#190： A Thousand Naked Strangers
Episode Stats
Summary
He s the author of the book A Thousand Naked Strangers: A Paramedic s Wild Ride to the Edge and Back, a memoir of his time as a paramedic in Atlanta, Georgia, and the story of how he became one.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so have you ever
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thought your life was too routine and safe maybe you've felt like you've never had the chance to
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test your mettle and see how you respond in a chaotic situation i mean would you break or
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would you rise to the challenge i think it's a common experience for many men well my guest today
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on the podcast had those same feelings and decided to do something about it by becoming a paramedic
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in atlanta georgia instantly he was thrown into a world that often goes unseen violence addiction
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and mangled bodies became a regular part of his existence his name is kevin hazard and he's the
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author of the book a thousand naked strangers a paramedic's wild ride to the edge and back and
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today on the podcast kevin gives us an inside look into the hidden world of paramedics and
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shares what he's learned during his 10 years of service as a paramedic about himself as well
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as the human condition a great show fascinating when you're done make sure to check out the show
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notes at aom.is hazard and that's spelled h-a-z-z-a-r-d kevin hazard welcome to the show thanks
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i'm glad thank you for having me on it's great to be here so your book is called a thousand
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naked strangers a paramedic's wild ride to the edge and back it's a memoir of your time as a
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paramedic in atlanta and the backstory of how you became a paramedic is fascinating because before that
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you uh were a novelist you had written a fiction book you were a newspaper reporter and then out of
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the blue you decide to become an emt and that's a huge career change and i figure you know someone with
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your background they'd probably become like a high school english teacher or something so what drew
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you to become a paramedic yeah that is a huge change um and you know it uh there are a few
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different factors that were involved in that and the first was you know and they're not in any way
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necessarily even related um the first was that while i was in college i'm at school in in south
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carolina and lived in charleston and um while i was in college i i had the summer job where i led jet
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ski tours and one afternoon i had these two guys in one of the tours i was leading that were kind of
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spraying each other with the jet skis and um they wound up crashing into one another and the one ski
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kind of jumped up in the air the one guy was knocked into the water and the jet ski came down and hit the
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one guy in the face and i mean pretty much everything below the nose was gone and so here
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he is he's floating in 75 feet of water he's missing half of a face i mean this is a horrible
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you know this terrifying life-threatening moment i am 19 years old i'm hopeful hopelessly outgunned by
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the situation and i did the only thing that bystanders are asked not to do in the event of emergency i
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totally panicked and so that was my sort of one experience with an emergency was just not handling
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it well and just having this horrible feeling of you know god this is this is what it's like when
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things go wrong and then so i graduate um i was supposed to have gone to the peace corps but i met
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this girl who you know essentially changed my whole world and i was like all right i guess i'm not going
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on i'm going to stay home to be with her so i had to figure out what i was going to do from there
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and i wound up being a reporter which was great because in so many ways it fit exactly what i
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wanted to do the problem was i had this intention all along of going off to live this adventure and
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to do something that was much larger than myself and and you know be part of of something you know
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at least in my mind that would have mattered and now i found myself covering you know city council
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meetings and highway budget meetings and it just felt the opposite of everything that i thought i
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was going to do and then 9-11 happens and because i had gone to the citadel which is a military college
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in charleston a lot of my friends were in the military and they are marching off to iraq and
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afghanistan one of them was one of the first marines to go into iraq during that invasion
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and they you know i'm hearing from them and they're telling these unbelievable stories and i just know
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without even having to speak to them that you know they are involved in this huge thing this massive
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moment that's going to define our generation and i am at home covering a city council meeting
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and it just all the all those things kind of came together at the exact same moment the
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the constant wondering if i am no more than someone who panics at a time of of emergency the feeling that
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you know i thought i was going to do something larger than myself and now i'm not and then just
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the general i guess malaise of of being a 22 year old kid who suddenly finds himself really bored with
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where he is and all those things happening and i just realized there's got to be something more than
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what i'm doing this isn't this isn't what i want to be and around that time i covered a tunnel collapse
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and in the subsequent articles both from witnessing these guys the night of that disaster and then
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talking to them afterward i saw something in them that i realized could address all these things that
