Submitted photo

Boating accidents, car pile-ups, race-car crashes and … a man stuck in a silo?

Be it a life-threatening situation or a quick fix, three UW-Eau Claire students see it all.

Seniors Meg Wertjes and Jessie McCarty, EMTs, and non-traditional freshman Adam Rumphol, a paramedic, began working in the health field several years ago and have collectively assisted in thousands of 911 emergency calls.

“I fell madly and deeply in love with it.”
The best EMT call Wertjes ever went on involved a man who got his finger stuck in a pellet-loading machine.

“We get to this house . and there’s this man sitting in the snow bank with this giant metal contraption between his legs,” she said. “He said, ‘I think this finger’s stuck.’ He’s just sitting there calm as can be, and his wife is hyperventilating and getting ready to pass out over it all.”

Wertjes said she really didn’t see the humor in it at the time, but once she and the other EMTs got back in the ambulance, they laughed all the way home.

“We were like ‘We did not just do that, did we?’ ” she said.

Wertjes is a nursing student at UW-Eau Claire’s School of Nursing Marshfield site in St. Joseph’s Hospital and became an EMT three years ago.

Licensed since she was 18, Wertjes said she has tended to more than 300 calls.

“I fell madly and deeply in love with it,” she said. “It’s kind of put me on the path for the rest of my life.”

When she is on call in her hometown, she is required to wear a “big, ugly, honking, heavy-duty pager.”

Then, when she’s needed, she must go to the station, get the patient’s address and a small summary of what is going on.

After she warms up the ambulance and pulls out the equipment, she and two or three other EMTs head out, usually quickly trying to figure out where exactly they are going with a map in the backseat.

Upon arrival, they assess the area, making sure it is safe.

“Most of them are ‘Grandma doesn’t feel good,’ or a taxi service with vitals, but you get interesting calls,” she said.

People’s stories about how things happen are amusing, because there are times when she knows they are lying to her, she said.

“It’s not our job to pull the truth out of them, but afterwards it’s like ‘Did they honestly think we bought that?’ ”

But with the sometimes-humorous calls comes the life-and-death ones.

She said she’s dealt with a lot of code calls, meaning a person doesn’t have a pulse and is essentially dead.

“For many of them it’s not really a question of if they’re going to live or die. They’re already dead. They’ve been gone so long, nothing you’re going to do is helping,” Wertjes said.

But she said she never questions why she does it.

“I do love it. You feel sad for that person, but you didn’t know that person,” she said. “You have that empathy, but at the same time it’s really hard to connect with somebody you never knew.”

She said she probably sees about four or five deaths every year, and just when she thinks she can’t see one more, she has a good call.

“And you’re like, ‘Yeah, this is why I do it,’ ” she said.

When Wertjes isn’t on call as an EMT, she works in the emergency room in St. Joseph’s Hospital in Marshfield, an experience she said is fascinating because she is able to see what happens from the time the EMTs arrive on the scene all the way to the hospital.

But if she is on call as EMT, she just turns over the patient to the hospital, files her paperwork, cleans her rig and goes home.

Upon graduation in May, she said she plans to work in a Madison hospital.

Close family friend and colleague Jim Rattunde of Necedah, Wis., said Wertjes’ work continues to impress him.

“She’s a gal that’s lit up. She’s got a fire going. She has a lot of enthusiasm,” he said. “She’s extremely intelligent and she’s a take-charge person . which is what most good EMTs are.”

“I try to keep my emotions separate, but it’s hard at times.”
Just before Christmas, Rumphol was faced with the hardest task he ever had to perform as a paramedic: telling a child his mother died.

“He cried and wanted a hug. I comforted him as best I could until his grandma was able to come and help him, and I answered his questions,” Rumphol said. “I try to keep my emotions separate, but it’s hard at times.”

For the past seven years, 27-year-old Rumphol has been a paramedic at Mayo Clinic Medical Transport, and has since attended to thousands of emergencies.

With a degree from Chippewa Valley Technical College already, he is currently working on a nursing degree and is on call twice every week, taking 24-hour shifts at a time.

Unlike Wertjes and McCarty, Rumphol is a paramedic, meaning he can perform more procedures and administer more medication.

He said usually the calls are not as serious as the one involving the young boy, recalling one incident where a man got caught in a silo.

But he did say he has seen his fair share of tragedy.

A man crashed his drag-racing car into the guardrail going 180 mph at Rock Falls Raceway a few years ago, and Rumphol wasn’t able to save him, he said.

While he said it is horrible when he can’t save someone, paramedics have to keep their emotions separate.

“I don’t know that individual. It sucks that they died. It’s sad that they died, and I know that they have family that cared,” he said. “We’ll go back and talk about what we did. That’s kind of our way of grieving.”

Rumphol said one case really tugged at his heartstrings, though.

“I ended up doing CPR on an infant,” he said. “That’s the only call that’s ever really gotten to me.”

That being said, he said it’s always difficult telling the loved ones about the death.

“It’s not an easy thing to do,” he said. “It’s a subject that you have to approach with a lot of care, compassion and kindness. You have to be able to explain what happened.”

Although it’s difficult, he said he likes the variety and the challenge.

“That’s probably what keeps me going.”

“Our patients . were just laughing at us, because it was just really disgusting.”
It was 105 degrees outside, but that didn’t matter when McCarty responded to a three-car accident.

For safety reasons, EMTs are required to wear their heavy fire gear, making for an unforgettable experience, she said.

“I just remember being out there and I had my gloves on. They were just so sweaty you can’t even do anything,” she said. “I was just thinking, ‘Oh my God! I don’t know if I should do this with my life!’ ”

It turned out the patients weren’t seriously injured, so they were amused by the trouble McCarty and the other EMTs were having.

“They were just laughing at us, because it was just really disgusting,” McCarty said. “You lean over them and you have sweat dripping over them.”

McCarty became a certified EMT at 17, when she took the year-long course.

During this course, she said she learned the basic assessment skills, medication techniques, how to administer tubes and backboard splints and write hospital reports.

McCarty works in the Luther Hospital emergency room in Eau Claire as an EMT and also does ambulance duty in her hometown, Cambellsport, Wis., a small community.

And she said there are both positives and negatives to that.

“You know the family, but at the same time I think it helps the family, because they know (you) . and they respect you,” she said.

The cases involving children and infants are the most difficult, she said, especially when their parents are standing by watching.

“Because you’re the help that’s finally there, but I think it’s more difficult when the parents realize that there’s not that much you can do,” she said. “I think it’s good for the family to be there, but you get stuck in your little EMT bubble . once you realize the impact that this could have on everyone that’s standing there watching you is kind of hard.”

McCarty said her first EMT experience was when she was 16 years old during a ride-along – a call where the patient died at home in his chair with his two daughters by his side.

The EMTs and paramedics she rode with worried McCarty was going to be too emotional, she said.

“You don’t know how you’re going to react your first time,” she said. “I remember it being hard, but I was kind of surprised by how not emotional I was . You have to learn that it’s part of your job. You did all you can do.”