This week we present two stories from people who deal with emergencies.

Part 1: As a first-generation pre-med student with no financial aid, Brooke Dolecheck takes a job as a 911 operator to support herself.

Brooke Dolecheck graduated from Boise State University in 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in Multidisciplinary Studies with an emphasis in Leadership and Human Relations. She's now an undergraduate academic advisor at Boise State University in the program which she graduated from. She works with students who, like herself, have found alternative pathways to pursuing a degree when the traditional route didn't work. She's an advocate for her students - creating unique degree plans that meet the needs of students' goals and the demands of the workforce.

Part 2: Flight paramedic Marc Doll must transport a child to St. Louis for his last chance at a heart transplant.

Marc Doll is the EMS Bureau Chief of the City of St. Charles Fire Department and a 26-year veteran of Emergency Medical Services. Marc has flown world wide to transport those in dire medical need from remote Russia to Carbondale, IL. He’s spent a total of 15 years in the high adrenaline atmosphere as a flight paramedic for both repatriation and children. For a change of pace, he has spent 22 years as a firefighter. While working two full time jobs, he finished his bachelor's degree in EMS Management from Missouri Southern State University with honors and is planning on continuing at Maryville University to acquire his nursing degree starting in the fall of 2020. His hobbies include beer making, practicing his banjo, and spending time with his wife, daughter (who is a nurse), two sons, and two dogs.

Episode Transcript

Part 1: Brooke Dolecheck

I’m a first generation, non-traditional college student. What that means for me is that my parents didn't go to college. I had a brother and a sister ahead of me that attempted college and couldn't finish because they didn't have the support they needed, including a dad who didn't file taxes so my brother couldn't even get support through financial aid. We were, by socioeconomic standards, poor. We all worked very hard for the things many other people take for granted.

When I graduated high school, I had to grow up very quickly. We were expected to move out of the house and figure it out. I looked around at my peers and they had the support from their parents they needed when emergencies came, but I didn't have that luxury. So I had to figure it out.

I always wanted to go to school. I wanted to be a doctor or a physician assistant, because I was such a great caretaker and I loved blood and guts. But I started doing the math. Rent, 900, car payment, 250, my food 100, dog food, 300, cellphone insurance, I'm going to need like three jobs, so that's what I did.

But on my 21st birthday I got a job offer that would allow me to quit my three jobs and eventually go to college. I was hired as a 911 dispatcher in the Denver Metro area. Before I could jump into college classes, I had to learn the ropes of 911 dispatch. It's not an easy job.

And so I answered calls from people, like a man who came home and found a naked man in his house after being gone from a work trip. As he fired a warning shot while I was on the phone, I convinced him the police were on their way.

When I got four years into the job, I had enough seniority where I could tailor my schedule to my college classes, and so I applied to school excitedly and enrolled in 12 credits as a pre-med student. I was so excited about what the future were to bring.

My first few semesters of college went really, really well. I was doing the shift work, full-time work and full-time student thing really well. I even still had time to work out and take my old dog Maggie on hikes.

Brooke Dolecheck shares her story with the Story Collider audience at The Lookout Room at the Student Union at Boise State University in November 2019. Photo by Elisha Brooks.

I would be at work and be able to study. That was another thing that was really nice about this job. So I would be in my books and then the phone would ring and I'd answer, and it would be something like this.

“Ma'am,” it's a scared, shaky, sweet old man, “I need an ambulance.”

“Okay, sir. How old are you?”

“I'm 91.”

“What's going on?”

“Well, I was shaving my scrotum and I cut myself and I can't stop it from bleeding.”

So this is how it went.

I remember studying for a biochemistry final one night and I got a call from a woman who I initially thought was suicidal, but she called me not because she needed help but because she'd shot and killed her husband 24 hours prior while he lay asleep on the couch because he wouldn't go get her more crack cocaine. So I dispatched police officers. They have to set up a perimeter and I need to get her safely out the door.

I'm talking to her, she's naked and high as a kite, not making sense, more worried about what she's going to wear as she exits the house than putting down the gun.

I get a full confession from her and when police are ready for her, I try to get her to get out. And all's I could think this whole time was, “Just put down the fucking gun so I can get back and study.”

So it went on like this. I would work a 10-hour night shift, take off my headset and head out the door to either go to campus and go to class, or go home and get a few hours of sleep to study. I did this for three years and I don't know how many of you have worked night shift before but that really wears on your body. On top of that, I was worried about paying rent and whether or not I was doing well in my classes. It just kind of started to get me down. My tank was being emptied.