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that i had been you know these these voids i guess that i that i had and it was just this epiphany
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moment of oh wow like right here under my nose at home is something that i can do that that satisfies all
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these needs and um i i couldn't shake the thought and so my wife who is you know very typical type a
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personality you know and it's just like don't talk about it if you want to do it just do it you know
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shut up and do it and that's what she said one morning when i was talking about she said if you
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want to do it just quit your job and go to school just just do it and so i did that's really interesting
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so this is the art of manliness podcast and i hate playing armchair psychologist but i think what
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you experienced i think a lot of men have gone through that sort of thing where they they feel like
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they're missing something and they want to know if they're competent in times of emergency that they
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they have this idea to be a man they have to know what to do when things go wrong you do you think a
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little bit of that was going on in you as well or do you just yeah absolutely i mean there's a huge
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a huge part of it that you know and i think that's the word competent um i remember way back when i read
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uh black hawk down and the description that one of the the widows gives of her husband who had been
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one of the the delta snipers and that you know she was concerned that she was never going to be able
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to you know how can you ever replace a guy who has that level of competency and that no matter what he
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entered into she felt confident that that he could do it you know whether it was fixing the refrigerator
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or sewing a halloween costume or heading off to mogadishu to be a delta sniper like he was that guy who
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could just handle any situation and when you haven't been put in that situation when you haven't
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forced yourself into that situation when you haven't you know done anything to say you know i want to
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test myself under extreme conditions you know you you you don't know and you you do have no way of even
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gauging where you would fall um in that line so that was a huge part of it and and that was a big part
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of what i noticed in these guys you know that they were this sort of special rescue tactical team that
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you know go out for various types of of incidents including you know the tunnel collapse um and there
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was there was a there was the way in which they carry themselves suggested that that they were
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supremely confident in their abilities and that they had been there before would have to go again
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and knew that they could handle it and that was something i envied and certainly wanted to have in my own
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mind so your wife was really supportive in all this and said you know just do it quit talking
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about becoming a paramedic and just go do it so you did it can you walk us through the job of a
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paramedic because i think it's a it's a big mystery for a lot of civilians they just don't know what's
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involved in becoming a paramedic or what the job is really like you know so for example i always
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imagine that a paramedic's training would be really really intense you know emts paramedics these are
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the people who are the first responders on call when people are dying or there's big trauma so you're
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going to expect that these are highly and rigorously trained medical specialists so is the training very
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rigorous to become an emt yeah you know the the training is a funny thing um emt you know it's
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different for a paramedic uh you know the difference between emt and paramedic the easiest way to say it is
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imagine the emt is the nurse and the paramedic is the doctor it's that sort of hierarchy and
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difference in training um but the emt training is really kind of a funny thing uh unlike other
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branches of public safety it isn't something that you have to be first hired by the city and go
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through the city's hiring practices you know if you want to be a cop that's what you have to do you
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have to apply with the city and it's this long byzantine process and then you go to the city's
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academy same thing if you want to be a firefighter well ems in most places although it's starting to
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change a lot more and more municipalities are are pairing fire and ems into one service but
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uh it essentially you know anyone who wants to sign up for night school can come out registered as
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an emt and you don't have a job you just simply have a certificate that says you know i went to six
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months of school now i am an emt i passed this nationally administered exam and you know and i i i have
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the requirements to be an emt should somebody want to hire me so in that regard it's kind of different
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that you can just go to the school and and and be it and so you know there's not a ton of standardized
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training you know the test is standardized but how people are trained how regular rigorously they're
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trained it's kind of all over the board and you know when i got there my class my teacher was very
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good um and he'd been in ems for a long time and uh you know he had a huge class i mean i think there
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were 60 some odd of us in there and so he had a hard time um you know i think keeping us in line
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because he had a bunch of like a lot of 22 year old kids who were just goofing off um so some of it
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was just trying to herd cats and keep us moving but he was very good and and you know i when i walked
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out of that i felt as prepared as somebody could be but the training essentially is you know you're
