Mark Belchamber wrote a book to help him deal with the dark side of the job.
From the mean streets of London to the quirky but equally stressful roads of Taranaki, Mark Belchamber has seen it all.
”You’re consistently surprised by how awful something will be, but you’re also consistently surprised by how miraculous some things can be,” he said.
Like anyone who works in emergencyservices, Mark has many interesting stories to tell, and some that still haunt him.
”I vividly remember a lady in London, she called us because she was due to give birth and had birthing pains. She was walking out of the front flat with her bags towards the ambulance and then she stopped and pulled her pants down.
“I thought ‘Okay, bizarre but let’s work with it’. There was a splash and I thought her waters have broken and then there was a cry and I thought ‘that’s the baby!’” We had to very quickly bundle up this little thing which had thankfully been caught inside this lady’s pants.”
Mark and his family moved to Taranaki, where he continued as a paramedic, but the new location was not enough to subdue the trauma he had faced.
He took 18 months off work and wrote a book on his experiences called The Guts of It, in an effort to get his feelings out of him.
”It was part of the healing process,” Mark said.
“I went to a very dark place. It took me 18 months or so, to recover back to a place where I could go back to work helpfully.
”PTSD is nasty. You can recover from it, but it’s always there in the background and you have to learn to live with it.”
Paramedic territory manager for Taranaki, Megan Stewart, didn’t expect Mark to return to work.
”Our job’s a privileged role, but with that comes a toll,” she said. ”We have so many services – collegial support, clinical support, debriefing, defusing, member assistance programme – through to our psychological team and also our health, safety and wellness space.
“But the key is the person needs to put their hand up, and know that it’s okay to say that they’ve got some challenges and they might need a bit of assistance.”
Back on the job in Taranaki, Mark’s work stories have a different flavour to them.
”I had a colleague who was an hour out of town and his closest mode of transport was the horse he was riding on!