So I start my night shift. I had I think an organic chemistry test or final the next day. And I got a call from a fellow dispatcher who was to relieve me in the morning at 7:00 a.m., and they're sick. So unless I can find a dispatcher to fill that place, I'm going to have to stay in the morning.

So I buckled down. I had the police officers pick me up a few Monster energy drinks, three. Drink them all and stayed. By morning time, I hadn't found a dispatcher to cover the shift so there I am in a sleepless drunkenness hoping to go home soon so I can continue to study and then go take an exam.

The phone rings and it's a woman who's walking along this beautiful creek path and she's come across a man who skinned his knee. In the description that she gives me, I picture her as being an observer, a bystander that's not stopped to help the man but that has done enough to call for help for him.

So I get his approximate location and dispatch the ambulance. My job is done, right? Well, I go back to my sleepless drunkenness and I don't realize how long the ambulance is taking to get there.

They radio in. “We're having a hard time finding the patient. Can you give us a better location?”

Well, the creek path ran right behind the police department and we had a building full of cops and investigators that I could send out to locate the man and help, and so that's what I did. Sure enough, the police officers found the patient before the ambulance did, and this is how it went.

“110 to dispatch.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

“Have the ambulance step it up. This is MC-1, Officer Jeff Hesselrode, and he's having a stroke.”

In stroke emergencies, minutes are crucial. More damage was done to Officer Hesslerode’s brain than was necessary. The mistakes I made that day could have cost Jeff his life. I was so angry at myself and the only thing I could attribute it to was that I had spread myself so thin that I wasn't making mistakes in my job that were going to kill someone and I was getting horrible grades.

For the next week I called in sick to work and I quit showing up to classes. When I went to work, I felt like everyone around me was judging me. And when I went to school, I felt like I didn't have anything left. I had no ambition left to continue, and so I quit.

I quit my job and I quit school. I cashed out my retirement and I went to work doing administrative duties, which was all that was available to me without a college degree.

Something wonderful did happen. I met my husband. We got married. We started collecting Labradors, because that's what white people do. And I settled in for a happy life doing administrative work.

But I had this shame over me and this fear that I just wasn't good enough. I hadn't finished what I'd started. I told all my friends and family that I was going to be a doctor. And I would constantly get asked, “Have you graduated yet?”

So fast forward a few years. My husband lost his job in Denver but he found an awesome job in Boise, Idaho.

And I thought, “Well, since I'm going to be living in such a boring place with just potatoes and a blue football field, I might as well go back to school.”

So I applied to Boise State University, but this time I wasn't as excited because I thought somebody's going to have to look at my transcript and they're going to see that last semester. It's a bunch of Fs and withdraws. I was mortified.

Plus, they're not going to know all the hard work that I put in and I don't get credit for it. There's no college credits for all of the 911 emergencies that I took. There's no college credit for me listening to a woman as she tries to breathe life back into her lifeless infant, but I applied.

I talked to the recruiter and I was just embarrassed and shaky. And I remember thinking, “He's going to tell me I've got like two years left. What are you doing? You're a science major,” and I didn't know what I wanted to study. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. To my surprise, he was okay with that.

Come to find out I'm not actually the only person that has struggled in that way. I found my people when I came to Boise State and I started studying multidisciplinary studies. There's people, my classmates have been through this. They didn't have the support they needed. And for one reason or another, it didn't work out for them, but they've done amazing things along the way. And you should get credit for that.

I liked it so much that I somehow convinced Boise State to hire me as an academic advisor for the exact same type of student that I was. I was shameful, I was fearful, I was regretful and I was angry over what had happened and what I had not accomplished. And every student that I get to see now I get to turn that story around and say.”All of that counts for something and you’re worth the degree. Your experience is worth it.” Thank you.

Part 2: Marc Doll

Four years ago, my team and I were walking into a pediatric intensive care unit in Oklahoma City. We had been sent there to pick up a kid who had a congenital heart defect that if he didn't get back here to St. Louis and get a heart transplant, he would die.

All the other centers around the country had turned him down and we were sent there to get him. Maria, Michelle and I, two of my best friends and co-workers over the years, we made a solid team. We got into the room and we walked up to the bed and Maria went off to go talk to the physicians that were there to get a little bit more background.

Marc Doll shares his story with the Story Collider audience at the Ready Room in St. Louis, MO in July 2019. Photo by David Kovaluk.