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taking people with zero experience and you're trying to teach them to handle every single
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emergency that could possibly happen so you know it's almost like western civ you know that you
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take in college it's like there's no way you're really going to be able to learn a thousand years
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of western history so they just touch on really the big points um and it's it's a lot like that you
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know we did uh you know there's the cpr heimlich section um there's some stuff on uh you know bleeding
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control you get an overview on stuff like seizures and diabetic emergencies and strokes and heart
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attacks just enough so you have some clue of what's happening around you um and you you know
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we uh uh did some work on you know how to read the signs on the side of tractor trailers so if you
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know you know if a tractor trailer has tipped over and you've been called out to it you should at least
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go to look at it and say hey the stuff in there is really flammable and we should be careful
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so that's kind of what it is it's this massive overview of everything that could possibly happen
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you know as well as a couple weeks of anatomy and physiology crammed in there and you know there's
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some practical skills that you have to learn like you know ivs and um you know using airways and using
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various types of splints and stuff but i mean it's essentially a sprint through you know emergency
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medicine and then you come out after six to eight months and and then you're luckily in most cases
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you know you're the junior member so ideally you're working with someone with some experience who can
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say okay remember that stuff you learned well here's here's how you put it into practice can you tell us
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about your classmates i mean what walks of life do they come from do they cover a spectrum of
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socioeconomic classes uh do you have doctor who are students going through the paramedic training
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uh you said uh 22 year old kids who just didn't really know what to do in their lives
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uh were there as well is that the type of people who went to school yeah we had all sorts of people
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in my class um you know i noticed in general in ems you have sort of a wide swath of of the american
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public um from you know whether it's uh like someone who went to duke and is trying to get into med school
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but screwed around too much in school and so now has to try to bolster their their application there are
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people like that but my class in particular is you know very much a blue collar group the oldest guy
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i think was 65 wow yeah he'd been a truck driver um and one day a car full of nuns i mean you can't
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pick it would be hard to pick a worse scenario than this a car full of nuns runs a stop sign and he t-bones
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and it kills them all i mean like of all the things you can do to kill a car full of nuns and even that
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wasn't his fault he just couldn't drive a truck anymore that was it like that that was his moment
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he said i was done but he was sufficiently impressed with the guys who showed up on the
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scene to say well maybe this is something i could do now he was in his mid-60s heavy smoker in horrible
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shape none of us had any illusion that this guy was actually able to do this but i think it was just
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some sort of therapeutic step he was trying to take after having just killed a carload of nuns
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so he was the oldest um and the youngest was probably about 21 he was this part-time mailman
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he looked like he was 13 and everywhere in between or everyone else seemed to fall somewhere in
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between you know a lot of it was people who just graduated from high school a few years ago had been
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kind of bumping around from one odd job to another and somehow or another had had heard about this and
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thought well you know i can do three nights a week for six months and and you know maybe that'd be a
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good career field for me and so they kind of entered into it you know a little bit capriciously
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thinking hey you know maybe this would be maybe this would be kind of cool and and there's a handful
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of people who you know they are fanatical like they have wanted to be an emt since they were a kid
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and here's their moment and they're ready to rush off and do it but it's it's people from all walks of
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life that get into it right i guess so yeah it's interesting um so it's interesting that everyone had
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their different reasons for doing it like they had existential reasons and reasons they didn't
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really have reasons they just decided to do it yeah i was i was surprised you know i kind of i
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expected it to be something of an outcast coming in because i had no clue really what it was i you
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know i had some understanding that that ambulances existed but i didn't really know what they did and
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um you know i didn't really know what the job was that the first night that i walked into class i
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remember distinctly saying to myself am i going to do this like is this is this some weird thing that
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i'm just going to try for a week and just you know i had entered into it so almost accidentally that
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there was it was hard for me to even imagine that i was going to make it all the way through and then
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of course there was a specter of of me panicking back in 97 and then i'm flipping through the textbook
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and i'm looking at these horribly mangled bodies and getting lightheaded and thinking man this might
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not be for me what i thought was surprising the book was when you talk about getting your first job
