– It is said that human life has no price, but it costs three thousand zlotys a day for an ambulance to work. An ambulance makes an average of ten trips, so the price for a human life is PLN 300 – says Paweł Reszka and describes the medical world again, this time in the book “Little Gods 2. How Poles Die”. Zuzanna Opolska talks to the author.
- Paweł Reszka is the author of the famous book “Little Gods”, in which he described the world of Polish hospitals. To gather material for the book, he hired a paramedic.
- “Little gods 2. How do Poles die?” talks not only about the lame system of Polish health care, but also about the work of rescuers and patients, as well as their families and homes
Zuzanna Opolska: “Little Gods” got the second part. Have you been bitten by your conscience that you have stripped the “gods in white coats”?
Paweł Reszka: I have stripped away not so much the “white-coated gods” as a system that turns empathy into desensitization. The response from the doctors was positive and I still have contact with most of the heroes. I think that those who did not read my book were offended the most.
I do not believe that nobody wrote: Reszka I will get you in the ward …
From where! I repeat: doctors accepted my book positively. Some thanked them, others wanted to tell their own part of the story. These were confessions full of fear, resignation, and less hope. I felt their letters had potential, just didn’t know how to enter the same river a second time.
Have you decided to come back in an orange uniform?
Lifeguards allowed me to ride with me in the ambulance. “Little gods 2. How do Poles die?” is a different report for two reasons. First, I was not incognito – all members of the rescue team knew who I was. Secondly, my book is not only about the system, but about society. I watched the paramedics work closely, I entered patients’ homes, I watched their families.
Impressions not the best… Dirt, poverty, bugs?
I knew that such houses exist, but if you visit several places in one night and everything is not right, the scale of social problems scares you, sometimes knocks you out.
Is it really so that every rescuer has a characteristic GPS in his head? In this block of flats lives a heart attacker, and in that tenement house a female boxer …
Yes, each ambulance operates in a specific area that rescuers know inside out. The map carved in their heads is not limited to the addresses of patients only, but the locations of the events. I could hear who died at this roundabout and who died at that corner.
This time, not only the doctor is small, but also the patient – what shocked you the most?
Probably insensitivity to relatives. Christmas and holiday grandmothers, which are more conveniently placed in the hospital. Besides, loneliness. You come to an eighty-year-old lady who, apart from her neighbors, has no one and is not at all guilty of being alone. She just did not get married, and the rest of the family has already said goodbye to this world. You look at her furniture, photos, great books that she read recently and you don’t understand …
The description of the old woman’s apartment, which the son visited through the door frame, is terrifying …
And in her apartment, onions, carrots and celery were taking root. It seems that people cannot and should not live like this, but it does. Anyway, I do not know which is worse: whether inhuman conditions or seemingly normal houses torn from the inside. Through alcohol, drugs, violence. You go inside and you don’t know what for? What to do with a young drug addict, daughter and mother who wants to turn on the gas and blow up the entire block? Should I leave it, take it to a psychiatrist or give her relanium which will bring relief? If he gets a roll, he will always call an ambulance when he is hungry …
There are many deadlocks in your book… Do you already know what our society is suffering from?
Poverty, drunkenness, loneliness, lack of tenderness, lack of prospects, hopelessness. Plus an inefficient system in which the emergency service is the last resort in the social sphere. Whenever there is no better alternative, you can call an ambulance. Dispatchers are like “omnivorous birds that swallow anything.” Nobody will risk for three thousand zlotys a month: “Will he not send an ambulance to someone in need? Will there be TV and the prosecutor in the morning? Fuck! They want an ambulance, so I send her. It’s actually quite rational.
And the ambulance goes with a patient that nobody wants to see …
Yes, because the SOR (Hospital Emergency Department) is not a lonely person care unit, but a unit providing help to people in states of sudden health emergency. So you have to figure out how to get a patient married. Even so, there were some touching moments.
For example?
I was walking into the “Nursing Home,” a former brothel that smelled not of cheap perfume, but of urine. A real dying house – two nurses, a ghost doctor, grandparents and grandmothers like sprats arranged on narrow beds. Among them, our summons – a 76-year-old grandmother with a mouth brown with a mushroom. It is known that we should not take her to the hospital, but leaving her in the nightmarish “Nursing Home” is actually a crime. And the team principal says, “Okay, we’re taking it. We’ll get her into the hospital somehow. ‘ Cool!
Townsmen have a problem with accepting old age?
That’s what my team members thought. In the countryside, death is treated as the natural course of things. Families prefer a relative to die at home, and calling an ambulance is a last resort. In the city, you hear a short one much more often: please take it. Even when you explain that you most likely won’t be taking your grandma or grandpa to the hospital. Even when you explain that he will give his life to the sounds of a creaking bed and shouting of the attendant: “let it move”.
One of the heroes of your book says that Patryk Vega’s Botox is no SF. This is what the Polish ambulance looks like?