Michelle and I went to the bedside and we walk up. We know general age and gender, you know a lot about the patient before you get there, but he was so cute, 18 months old and that cherub little face. He reminded me so much of my little Louis John at home. It's this beautiful child and he's really friendly and cute and he's like doing fist bumps with me. Him and I were like simpatico, man. You know, we're buddies.

So we were talking to mom and mom Janet, she was great. She was cautiously nervous as to what was going on. Obviously her child was dying and she'd been living with this for a year-and-a-half and she knew the possible outcome. We were laughing and joking about her. We try to add a little levity too, because usually when we show up there's a bunch of people in flight suits and it's scary and heavy and dark.

So we're joking with her. This is going to be her very first airplane ride, right? With her sick kid. So we're trying to tease her about the fact our airplane is really small and nothing to worry about. We got this.

So we get James loaded onto our stretcher and we have our cardiac monitors and IVs and all those things put in place. We're cautiously optimistic as his vital signs are decent for a kid whose heart is only beating 3 to 4% of the capacity of everyone else in this room. He had an incredibly sick heart.

So we get him into the ambulance and we're rolling to the airport, because we got to get to the airplane. James and I are playing peek-a-boo with one another. This dude and I, like for whatever reason, we had a connection. We're all still monitoring vital signs and stuff but he's like every other 18-month-old, right? He's seeing things in the ambulance and he's looking around, he's like, “This is awesome!” Like there's 40-year-olds that hop in our ambulances at the firehouse and they're like, “This is awesome!”

So we get to the airport and we get loaded in the airplane which was a whole process, because he's got IVs and monitors and all this stuff. Our pilot, Dave, is a good friend of mine who would get us up to altitude and there's really no issues at this point because Janet, the mom was coming along with us. There wasn't enough room in the back so she was taking up my space and, thankfully, it was my turn to be up front so I didn’t have to deal with all that mess back there.

So Maria and Michelle were in back and they're handling the patient. James is cruising right along. There's no problems. And Dave and I are shooting the shit up front and we're talking about where we're going get a beer next week.

Also, I smell something a little shitty, so to speak. Right at that point I was like, “Oh, thank you. I'm up front. I don’t have to deal with that stuff.”

Dave then turns to me he goes, “Want to know why I'm a pilot and not a nurse?” Well, gee, I wonder.

Right about then Maria comes up and I get this tap on my shoulder. I turn and was like, “Oh, hey, Maria. What's up?” And also I'm like, “I'm not going back there to change that diaper. I got three-year-old at home and I'm already wiping his butt and he's still not potty trained. I don't want to deal with that. This is my time to be up front.”

She's like, “Marc, I really need your help back here.”

Now, Maria's a rock star nurse, right? She’d never asked for help. Michelle, again, super rock star nurse. They don't need my help. I'm the ambulance driver, right? Paramedic.

So like she's, “No, really. I need your help.”

I turn around and I look back there and I see Michelle laying the stretcher flat and I see her putting her hands on James's chest and she's starting to do chest compressions.

Now, I've flown all over the world to pick up patients and bring them back to United States and I've transported thousands of children and I've never had one die in the airplane. My brain and I like had a little bit of a vapor lock, I'm like, “What the hell am I seeing? I just was playing peek-a-boo with this child 40 minutes ago. We were laughing and joking, right? Now he's in cardiac arrest.”

I had this little pause and half a second later, I'm out of my seat and my buckles and I'm heading to the back. I tell Dave our pilot, I’m like, “Declare an emergency. We need to get down. Find us the closest hospital.”

We're five miles above the ground. The closest hospitals is 150 miles away. It's a 30-minute flight.

He tells me this and I'm like, “Well, this sucks.”

So we get back there and we start a resuscitation attempt. Michelle is doing CPR and Maria is handling all the medications and I'm contorted stretching out on this cooler trying to get this kid intubated. We get him intubated and we do all those things we’re supposed to do, right? You have these algorithms you follow and we're doing it perfectly. We're hitting all of our medicines at the right time and we're switching out compressors on this sweet little baby boy, and it's not changing.

Now, there's medical people here and most people know that resuscitations usually they can turn into shit shows sometimes. This was a perfectly run resuscitation with three people. In a hospital you have 15 or 20 that will show up. Well-oiled machine, we're getting it done. Tuning out any emotion.