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you went through the classes you got certified and then you go out there to look for a job and i knew
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that you know ems had a high turnover rate because it's a tough job but you had a hard time finding a
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job at first why was that what's going on there and also can you talk a little bit about i don't know
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about the the different levels of ems jobs that exist out there yeah yeah so you know as i said before
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some in some cities the ems department has been enveloped by the fire department and they kind
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of exist and and as i said those are those are tough jobs to get to get in with a fire department not
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that you know necessarily that the standards for hiring are are any different necessarily it's just
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that cities tend to hire those kind of jobs once or twice a year so you have to really be patient you
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know and you have to understand that hey they might not be hiring for another six months
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and then when they do there might be 750 applicants for four jobs you know that's kind of that's kind
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of how it how it goes with these with these you know people who get into that job tend to you know
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they tend to retire and so there's not a ton of openings so that was one area that was pretty much
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immediately i realized okay i'm not going to get into the fire department and there's no you know it's so
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difficult to do that nor did i really have any interest in fighting fire you know it just wasn't what i was
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there to do so then you look at all right who provides non-on-one ems in atlanta and if you're
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in atlanta frankly if you're in georgia the place you want to be is great it's this massive public
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hospital it's one of the largest trauma centers in the u.s it's very well known and they run the
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ems department for the city of atlanta and so if you want to work in atlanta that's where you want
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to be there's no doubt and of course that's what i wanted to do but i went and applied to them and they
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said yeah no you need experience we're not going to hire anyone without experience so all right well
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how do i get experience and i i started looking around at some of the other ems providers you know
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whether it's full county or different counties different cities and i did find one who said oh
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man i wish you had you know called me two days ago we just got done hiring which was you know one of
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those gut-wrenching moments and then i got to the private ambulance services which i didn't even know
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existed until this moment and essentially you have two types of ems services you have 9-1-1 which
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obviously you dial 9-1-1 and on the other end of that call ultimately is an ambulance with an
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EMT and a paramedic and the other one are the private services and their main role is to
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take people to and from appointments so they will if you live in a nursing home they'll pick you up and
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take you to a doctor's appointment or there are people who live at home that you know they can't sit
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up in a car or whatever and so they need they need an ambulance to take them there obviously without
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even having to be told you know that that is not going to attract the prime talent right it's either
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going to be people who are looking for the easiest possible job or people who wanted to be a 9-1-1 and
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either can't because they don't yet have the experience or got there did not do a good job and had to
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leave and so you it's a very weird mix of people a very strange crew and the thing that happens is
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nursing homes oftentimes will sort of use a non-emergency service these private ambulance
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companies to fudge their math and so let's just say your grandmother is living in a nursing home
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and she falls one night or she has a stroke or she chokes on a piece of chicken or she has a super
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high fever because she has a urinary tract infection that they didn't catch if they dial 9-1-1 and her
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paperwork is going to say we had to call 9-1-1 which immediately suggests to anyone reading it hey there
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was an emergency but if they call this non-emergency service they can say oh you know it wasn't a big
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deal it was something minor we caught it early you know and we just called it was so minor a fact that
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we didn't even have to call 9-1-1 we called a non-emergency service even though this woman may have
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maybe having a stroke and this could be a life-threatening situation they often do that
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and so now to this emergency arrive someone who never wanted to be a 9-1-1 and his partner who was
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someone who tried to be a 9-1-1 but couldn't handle it and got washed out and now they're arriving in
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this poorly equipped ambulance and doing a really terrible job and that happens quite often and i worked
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for one of those places it was a it's kind of a shady place to be perfectly frank in my job interview
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they never bothered to verify that i actually was an emt they took my word for it um they uh you know
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and in the interview there i was assured that look i know you've heard the rumors about possible
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medicare fraud we've been investigated and the government so far can't find any evidence
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so for your potential employer to say you know we aren't doing anything illegal as far as a government
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can prove in a job interview it's kind of it's not it's not the sort of thing that immediately
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bestows a lot of confidence but that was the only thing i could get so i took it and uh you know i
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had some weird partners i mean i had one who used to every night she'd bring her girlfriend in and two
