By Beth Smith
The Gleaner
HENDERSON, Ky. — Nearly 40 years ago when Henderson County resident Steve Wring stepped into an ambulance for the first time, the idea of a hospital-operated service was a new one — at least here.
“The ambulances were run by the funeral homes,” said Wring, a 37-year-veteran of the Henderson Ambulance Service. “At first, they were having one EMT on an ambulance. But the state came down and said you have to have two EMTs.
“At that point, the funeral homes said they didn’t want to do that,” Wring said. “They didn’t want to pay two people to run an ambulance. At that time, they were racing down the road to see whoever was going to get there first. Because whoever got there first, usually got to do the funeral.”
Wring, chief paramedic and shift supervisor, and another longtime veteran of the service, Walt McPherson, recently retired from the Henderson Ambulance Service. McPherson served as an EMT/Paramedic for 22 years. He was unavailable for comment.
Thirty-seven years after the fact, Wring will tell you that he hadn’t planned to spend his life as an EMT/Paramedic. And he certainly hadn’t planned to be one of the first of that kind in Henderson County.
However, during the transition from the funeral-home based service to a hospital-operated service, Wring had an encounter which he said set him on the path to a lengthy and satisfying career.
“I wanted a job where I was working with people and helping people,” he said. “One day I picked up a hitchhiker. I’ve never seen that guy since. (The hitchhiker) said, ‘What about the hospital? They’re starting an EMT service.’ ”
“When I went up to interview with Neil Kellen, he asked me what do you think an EMT is? I said, ‘Isn’t that what Gage and DeSoto do (from the television series Emergency!)? He laughed ... and I thought, ‘Well I’ll never see this job.’ But before I knew it, I was called up to work.”
“The first day was April 25, 1977. That’s how old the service is (in Henderson). It’s 37 years old. There were probably around 16 of us. Four people for each shift” and four ambulances, Wring said. Now the county has six ambulances.
“There’s been a whole lot of learning going on” and more training since the funeral homes ran the EMS service, he said.
Before the hospital took over, the funeral home EMTs could provide only very basic help to sick or injured people.
“They would literally just pick the patient off the ground, put them on a cot, put them in the ambulance and take off with them,” Wring said. “That’s all they did. At that point, if a patient had a bleed, (the funeral home EMTs) put something on it and tied it down or if someone had a broken leg, you left it alone until a doctor could look at it.”
Over the last 37 years, he said, medicines, medical techniques and procedures have changed dramatically.
In 1977, “We didn’t wear gloves,” Wring said. “We didn’t even worry about masks when we did CPR, mouth to mouth.”
“Procedures began to change in the late ‘80s and training changed with more education about contagions,” he said. “We started wearing gloves and a mouth piece for CPR. It took me awhile to get into the habit of putting the gloves on.
“I can remember days when we’d come into the ER with a trauma (patient). We’d have blood all over our face/hands from giving CPR and we’d come into the ER and after getting the patient set up a nurse would tell us to go get ourselves cleaned up.”
“I never really thought about it until they wanted us to use gloves and masks. I thought, ‘How much of that did I take home?’ ”
“I never was really sick except for colds, but how much of that did I take home to my kids?” Wring said.
Equipment may change, and procedures may change. But one fact that doesn’t, is that EMTs and paramedics see and experience things which to the rest of us are unimaginable.
Two situations Wring said he will never forget occurred during his first months on the ambulance.
“Two of the really bad ones were when I first started,” he said. “The first one was an old wino in Corydon. He was in a shack, and it was burning. The firemen and rescuers kicked the door in and were putting the fire out. They didn’t realize there was someone in there.
“There were all these flames inside the building, and they noticed some green flames. And the man is laying on the couch, and he is burning green flames because he had so much alcohol in him. That’s how they found him,” Wring said.
“You’ve heard of third-degree burns. He was to the point of fourth-degree burns. I’m talking about cooked muscles and charred bones,” Wring said. “He was still alive. They wrapped him up in a wool blanket. They didn’t know any better at the time. That’s how they pulled him out. When we opened him up, that wool blanket” was pulling skin off. “I can remember that.”
After medical personnel put the man in the ambulance, he struggled to get up and out of the vehicle, Wring said. “He didn’t have any pain because all the pain receptors were burned. He didn’t know he was burned. He couldn’t see because his eyes were burned. All he wanted was to go find his wine bottle.”
The man lived two weeks after the fire. He died from suffocating due to a mucus plug in his lungs, Wring said.
The second incident which Wring said he will never forget involved a young girl who was dying from colon cancer.
“It took me five years before I could talk about it,” he said. "(The girl) looked about six, but she was really 12. She had colon cancer. It was stage IV. I’m back there (in the back of the ambulance) and I’m thinking, ‘This little child needs her mother back here.’ ”
“I hollered up front that this baby was dying and mom needs to be back here. Well mom didn’t want to be back there. She was in denial,” Wring said. “The little girl looks at me and said, ‘Just hold me.’ So I sat on the cot and held her. And she’s dying and I’m sitting there holding her and I’m thinking, This ought to be mom and dad back here for her last moments.'And she died.’”
“That one, I almost quit over that one,” he said.
“I learned in the Navy that the things I saw and did, to put them in the back of my mind. I know one of these days I’m going to have all of this free time, and I’m going to start thinking about all of these things,” he said.
“These two, I remember those like they happened yesterday.”
“Any of us, we learn at the time to put that in the back of your mind, because you have a job to do. If you practice your skills the right way, you’ll do it the right way when it comes down to needing to do something. You know you have a job to do and not just because it’s a job, but because it’s a human being. You don’t want to make a mistake with a human being. If you do, you want to try to correct it,” Wring said.
Thirty-seven years ago, “It was a macho thing not to cry. Then they came up with a really good program, where you get in a room and talk about what happened and it’s a ‘no fault’ conversation. What you saw, what bothered you and leave it at that. That really has helped. Now, it’s not a big deal for someone to break down and cry,” he said.
“There’s been a lot of bad times. I put my faith in God and I really think that’s what has kept me going in it. When I started I only planned to work five years and then (get hired) to the Henderson Fire Department or even to the Henderson Police Department,” Wring said.
“But it was like the Lord kept saying, ‘No. I want you to stay a little longer. There’s something else you need to do.’ ”
“There have been times on trips to Louisville, Nashville or Indianapolis that I’ve been able to talk to people about the Lord. And if they don’t want to talk about it, I’ll change the subject and talk about something else because Christ never forced Himself on others. I’m not going to force them, especially not when we’re going 70 miles an hour down a freeway and they can’t exactly get away from me. So that’s the way I’ve always worked,” Wring said.
“Someone told me one time that I was going to get in trouble and I said, ‘Well, I’m not doing it for them. I’ve got something more important and it’s called eternity.’ And I’ll tell you, there are times you are working with someone who is dying, and you get a feeling they just need to hear something,” he said. “It’s a shame when someone dies and they don’t know the Lord. I don’t know how people get through a lot of really bad situations. Most people depend on God, but there’s a few out there who don’t want to have anything to do with Him.”
Wring said in addition to sharing his faith, he’s enjoyed the camaraderie that he’s built between himself and the community. “I like going to festivals and talking to people,” he said. “And when I go to Walmart, I know everybody there ...”
Looking back over his career, Wring said, " It’s been pretty good.”
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(c)2014 The Gleaner (Henderson, Ky.)
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