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Kan. medics welcome terminally-ill teen to their ranks

18-year-old wanted to be a paramedic; able to do 2 ride-along shifts in final months of his life

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Kyle Begin with Sedgwick County EMS personnel Maj. Kevin Hartley, Paramedic Cassie Powell, and Capt. Pam Utter

photo courtesy of Col. Paul Misasi

By Roy Wenzl
The Wichita Eagle

WICHITA, Kan. — Paramedics don’t let just anybody join their ranks.

The traumas are rough, they say. The job standards high.

They try to save every patient on every ambulance run. Sometimes they can’t.

The paramedics at Sedgwick County EMS couldn’t save Kyle Begin on Feb. 7.

Kyle had worked a couple of ambulance shifts with them, back in December.

They liked him. They let him join their ranks. They still call him “family.”

They gave him his own 911-channel radio call number: EMS 298.

After he died, they broadcast that EMS call number over the air and said it would never be used again.

His brief career

Kyle Devon Begin was 18 and had suffered from cancer since infancy.

Sedgwick County EMS crew members say he never had time to complete the studies and training to join their ranks full time.

But there is a reason why EMS crews call Kyle one of their own, said EMS Capt. Pam Utter.

“We are an unsung profession,” Utter said. “You either know you want to do our job or you have no idea what we do. Kyle wanted to be one of us.”

The story of Kyle’s brief rescue career began in early December.

Paul Misasi, the Sedgwick County EMS clinical manager, got a call from a hospice nurse.

Misasi said the nurse told him there was a cheerful youth in their care who had stage four neuroblastoma. Kyle had less than six months to live.

His life had been filled with suffering, Misasi said. At one point, doctors removed his cancerous jaw and rebuilt it using bone from one of his ribs.

But Kyle was a cheerful guy who lately had decided to become a paramedic, his stepfather, Bob Grauerholz, said.

“That boy had spent so much time in hospitals with oncologists and surgeons and so many people in the health field that they all had a big impact on him,” Grauerholz said. “He wanted to play for the NBA for a while; then he wanted to be a radiologist. Then he got excited about EMS. He wanted to help people.”

Touched deep

There was no way Misasi could allow a seriously ill person to ride an ambulance just for fun.

But Misasi talked with Kyle and approved a ride-along.

“He seemed like he was in pretty good health at that point,” Misasi said. “He was so enthusiastic. He was just so thrilled that we would consider taking him along.”

Misasi arranged for Kyle to ride a 12-hour shift with the paramedic crew of Sedgwick County EMS’s Medic 24, an ambulance based at Emporia and Pine Streets in downtown Wichita.

Utter and Cassie Powell, the paramedics on board that night, answer emergency calls in central Wichita, including Riverside and Old Town.

Kyle arrived at the station Dec. 13 with his mother, Jeanne McGaffin, and Grauerholz.

“He grinned from ear to ear all night,” Utter said. “We kept asking, when we could see he was getting tired, whether he wanted to call his parents and call it a night, but he said ‘no, I want to stay.’”

And they rolled.

There was at least one non-fatal traffic accident that night, Utter said. And several falls or other minor traumas, and a homeless guy in Old Town that they all tried to help – Kyle, too.

After the shift, before he went home, Kyle told them he wanted to ride again.

Something about the young guy touched them deep, Utter said. It wasn’t his illness, she said. And he was too cheerful to inspire pity.

It was that he appreciated them and what they do.

Kyle did one more ride-along, Misasi said.

Then they did not hear from him again.

“You indeed belong”

After Kyle died on Feb. 7, EMS crews reacted as though one of their own had passed.

A dozen EMS crew members came to his funeral. “It was hard,” Utter said.

“But even in that short time with us, he made everybody appreciate our jobs more,” Utter said. “He made it clear that there are people who get it – about what we do. His selflessness (from his suffering) made everybody second-guess themselves about what they think about life. We all felt a sense of renewal.”

Misasi wrote a eulogy:

“If working as a paramedic has taught me anything, it is that life is beautiful, and life is fragile. I would like to think that Kyle’s desire to be a part of EMS was for the same reason that I and presumably many others do – because underneath the lights and sirens, this is God’s work; and that somehow, maybe we are saving our own lives.

“Yesterday Kyle was assigned a radio number. EMS 298. We use these radio numbers as unique personnel identifiers, and eventually they become as common as your name and a part of your signature, a part of your legacy. They serve as verification that you indeed belong and have your place among the EMS family.

“Today, we will retire his number to honor his dream of becoming an EMT, and he will take his place among those who have gone before him.

“Godspeed EMS 298.”

©2015 The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.)

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