Many scenes from Vega’s film are authentic, but let’s not forget that Botoks shows the reality of the 90’s. Besides, it is not a document, but a fictional film that must redraw reality. Today, an ambulance service is no longer a place for professional or medical exiles. This is where enthusiasts go – a lifeguard is trained for three years, and an emergency medicine doctor – thirteen.
So what about Vega’s movie happened in real life? Sex with a dog?
This is a legend of the Warsaw ambulance service. The breed is correct – German Shepherd.
Wasn’t “Skin Hunters” a top secret?
Such was my relationship. Necrobusiness was not limited to Łódź and many people knew about trade, but there was a conspiracy of silence. Nobody wanted to expose themselves to infamy.
Grandparents and grandmothers, seeing the paramedics, still cry out: Just don’t give me a pawulon?
No, the “case of skins” has already died down and the ambulance service has a good record.
And the thefts?
In each professional group we find less and more honest. About ten people have passed through my teams, and I don’t think anyone has had a similar thought. If you ask me: can this happen? That’s it – earnings are small, the community is large, and the temptation is huge. Imagine entering a house with a lonely 90-year-old man and a pile of dollars on the table. Opportunity makes a thief.
In the “list it happens but shouldn’t” there is still irritation …
If you break up with an aggressive drunk several times during one shift, you will be damned. You were supposed to save a human life, and not put people on their feet like a spade. With time, you start to wonder what did you need six years of study, internship and residency for? Some people get on their nerves and use tricks …
Including the so-called resurrection, that is, putting the shoe on the little toe. Must hurt?
Do you want to know if I condemn it? I think journalists are not from condemnation, but from observing and describing reality.
How about filling out cards? What to do to prevent the patient from consenting to being transported to the hospital?
The interview can be conducted so that the patient will prefer to stay at home. Actually, if a guy is addicted to drinking water, why drive him to the hospital. That he would poison him and start drinking again? If he wants to be healthy, he has to give up alcohol and the paramedic will not help him. He can help himself, but he doesn’t seem to want to. Similarly, you can conduct an interview so that the patient does not go to the family doctor, but called the ambulance: “You will say that it hurts in the sternum, they will come, take you to the Emergency Room, you will have all the examinations done in 24 hours, without queuing”. Such tricks.
Working in an ambulance hardens?
It definitely leaves a mark on the psyche, after all, you face death every day and look at things that nobody wants to see. Contrary to what we think, under the orange jumpsuit there are no cyborgs, but ordinary people. Left to fend for themselves. Nobody asks them how they are doing, but whether they turn up for the next shift. From the reporter’s point of view, it was the peeling of the cuticles that was the most interesting.
Did you manage to find out about their private lives?
I did not ask about it, and there was hardly any talk about it at the station. But I remember one conversation. The paramedic told what it was like to refrain from resuscitation of the patient in the presence of his relatives. Tell them “it’s over.” The lifeguard said it was difficult, but they try not to take it home. Then he added, “Sometimes we just don’t have a home. So the only animal I can buy is a snake, because it is rarely fed, the dog will die. When I had my first longer vacation, 3 days was ok, it was fun, but then I was already wearing me. I have a friend who went with his girlfriend to Croatia, they were supposed to be there for two weeks. The first longer vacation in 10 years. After 4 days he cleaned the whole house, then he packed up and said that he was coming back, that someone might be able to offer him on duty ”.
Lifeguards work around the clock, and when they are not working, they feel bad. Did you feel a lack of adrenaline after finishing the book?
I have no shortage of emotions in my life, but if I could go back in time, I don’t know if I would choose emergency medicine.
At the beginning of “Little Gods 2” you ask a few questions – how does it feel to turn someone off the road to the other world?
You definitely feel like a better person. On the one hand, for a moment you hover a few centimeters above the ground, on the other hand you are pissed off that the rest of the world does not understand it.
And what is it like to fail or fail?
It’s sad. Saving a life is a brutal process that dehumanizes in a way.
Man becomes a “chicken” and an ambulance a “bustle”?
I have described my own impressions. The patient is naked, livid, intubated, and strangers are standing over him. He doesn’t look like yesterday, he doesn’t even look like today.
What about the faces of those who have passed away? They go home with rescuers, do they dream at night?
I did not ask the rescuers such a question, but it seems to me that the traumatic memory must come back. If for the third time you hear a story about a bride fastened in a corset, which colleagues do not want to cut, but solve. Because it can be sold, and young people usually need every penny. Or it is a souvenir that can be shown to children … And it turns out that it does not work – she dies, the groom hangs a month later. On the one hand, it is difficult to forget, on the other hand, it is difficult to remember.
Could you fall asleep after the night shifts?
I can fall asleep easily, but a few stories will stay with me for a long time.
So, what’s now? Maybe you will play the role of a patient?
I guess I’d rather not, but maybe it’s an idea.
«Little Gods 2. How Poles Die» Paweł Reszka, Wydawnictwo Czerwony i Czarne, 2018