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of them would would play cards and drink beer um i had another who used to disappear at night in the
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ambulance to go pick up prostitutes uh you had another who used to get homeless men to you know
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pay him a few bucks to clean out the ambulance i mean it was a it was a strange crew of people that
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worked there and i i was always looking around going i cannot believe that this is where i am right now
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what weird world have i stumbled into yeah after i read about the private emergency service i started
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seeing them uh when i was driving around because it was on my radar so uh there's one there's this
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ambulance that i saw that looked like the ghostbusters car it was like a hearse but it was a private ems
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and uh that's not 9-1-1 uh so thanks to your book i'm aware of this thing did you get any experience
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there that would help you move on to what you eventually were wanting to do which was 9-1-1 ambulance
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or was it just a lot of taking old people who had strokes at the hospital uh was that just it
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you know there were in doing that and taking those because you know that's about a lot of 9-1-1 is is
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is people old people within medical emergency and so the fact that these nursing homes so often would
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use these non-emergency services to sort of cover for the fact that they hadn't noticed
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that your granddad you know had a stroke four hours ago um that gave me a lot of experience you know
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because it would be me and some some other emt so both of us are emts um you know there's no
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paramedic involved it's just two emts and uh the person i was partnered with oftentimes didn't know
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what he was doing maybe knew less than i did um or maybe thought he knew he was doing and was just
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really bad at his job and so it kind of forced me very early to you know put me in control of a
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situation i was not prepared to be in control of and of course you learn from that you know you
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you gain experience in terms of dealing with an emergency and uh and then trying to be involved
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which is you know it's kind of funny because then i switched to 9-1-1 service and now like nobody would
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dream of of putting me in the back with one of those patients you know i didn't have i had neither
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the training nor the experience to do that so i went from this world where if anything went wrong i
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just would be the one to take over because i knew my partner knew even less than i did to one in which
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you know i was considered nowhere near experienced or trained enough to handle it so i did learn some
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stuff for sure after you went from a private medical private emergency service after that you
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went to the county fulton county correct i did is that when you first saw your first traumatic
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accident you talked about in your training uh in your certification course you would get
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lightheaded looking at the pictures uh in the the manual did you encounter something like that when
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you were at fulton yeah that was where you know that was a regular 9-1-1 service so you know right
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away you begin to you know right away you're you're you're that's what you're doing so i think my
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very first call um working full and county ems was uh a guy who he was mowing his lawn it was morning
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and it was a it was a slight hill and a little slope in the backyard and he was you know he went down
00:23:55.120
and then was backing up which is you know the one thing you should never do a lawnmower especially in
00:23:59.740
wet grass uphill he slips and essentially just pulls a lawnmower over his foot and um you know
00:24:06.580
there go your toes in a hurry and so that was the first call was for a guy who had cut his toes off
00:24:11.240
with a lawnmower and so there i am at 8 15 in the morning i'm brand new and i'm kneeling in this
00:24:17.600
guy's grass looking for looking for toes and i was i couldn't have been happier than i was at that
00:24:24.060
moment it was you know i got here i am you know doing it i'm i'm in the mix and something crazy
00:24:29.180
has happened and i'm the one that that was called and that is an incredibly especially in the beginning
00:24:34.220
it's an incredibly heady intoxicating feeling to know that like whatever you're doing you might be
00:24:39.820
sitting down eating lunch you might be you know at work checking off that you have everything that
00:24:45.040
you need but to know that if anything goes wrong i'm the person that they're going to call
00:24:50.320
to handle it and that's just really this incredible feeling that no matter what happens around me i'm
00:24:55.780
going to go and i'm going to be there i'm going to witness it i'm going to be part of it so if
00:24:59.360
there's a shooting or explosion or you know a child is born or some massive car wreck or a plane crash
00:25:06.460
i mean who knows whatever happens i'm i'm going to be there um i mean that's just it it's once you
00:25:11.960
get your head around that uh it's it's really a pretty pretty wild experience so yeah it's going
00:25:18.240
back to that sense of competency right that sense that i can handle whatever this situation is
00:25:22.420
i'm curious did that sense of mastery we would say like in your career as an emt and paramedic did
00:25:30.160
that carry over to other aspects of your life or was it very domain specific like you feel great and
00:25:35.400
confident when you're looking for toes and patching people up but when you're out with your wife at
00:25:40.480
home did was there carryover there yeah you know it's funny um it didn't initially i didn't have
00:25:47.920
that feeling you know because one i was new but two you know as the emt you are essentially
00:25:54.040
you're almost a glorified witness um and i don't mean that and anyone who is an emt you know i'm not
00:26:02.200
trying to knock anyone but anyone who's worked the job knows that ultimately the decisions all come
00:26:07.340
down to the paramedic so it isn't until you become an experienced paramedic and and have to make those
00:26:13.040
decisions by yourself and have to live with the consequences by yourself that you can really begin
00:26:18.200
to feel that level of confidence and like yeah i've got this and i can handle it so initially of
00:26:22.920
course you know just as an emt it wasn't there it was just you know it was just fun i just wanted to
00:26:27.400
be a part of as many things as i could possibly be a part of so that when i came out of paramedic
00:26:32.160
school you know i'd be ready to roll but when it did come and you know it did as i was had been
00:26:39.980
you know it's around the time i was finishing paramedic school i'd been at that point in the
