Minnesota House Unanimously Passes First Responder PTSD Bill

  ST. PAUL, Minn. (KARE11) - Many kids say they want to be a firefighter. Brian Cristofono happened to follow through. His dream turned profession, eventually becoming a firefighter in St Paul. "That's where I started having issues," he said. But soon, the service took its toll. "There was a six-month-old, I remember going to, at 8 in the morning and the baby had been beaten to death and we just knew it was not breathing. We got to the hospital and I remember looking into the room and just kept doing chest compressions. I went into the bathroom and I just locked myself in there and just balled because my son was a year old at the time," Cristofono said. "That was it, another 23 hours to go, and we didn't talk about it. There was no intervention. There's nothing. You are just left to deal with it." Nightmares started. Calls kept coming. Panic attacks started. Day after day. Year after year. No help. "So you try to push through it you try to deal with it and at the same time you are going 'what's wrong with me? Why am I acting this way? Why am I having nightmares? Why can't I man up and deal with this everybody else does? Why am I so crabby? Why am I drinking a lot? Why is my marriage falling apart? Why can't I control my -- like it's out of control and finally after so long of this going on you just start thinking this is never going to change. I am broken. I am defective and this is not going to get any better. Then things get really da...
Source: JEMS Administration and Leadership - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: News Videos Administration and Leadership Source Type: news