We get to the ground and a local ambulance company picks us up and we start driving to the hospital. Meanwhile, I should have told you, mom is freaking out in the back of the airplane, trying to run forward. Sudden CG shift in an airplane is lethal to all of us, so trying to calm her down. Getting her down to the airplane, we promise we're doing everything we can.

She's in the back of the ambulance with us and we're doing CPR and we're exhausted. By this point, we have been doing CPR for 50 minutes. It's a hell of a core workout and I don't recommend it for anyone.

I am emotionally exhausted and physically exhausted and mom is like praying for some higher being to put power into our hands to fix her baby boy, her beautiful, beautiful baby boy.

We get to the hospital and we transfer him over to their ER bed and they start their resuscitation. And we're helping out and we're telling them history and all this.

Finally, the physician was like, “Listen, how long you've been doing this for?”

We had been doing CPR at that point up to 65 minutes.

And she's like, “All right. Does anybody else have any ideas that we haven't thought of?” And all of us were like, “We've tried it all.”

James was pronounced dead right then, this beautiful baby boy who I wanted to hug him and hold him.

You know, medicine is so fucked up. You can do everything right, perfect, by the textbook that they tell you and it still won't work. The person will still die. Or you could totally screw up, medical mistakes happen every day, and you'll live and go home.

I'm looking around the ER and everyone is crying and sobbing, and mom is screaming, “Jesus, why did you take him?”

I still hear her voice now, today. It was late at night and these nurses and these techs were all... it was in the summertime and they're all recent graduates. They had never participated in resuscitation let alone seen a dead kid like this, sobbing, crying everywhere. Everyone, except for one person, me.

I'm looking around. I'm not tearing up. I'm not crying. I'm like, “What's up?”

That point I started asking inside of me like what the fuck is wrong with me? Has 25 years of doing this job hardened my heart to the point that I can't feel for a baby boy? What... am I broken inside? Has my heart turned into a stone-cold lump of coal?

I got home the next morning and typically I don't tell what I see in my career to my family. My beautiful bride does not need to hear that. She doesn't need to carry that burden that I carry. She doesn't deserve it.

James, though, for whatever reason, and it's probably because he looked like my little Lou. I told her everything. I told her about the trip and about the flight and about the him dying after pooping in altitude. I told her about we had to rent this car and drive four hours back and it smelled like cat piss with McDonald's french fries all over the floor.

I remember sitting at brunch with her and I've been up for like 26 hours at that point. She had a tear in her eye, I'm like, “Maybe I should figure something out about this?”

So, two or three weeks later, suddenly I started having nightmares every day and I see James’ face. I feel like I'm in quicksand I want to help him but I can't, and there's nothing I can do.

I go back from the beginning of the trip to the end of the trip, like what did we fuck up? What did we miss? What did I do that caused him to die? To take him away from his mother? How come I'm lucky and I have my baby with me every day?

I remember this weight is pushing on me and I'm driving to work at the firehouse and the Blanchette Bridge is right there. We get jumpers there every day. I was like, “I could just pull over and jump over and be done. I won't have this sitting on my shoulders every fucking day.”

One thing, though, that I had. I've been in therapy for five or six years. I love therapy. it's awesome, right? Even for a proud fireman, you know, but I never talked about it, about work. I didn't think it really... I was like, “I'm good. You know what, it doesn't matter.”

My wife had mentioned something. She's like, “Maybe you should talk to Shannon about that, you know, just it might help you. You seem a little off.”

So I started opening up to Shannon and let her know what was happening and these dark thoughts. I got diagnosed with PTSD, posttraumatic stress disorder and not necessarily from James' death but from thousands of traumas over 25 years of seeing the absolute worst of the human condition.

I always have anxiety, like that's who I am. I'm a worrier. There's a couple worriers out there, I'm sure, like on a side note. My beautiful bride, she always says like the best part about marrying me is that she doesn't have to do any worrying because I do all the worrying for both of us. She's good, right?

So in paramedic school and in nursing school, in medical school they teach you how to diagnose a heart attack or take care of a broken bone or take care of a patient that got hit by a car. They teach all these things but do you know what they don't teach you, at all? It's how to take care of your fucking self.

They didn't tell me, they did not prepare me for what my eyes would see for the next 25 years of my career. Because one of the joys of this job is right alongside of the really best of humanity that you see, you see the absolute worst.

When I was in that emergency room looking at that beautiful baby boy who had just died, I had asked myself if I was broken, and I was. I was a destroyed man at that point, an absolute failure. Now, I don't think I'm broken anymore. I just might be a little cracked around the edges here and there. Thank you.