00:26:43.600
job about a year and a half and i started to feel very confident because you know i'd done a bunch of
00:26:47.860
things and uh and yeah it does it comes into other aspects of your life because you begin to realize
00:26:53.560
okay one i can handle pressure uh two you know i'm not the kind of person who panics um i can deal
00:27:01.800
with multiple things at once ems is a lot like it's like trying to arm wrestle three different
00:27:06.220
people at once you just never have enough hands to get done everything that needs to get done
00:27:10.360
and so you have to know how to work really quickly how to multitask how to go from one thing to another
00:27:14.900
and you know you're opening packages with your teeth and you're moving things around with your feet
00:27:19.740
and you're grabbing and you're dropping and you're moving and meanwhile of course there's this
00:27:22.800
patient and you're in an ambulance that's moving 65 miles an hour down the highway you know if
00:27:28.120
you've ever stood up in a car or in a you know in any kind of vehicle you realize every time it turns
00:27:32.780
you go flying and so to learn how to do all that and and operate under that kind of uh that kind of
00:27:38.940
pressure and in an austere environment like that yeah it does huge things for your confidence and
00:27:45.400
you know you you just realize okay i can i can handle a lot more than i ever thought i was capable of
00:27:50.760
and you know that it'd be very hard i think for for that not to translate to other areas of your life
00:27:56.140
in the book you talk about there's different types of emts or paramedics you refer to one group as
00:28:01.840
tourists and the other as true believers what do you mean by that uh what made an emt a tourist and can
00:28:09.700
you give uh any notable examples from your career of tourists that you had worked with during your time
00:28:14.460
yeah and you see it a lot with with part-timers um but you know you see with all sorts of people
00:28:21.960
because ems is such a strange thing because you can do a few months of a night course and then go
00:28:29.020
and work somewhere it it attracts people who are doing other things with their lives and so you might
00:28:35.260
have a landscaper who just needs benefits and a full-time check because he doesn't do any work in
00:28:41.400
the winter i had a friend who was a sommelier and he was trying to get a business off the ground
00:28:45.760
and again he needed money and there were people like me who you know medicine was not a natural
00:28:53.420
calling for them but they found the world of ems to be very intriguing and exciting and fulfilling and
00:28:59.240
they went to it uh you know i had a one of my early partners um was a bodybuilder and he's a good
00:29:07.220
guy he was a good medic he'd been at it for a long time but really what he was and what how he
00:29:11.240
identified himself was not as a paramedic even though he'd been doing it for 20 years he identified
00:29:16.860
himself as a bodybuilder and he was a strange character who uh you know he i i never worked
00:29:24.320
with him when he was getting ready for a show but he you know he he was he worked out all the time and
00:29:31.540
you know he had all his protein shakes and all his muscle magazines and you know was always talking
00:29:37.860
about some philosophy and you know it's weird because there's a whole like you know uh questions
00:29:42.960
about which type of can is better natural tan or or a sunbed tan and and you know which oils really
00:29:50.640
accentuate your muscles the best and uh you know and he he was this enormous guy who put away a ton of
00:29:57.280
food and of course you know when he was getting ready for a show he'd you know he'd tear his diet
00:30:02.500
down and be you know and tons of diuretics and all that kind of stuff but on a normal basis he would
00:30:07.640
eat you know this ungodly amount of food because he was just so big uh but that's why he was there
00:30:12.300
you know he needed he needed the flexibility when he was getting ready to do a show to be able to
00:30:17.100
work less and work out more and you know he was kind of a perfect example of of what a tourist was
00:30:22.940
someone who was doing the job but it wasn't their primary focus were you a tourist for a while would
00:30:28.020
you describe yourself as a tourist yeah i i would i would because i was there for reasons that were
00:30:32.700
totally about me in the beginning you know and uh that's you know not something that i don't say that
00:30:39.780
with any great level of pride or embarrassment it's just it was just the way it was like i went there
00:30:44.700
um you know seeking something about myself as opposed to going there to be part of to be a you know
00:30:52.840
one step in in in the health care ladder i went you know i went there to you know sort of
00:30:58.400
seek all the things that that young men seek out in in life and uh it took me a while to realize that
00:31:06.540
it wasn't about me that that there were people on the other end of that you know on the other end of
00:31:12.520
the ambience there was someone whose life was you know theoretically hanging in the balance and and i was
00:31:18.760
there to take care of them and once i kind of focused less on myself and more on the patient
00:31:24.060
i found that i had this natural um ability for the job that i was i was to my surprise i was a very
00:31:33.000
good medic and to my surprise i was very patient and i kind of surprised myself with how caring i could
00:31:38.480
be these are you know aren't things that in your early 20s you would normally characterize yourself as
00:31:43.420
you know and uh it brought out a lot of great things in me that i never realized were there
00:31:47.520
so i think you mentioned a part in your book where your wife were walking you and your wife were
00:31:53.340
walking out in public and you saw someone a homeless person that you had treated frequently
00:31:57.060
and your wife even noticed that you had become kinder and more yeah and i know i think there are a lot
00:32:02.740
of things that are in us all the time um you know just like the ability to handle pressure
00:32:07.400
it's like i learned it through this job it's either in you or it isn't there are plenty of people
00:32:12.580
who do the job who can handle pressure and you can see it you see them break down and everybody knows
00:32:17.620
it and you know there's a sort of black mark over their name where we all say oh boy don't work with
00:32:22.320
him you know he's gonna he's gonna panic when it comes down to it uh and yeah that that you know
00:32:27.880
that compassion and that empathy was something that the job brought out and you know that particular
00:32:33.120
case you're referring to is a woman uh that we ran all the time who you know essentially she you know
00:32:40.300
there are a lot of people like this where she had massive substance abuse issues but they were
00:32:46.660
part of that was was a long and um untreated psychological history and and she had some
00:32:54.520
pretty serious mental issues and and because she didn't have any kind of support system she wound up
00:33:00.020
on the streets and and you know being in the streets is a place where people tend to get into
00:33:04.640
prostitution and drugs and and that's really what she was i mean you know to to the average person
00:33:09.640
walking down the street she you would just say well this is just a crack whore um and that's kind of
00:33:15.320
how she described herself but she was she was a good person and we used to joke and laugh and i picked
00:33:20.260
her up quite a bit and she got to know me she got to know my wife or at least by name and so yeah one
00:33:26.400
day we were tailgating at a football game and uh and i see her picking through the trash and it was
00:33:31.620
this weird moment it wasn't that often that my professional personal life uh lives collided like that
00:33:38.640
but there was the prime example of it and there she was and so i stopped and uh i said hey what's
00:33:44.900
