale the snot pouring down my face and apologising non-stop. I had no idea what was wrong with me and no idea where to start trying to work it out. The manager I was speaking to at the time was fantastic and soothing. She sounded genuinely concerned about my welfare and said the right things, although looking back I can’t actually remember what those things were, other than a fleeting thought that she was worried I was going to go home and neck myself when I hung up. I must have said enough things to reassure her that this was not the case, because we left it at that.

The events leading up to that phone call, in my mind, were brief and short-term. I was feeling sick while getting ready for my night shift. A bit ‘iffy’, if you will (see what I did there?)… I got to the part where I get my ambulance uniform out of the wardrobe to place on the bed and felt a sudden wave of nausea. I thought I must be coming down with something. I began to feel hot all over and my throat constricted in that familiar pre-vomit sensation, narrowing to make sure that whatever was ejected from my body would be flung at full force across the room at high velocity through a narrow opening, spraying as much of my lovely pistachio-green bedroom walls with last year’s carrots and broken dreams as possible. I called in sick for my shift and as if my magic, the need to vomit dissipated, my stomach stopped hurting and I felt what I can only describe as a huge sense of relief.

So, in my mind, I was feeling unwell, coming down with a virus, needed to stay home, but with a small tinge of ‘hang on, this is interesting’ thrown in… I sobbed all the way down the hill on the half hour drive to my boyfriend’s house, wondering if I was premenstrual or exhausted, or both. I spent the weekend with him and his youngest daughter, having fun but never far from tears. I was frustrated and annoyed with myself for being what I considered a sook. I’m the woman who holds down 2 jobs, maintains a property, raises a child on my own 50% of the week, stays on top of things, helps others, attends the neighbours’ emergencies as the only paramedic in the village and generally just gets shit done, no matter what. Suddenly I felt as though my body and brain were 5 seconds out of sync.

I lay awake at 4am the next morning with chest pain. I tried breathing, I thought I was imagining it, I waited to see if it would go away (you know, all those things we growl at patients for). I have a big family history of cardiac illness with early deaths from acute myocardial infarction. My younger brother was only 31 when he experienced an AMI and almost died. I remember his specialist at Monash telling me at the time that I should start taking statins and being more aware of my own cardiac health. A few years earlier I had been diagnosed with a now unused diagnosis of prinzmetal angina after suffering chest pain and shortness of breath that had woken me from sleep. This sensation was very concerning at 4am but in my wisdom, I went back to sleep to ignore it. Denial can be a very comforting place to visit at times. One thing I have learned recently is that at same point though, the landlord of Denial gets cranky and kicks you out without notice. No time to pack your stuff, no time to think about where you’ll go next (I hear that Ignorance is nice this time of year). Before you know it, you are out on your arse, cold, hungry, and wondering what happened. In my case, rent (aka self-care and insight) had left the building long before and without them Denial is hard to hang on to.

A few days later I was driving home from lunch with a girlfriend, when I developed chest pain again. I was pale and sweaty. I did not feel anxious or worried, I have a family history, and I was going home by myself for the night. I decided that I would pop into the local branch and do a quick 12-lead ECG on myself for reassurance before leaving town. When I arrived and explained this to the crew on duty, one of them insisted on following me to the back room to assist. I was feeling foolish but also glad I was at least going to get some reassurance. I am in a high risk group and cardiac illness could well explain some of my recent fatigue. Well, my plan certainly back-fired…

The ECG showed changes and prompted