going on she came right over and you know gave me this hug and you know my friends are kind of they
00:33:49.600
know me at this point they know they've heard all the stories so they're sort of staring trying to
00:33:53.140
figure out who who is this person who's the you know which which of the stories have we heard
00:33:57.140
um is she a part of and and and she sees my wife and instantly says oh you know it starts talking to
00:34:03.380
her and knows her by name and knows all these things about her and uh and then she sort of
00:34:09.300
she she takes my wife by hand and says come on i want you to meet my boyfriend and you know
00:34:13.560
sabrina looks at me and i was like well this you know probably not safe and i a friend of mine
00:34:18.160
was standing there who worked with me a really uh a very big guy and he was like i'll walk with her
00:34:23.220
and so they walk sort of across the field and um she meets you know introduces my wife to her
00:34:29.480
boyfriend which is ultimately just her pimp and and the guy sort of looks at my wife and says uh
00:34:33.940
smiles at her and says you know holler at me if you ever want to make some money because with a mask
00:34:37.540
like that we can we can make things happen and she was very you know sort of an eye-opening experience
00:34:44.020
for my wife of course um but that was kind of a day in the life for me and you spent so much time
00:34:48.800
dealing with people like that and in really dangerous neighborhoods and bad areas and that was
00:34:53.700
just sort of the you know um your clientele so to speak and uh you know she was just surprised by
00:35:01.160
i think that the degree to which i sort of accepted those people without judgment but
00:35:07.300
you know i think that's part of the job as part of what would make you a good medic
00:35:11.780
that's really there's a really poignant moment uh in the book you and your wife go to new york city
00:35:18.800
to go to the 9-11 memorial and there were discounts for police firemen military first responders but
00:35:25.560
there weren't any for paramedics or emt even though that you point out during in your book that during
00:35:30.840
the 9-11 tax 43 emts and medics died trying to rescue people i think that speaks to a larger topic
00:35:37.940
of why emts or paramedics don't get the same sort of respect as other first responders do uh there are
00:35:44.620
the people these are the people like i said earlier that when it's 22 o'clock in the morning and
00:35:48.240
grandma's having a stroke they're often the ones who get there first yeah and ultimately they're
00:35:53.860
the ones who you know the ambulance is where a life is saved or not you know nobody nobody goes to
00:35:58.900
hospital by fire truck you know it's just not the way it works it's paramedics and emts are the ones
00:36:03.980
who who do that um you know i think there's several reasons for it first is that the paramedic the field
00:36:11.420
you know the title paramedic did not exist until the late 60s and they didn't exist in practice until
00:36:16.880
about 1970 and since then it's been sort of a strange road where people have been trying to
00:36:22.900
figure out you know what the field is and how to use it best and and so there's it's kind of new and
00:36:28.520
you know it's a bit misunderstood and and not always properly used by the cities then there's the fact
00:36:35.040
that it's medicine you know and you know people have a fear of doctors and would rather not even think
00:36:39.780
about that um you know and of course firefighters and police even even as much you know trouble as
00:36:47.040
police find themselves in today they still occupy rarefied air in american society and firefighters
00:36:53.840
as well and uh you know even though you know in commercials you see them joke about you know
00:36:58.760
firefighters rescuing a cat from a tree there's still nobody who you know a fire engine goes by in a
00:37:04.980
parade and you know people wave and and and they they there it's implicit immediately in that
00:37:10.760
interaction between the parade and all these things that we we revere and the fire engine you you get
00:37:16.120
it you know that is a part of of these people are there to save us should their house burn but that
00:37:21.220
recognition doesn't exist when you see an ambulance it's just it's just this other thing and uh you know
00:37:27.100
it's never been portrayed i don't think the correct way in popular culture and if you imagine
00:37:30.780
if you think about when you see an ambulance in a movie it's at the end right when bruce willis's
00:37:36.620
partner is badly burned and shot in the stomach and half dead and you know but bruce has saved the
00:37:41.680
day and these two faceless medics jump out in their little white cloaks and they load bruce willis's
00:37:48.320
partner into the back of the ambulance and then of course you know bruce has to double tap the doors
00:37:52.860
to say hey guys you can drive off now you know i give you my blessing as if they're too dumb to even
00:37:57.300
know when to drive away uh and that's kind of the only way they're really ever portrayed and um
00:38:03.440
there's it's just generally speaking i think we have sort of looked past it we try not to focus on
00:38:08.720
it for i think all those reasons has there been any uh popular television shows about paramedics
00:38:14.460
yeah there was a show in the 70s and frankly this is what created a big boom in this field because
00:38:20.820
you figure 69 jacksonville florida's first city to really figure out how to use a paramedic
00:38:26.600
and then other cities start using that model through the early 70s but of course you know
00:38:30.960
you got to devote some budget to it so it was slow happening but in the mid to late 70s this show
00:38:37.440
called emergency came on and it was about this group of of this pair of paramedics working in la
00:38:43.200
and that you talk to people who were in their 40s and 50s about how they got into ems they will tell
00:38:50.200
it was that show and you know it was essentially an ems version of dragnet these two guys um going out
00:38:58.680
you know working hard doing everything they can to try to save lives and get things done
00:39:03.740
you know it was sort of you know perfectly fit the era um but it also certainly glorified the field but
00:39:11.720
that's the only thing that's ever existed and you know as the world has become more complicated and
00:39:17.920
more accepting of complicated stories the uh ems is sort of the one thing that has never been given
00:39:23.520
that that treatment you know that we're the humor of it all the darkness and the sort of cohen
00:39:29.860
brothers side of of our story has never been told and of course that was a big part of why i wanted to
00:39:35.220
write the book yeah as i was reading the book uh that's what i thought i thought this would make a
00:39:39.680
great tv show like the wire for paramedics or something yeah law and order to disagree with that
00:39:45.580
you know it's you you see that sort of um you know you kind of see that version of it all the time i
00:39:52.680
mean you know if you look at essentially what the sopranos did to the mob story i mean they
00:39:57.680
they de-glorified it you know there's the godfather on the one end which is you know impossible to even
00:40:04.120
imagine ever existed in any way um you know but that's sort of how it was portrayed in a lot of cases and
00:40:10.080
the sopranos comes along it gives you a much more flawed you know uh look at it where you know this
00:40:16.720
mob boss is you know practically scared of his own shadow and has so many issues um and i feel like
00:40:23.140
there's you know the time is right for for the ems version of that to show what it is really like
00:40:29.300
so you did this job for 10 years right i did 10 years yeah yeah i mean it's it's the schedule's
00:40:35.460
grueling you saw carnage on a regular basis the people you dealt with uh you talk about in your
00:40:40.480
book they're often very difficult sometimes you had to fight with people physically who you're
00:40:44.300
trying to rescue often physically a lot of times emotionally exhausting so what kept you going
00:40:50.100
you know why did you stay so long because you talk about in the in the book a lot of people are
00:40:54.760
in it for a little bit and then they're out but why did you stay so long yeah yeah you know
00:41:00.180
they're sort of a there are a couple factors but i think they all boil down to the same thing
00:41:05.780
um a lot of people leave and come back and they say well you know i just missed it you know i missed
00:41:09.800
being part of medicine and i missed you know being here and um but you know you can work medicine
00:41:15.060
anywhere else in any other brand of medicine and be paid a lot more for it than you do in ems and i
00:41:19.800
i think that there are a couple things that really keep people rooted in the field and one is a bond that
00:41:26.340
you have between the person you work with um i was actually emailing back and forth this morning
00:41:30.720
with it with a guy that i haven't seen in years who's an old partner of mine and the affection that
00:41:36.260
we have for each other is to be to be difficult to understand um for someone who's never done it you
00:41:41.760
know you you find yourself in a situation and this guy in particular is a perfect example he and i get
00:41:46.800
called out late at night horrible part of town for this girl who's been injured and we get to the
00:41:52.820
door and there's 25 30 people in a room and they are drunk and they are fired up and then come these
00:41:58.560
two guys and they look at us and you know we don't look like them we don't come from their world
00:42:03.260
and they immediately get angry with us and the situation gets violent and thankfully he was a big
00:42:08.760
enough guy to be able to stand up and and you know calm them down with his physical presence
00:42:14.200
um but he we had multiple instances where we had to you know fight patients and we're wrestling
00:42:19.700
around with people and you know you you have that moment um where you get called out to someone
00:42:26.040
and the guy gets violent and you are fighting with him and his family is yelling at you and people are
00:42:31.660
jumping in and some neighbor saying i'm going to go and call the police and or i'm going to go and get
00:42:35.480
a gun and you know the cops are there and it's just mad scene and you're trying to just get this
00:42:41.360
guy to all you want to do is help this guy get him to the hospital but you wound up in a full-blown
00:42:44.720
fistfight with him and you got him on your stretcher and you got him tied down and you are sweaty
00:42:49.220
and your clothes are ripped and you've got scratch marks on your face and you're exhausted and you
00:42:55.060
just sort of look at each other and smile there's this little moment of a of a smirk at you that
00:43:00.740
passes like i can't believe that just happened and damn we did it again and um and that sort of
00:43:10.360
you know being in that situation over and over again having to rely so heavily on somebody
00:43:14.780
it it creates a strange bond you know then for the 40 minutes or so that it takes to run a call
00:43:19.700
that other person is the only person in your universe you know your partner is the only other
00:43:24.520
resource that you have and you know there are a lot of dangerous situations a lot of difficult
00:43:30.360
situations there are a lot of times where you know you have the ability to save someone's life but
00:43:36.600
you need your partner to help you and and when they do and the two of you are able to work together
00:43:41.420
to save somebody and and they come through at that exact moment you need them to come through
00:43:46.220
and do their end of the job perfectly you just you get it just creates an incredible bond and and that
00:43:55.040
is is really a big part of it the friendships that we have and how tight we are with one another
00:43:59.340
even though how hard we are on with one another and you know there's pc does not exist there and uh
00:44:05.380
the things people say to each other you know it the humor is very dark and very you know very
00:44:10.360
aggressive um so that's a huge huge part of it and of course the other thing is that working in
00:44:16.320
that in that field and sitting out on a friday night when the weather is nice and you're in this bad
00:44:21.940
part of town and you hear the distant pop pop of a gun and and there are people walking around and
00:44:27.780
they're kind of you know drug dealers communicate with this sort of almost like a cat call bird call
00:44:33.200
whoop whoop to each other and um and you're you're parked in this vacant lot and you're just
00:44:40.200
watching all this go on around you and you know that whatever happens tonight and you can just tell
00:44:44.280
it's going to be a crazy night that you and your partner are going to be called out to it there's a
00:44:48.840
i mean that's just a i mean it's just a fun it's an exciting job and so those moments um you know go a
00:44:56.180
long way and they really you know even in the the boring times when it's raining and you're just running
00:45:01.480
nothing but nothing and uh you know you remember those exciting moments and it's those i think
00:45:07.080
those things come together that the incredible bond and then the highs that you have when the job is
00:45:12.440
really good uh i don't you know i think you know that once you leave you aren't going to get those
00:45:17.420
back you did leave eventually uh do you miss it um i i my career i think ran its course so i don't
00:45:27.380
miss the job but i do miss those two aspects i do more than anything i miss that close relationship
00:45:33.640
to have with those people of showing up at work and finding out that someone you really like you
00:45:37.720
get along with really well is going to be your partner that night and knowing man this is going
00:45:42.200
to be a great night i'm right away and getting in the ambison too you just start talking and goofing
00:45:46.540
around and and you know and and especially the those those exciting times those really those great
00:45:53.620
calls that you you love to run where you they're really hard but you you know you get it done
00:45:58.140
it'd be hard not to to say you don't miss that um but it's it's such a strange thing you know once
00:46:04.580
you get out of it you realize very quickly that you know i'm not at the level i you know it's sort
00:46:09.520
of like a fighter that stops training you you get out of fighting shape very quickly and um it's not
00:46:14.680
like i could hop on an ambulance tonight and do that do that job i you know i'm no longer in that
00:46:19.940
condition hey kevin this has been a really fascinating discussion where can people learn
00:46:23.600
more about you and your book uh there's a website kevinhazard.com and uh there's stuff there's you
00:46:30.960
know some some things that didn't make the book there are some pictures and reviews and and links
00:46:35.520
to places that uh that you can buy the book kevin hazard thank you so much for your time it's been a
00:46:40.100
pleasure thank you i really appreciate it my guest today was kevin hazard he's the author of the book
00:46:44.800
a thousand naked strangers you can find it on amazon.com go check it out it's uh really poignant
00:46:50.360
graphic detailed and also there's points where it's just laugh out loud hilarious you can find
00:46:55.880
more information about kevin's work at kevinhazard.com and that's hazard with two z's and also you can
00:47:01.880
check the show notes for this podcast at aom.is slash hazard well that wraps up another edition of
00:47:10.080
the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness
00:47:14.300
website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy this podcast and have gotten something out of it
00:47:18.680
really appreciate it if you take a few minutes to give us a review on itunes or stitcher that
00:47:22.660
really helps our show out and gets the word out about it as always appreciate the support
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and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly