A Paramedic Tells His Story

ONE Sunday morning a call came in to the paramedics stationed at the Huntington Beach Fire Department in California. A frantic voice on the other end of the telephone line screamed: “Come quick! My husband’s dying!” When my partner and I arrived blood was spattered over every room in the apartment, and a man was lying on the floor gripping his neck. With every heartbeat arterial blood spurted out. What had happened was: He had been out drinking, came in and beat his wife, and she ran a nine-inch butcher-knife blade through his neck. It had severed one of the carotid arteries that supplies blood to the brain. In panic he had run throughout the apartment.

Now he lay writhing on the floor. He was sure he was dying. I clamped off the neck, got two IV’s (intravenous feeding) started, one in each arm, replacing the blood volume with a substitute blood-volume expander called Ringer’s lactate. We then rushed him to the hospital. It being Sunday, few were there to assist the surgeon in the operating room, so I did. A vein removed from his leg was spliced onto the carotid artery. He lived.

During my years as a paramedic, such rescues of persons from imminent death were very rewarding to me. Far more rewarding, however, it was that these dramatic events brought me to my senses concerning another lifesaving work. A far more important work, involving millions of lives, mine included.

The story began when I was five years old. My father had become one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. He set about training me and my two brothers as Witnesses. At age 16, however, I became quite rebellious. The life of a Witness was too confining for me. So just prior to my 17th birthday I told my father that I didn’t want to go to meetings anymore or go out preaching from door to door.

Well, he set me down and explained to me from the Scriptures that the love for Jehovah was the most important thing in his life. He said that if I was to live under his roof I would attend meetings and continue the preaching activity. I couldn’t understand how someone could love this God Jehovah above the family. So I moved out from under his roof and moved in with a high school friend of mine.

After graduation from high school I concentrated on acquiring some of the things I thought were really important. Also, I continued dating a young lady that I had met in high school. At age 19, I thought that not only did I know everything but also I was fully equipped to get married. So I married Pam, my high school sweetheart. We’ve stayed married these past 15 years and have two young daughters. As I matured I saw that there was more to life than the present. What would it be like in 5 or 10 years for these two young ladies I had fathered? What was this system of things going to offer them? And what could I offer them?

I quit the job I had in a machine shop that required long hours with little opportunity for advancement, and I entered the profession of a fire fighter. Working 24-hour shifts, I had many full days at home. Now I had more time on my hands than I wanted!

I thought, ‘I’ll just use those extra days for making more money and acquiring more things.’ So I took on a second job, in construction. I would work a 24-hour shift as a fireman, then from there go and work a full day in construction. I’d come home after being away some 34 hours. Understandably, family relations became strained.

It was at this time that the Huntington Beach Fire Department started a new program, the paramedic program. I joined up and spent the next eight months in intensive schooling at the University of California at Irvine Medical Center. Everything we were taught in these 16-hour days was geared to emergency medicine. Specially trained physicians, called traumatologists, instructed us on how to handle life-threatening situations not in sterile hospital operating rooms but out in burned-out houses, wrecked automobiles, dirty alleys, smoke-filled bars, vacant lots or wherever. I stood for countless hours with surgeons in emergency operating rooms, watching them perform open-heart surgery or open-lung surgery, or putting smashed bodies back into shape.

During this training I realized how fragile life is. I reflected upon things my father had taught me about God, the Creator. I also thought many times of the psalmist David’s words, spoken in awe: “In a fear-inspiring way I am wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:14) I began to sense the divine wisdom and design of his creations, and not just in the human body but in the animals, the plants, the earth, and the billions of galaxies with their trillions of stars.

And now, as I became aware of these things, many of my father’s words came back to me. I remembered times, years after I had left home, when I needed him. He was always there, with love and kindness. He never gave up on me. He saw to it that I always received the Watchtower and Awake! magazines wherever I went. And above all I remember this lesson learned: Never, ever, give up on your children​—never! You never know​—something might just click inside them, as it did with the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable, as it did with me, and they might come back to you, serving Jehovah.​—Luke 15:11-24.

After completing the eight-month-long paramedic course, I took a two-month vacation trip with my family. Those two months healed some of the family strains that had developed. I literally fell in love with my wife all over again. I realized I had neglected her, that no finer reward could a man have than a loving, supportive wife. I also realized that there is nothing finer that you can give to your children than yourself.

After our return I told my wife that I thought we needed a family Bible study. I’d like for it to be conducted by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Now, Pam had been reared with a hatred for Jehovah’s Witnesses. So I was both surprised and delighted when she readily agreed. The study began and a year later, in 1974, we were baptized.

I’ve told how during training I came to realize how fragile life is, but as a practicing paramedic I became impressed with how tenaciously the body clings to life and fights to heal some of the most appalling injuries.

One was the stabbing reported at the beginning of this story. As stated there, the stab victim lived, but he did lose part of his speech and the use of his right arm and leg. This because of the diminished blood supply to his brain. When he was recuperating, I went to see him. I frequently did this with those I had helped. It gave me an opportunity to witness to them about the hope we have in God’s Kingdom. I explained to him that his present recovery was only temporary, that a permanent one was possible here on earth under that Kingdom rule. My wife and I studied the Bible with this couple for four months. They eventually separated, but the last we heard about him was that he was still studying with the Witnesses.

On another occasion I responded to a drowning. When my partner and I arrived, a neighbor had just brought a seven-year-old girl up from the bottom of a swimming pool. She had no heartbeat and was not breathing. This is what they refer to in the medical profession as being clinically dead. She wasn’t biologically dead yet. She still had the spark of life within her. We started an IV and administered cardiac drugs and also electrocounter shock to stimulate the heart into beating again.

By this time her parents had arrived. Both became hysterical and had to be restrained. We worked on her alongside that pool for 22 minutes, without her having a heartbeat or doing any breathing on her own. On all our cases we keep in touch by phone with a physician at a base hospital, and this one told us to give up and bring her in. But we thought we were close to reviving her and got an OK from the doctor to try a little longer.

We continued the CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation). I went right through the chest cavity and into her heart with an injection. We got a faint heartbeat! We kept breathing for her, but as the heartbeat got stronger she started breathing on her own. She survived. She did have some brain damage that left her legs weak, but because of her youth she responded well to rehabilitation and now, seven years later, she’s fine.

One day I was going from door to door with the Kingdom message, and one woman was very angry with me. She told me to leave and even followed me to the street, scolding me all the way. There I turned and asked her, “Isn’t this the home where six months ago a small baby had stopped breathing and was thought dead?” A look of complete surprise came over her face. In a hushed voice she asked, “How did you know that?”

“I’m the paramedic that saved its life.”

I didn’t do this to make her feel bad but to let her know that Jehovah’s Witnesses were useful people in the community, and not, as she had charged, just pests that bothered people on weekends. She invited me into her home. We talked for about 20 minutes about the work of Jehovah’s Witnesses and why we call at people’s doors. I left a Watchtower and an Awake! with her.

A similar situation occurred when my wife was going from door to door with the Kingdom message. She approached an old man who snapped at her, “I don’t want it! Get out of here!” At the time I was talking at another home, but when Pam and I met and were walking back together she told me about the incident. We passed by his house. He was outside. I recognized him. His wife had suffered a severe stroke and had almost died. I was the paramedic who responded to his call. So I went up to him, my wife at my side, and asked him: “Your wife, how’s she doing?” I also introduced my wife to him. I wanted him to know it was my wife he had been rude to, and that I also engaged in this Bible educational work. It made him think. And he apologized to Pam.

Another time I went to a door and a woman answered. I introduced myself by name and started talking. “Wait a minute!” she interrupted. “You are Larry Marshburn! I remember you! You pulled my husband out of a burning airplane!” She continued: “You were so nice to me, assuring me that my husband was going to live, that he was going to be all right.” He did live, but he was badly burned. She had remembered my name, and we had a nice visit and Bible literature was left with her.

Similar occurrences happened repeatedly, and not just at doors. In a market, on the street, people would say to me, “You worked on my little girl,” or “You saved my mother,” or whatever the situation had been. That’s rewarding.

Not all calls are rewarding, however. On one call the woman clasped my arm and said, “I’m going to die.” She did, clinically. My partner and I started giving her CPR. We kept getting her heartbeat back, then losing it. Three hours we worked on her, finally revived her. Her first words to me were: “You should have let me die.” “Oh, no!” I groaned. She was old and sick and tired of living. We got her to the hospital. Her heart was so damaged that they put in a pacemaker. The last I heard, she was still living.

On another call I found three fire fighters from a nearby station who had beat me there. They were sitting in the living room, misty-eyed. One of them motioned me toward the kitchen. An elderly couple lay on the floor, both dead. The man had been a cripple, had no legs. It was a deliberate murder-suicide. The woman, his wife, had lain down on the floor, head on a pillow, face turned away from the man, and he had shot her in the back of the head. Then he had lain down beside her, put his arm around her, then put the gun to his head and shot himself. The notes left to their children indicated their love for each other, but economic and health problems were too much, and they were tired of living. They made the decision that they were going to die together. A deeply touching tragedy. No wonder the firemen’s eyes were moist.

In the five years that I was in the paramedic service (I now lecture throughout the United States on fire prevention but still go out as a paramedic a few times each month), I saw 70 or 80 persons die. The great majority cling to life, hanging on desperately. I saw it so much.

I can close my eyes now and still see this young man trapped in an automobile that had overturned and was on fire. I crawled through the window and just held onto him, his face panic stricken, pleading with me to save him. I knew he was going to die. I knew what he didn’t​—the lower half of his body was mashed beyond repair. We couldn’t get him out. I just held his head and kept talking to him until he died.

In my work I see tremendous drug abuse. I can remember responding to call after call after call of ones who had used Phencyclidine hydrochloride​—PCP for short, and commonly called angel dust. It alters the mind and in very short, sporadic outbursts gives unbelievable strength.

On one occasion, at one o’clock in the morning, we were summoned by a young man’s mother. She could not get him to respond to anything. When we got there he was sitting on the couch in the living room. He was about 5 feet 9 inches tall, very thin, weighing about 135 pounds. A couple of police officers were there taking information from the mother.

My partner and I tried to communicate with him, but he was “gone,” hallucinating. He wouldn’t roll his eyes nor would he blink, and his arms and legs were spread out stiff. And he’d been holding them outstretched like that for 30 minutes. Sit in a chair and try holding your arms and legs out for three minutes, then remember​—he did this 10 times as long! We began to take his vital signs​—blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, things of that nature. He seemed to be in a stabilized condition and in no real danger. So we decided to transport him to the hospital. At this time we still didn’t know what drug he had taken, but one of the police officers suspected that it was PCP.

By now the ambulance had arrived and we had six emergency personnel present. When we started to pick him up to put him on the gurney, he exploded into action. He literally threw the six of us off of him. I remember being on his back with my arm around his neck, and he simply reached behind himself and took me by my shirt and literally threw me over his head and onto the ground! I’m 6 feet tall and weigh 190 pounds, but he tossed me around like a five-pound bag of sugar! Finally the six of us did get him pinned down, handcuffed and strapped to the gurney. He lived. PCP doesn’t ordinarily take life, but continued use of it, according to a pharmacologist who has made a special study of the drug, can cause the brain to be “fried”​—his word for it. When a person reaches this stage he is unable to speak or think for himself.

At another time my partner and I were summoned to a wild beach party by police who had already arrived on the scene. They were trying to subdue a man who was on PCP. With our help the police finally got handcuffs on him. Police handcuffs are well built, a strong steel chain linking the two cuffs together. Well, this young man flew into such a rage that he snapped the chain that linked these two cuffs together! It was all the two police officers, myself and the other paramedic could do to get him on the ground. In fact, one of the officers finally had to use his billy club to subdue the man. Then they handcuffed him with two sets of handcuffs, and we took him to the hospital.

These two instances graphically show that PCP gives a strength so phenomenal that it’s impossible to believe it until you see it. Even when you see it, it’s still unbelievable.

Heroin is another drug we repeatedly encountered. It is a central-nervous system depressant and causes breathing to stop. I went on one call where a man had collapsed from heroin use. He was surrounded by others who were high on it. The needle was still sticking in his arm. He’d stopped breathing and turned blue. I started an IV on him and my partner put a tube down his throat so we could breathe for him. He began to get pink and we gave him some Narcan, which stands for “narcotic antagonist.” It reverses almost immediately the effect of heroin. (No such drug is available, however, to counteract PCP.) The man revived in seconds. When the other addicts saw this they became threatening, wanting to take our Narcan away from us. They wanted it to make their use of heroin safer.

There is no amount of words that will drive home to young people the damage drugs do to mind and body, even 5 or 10 years after they stop using drugs. They refuse to believe because they don’t want to believe. If I could take them with me for just one day to the mental-health ward in UCI Medical Center in California and let them see people who have been involved in drug abuse for many years ​—paranoid and catatonic patients—​they might open their eyes. I have seen individuals who have had over 1,000 trips on LSD, and for all practical purposes they are no longer human. Their minds are gone. They’re almost vegetables.

Being a paramedic and also one of Jehovah’s Witnesses is a unique blend. As a paramedic I’m helping injured persons get well, even bringing some back from clinical death. It’s gratifying work. Teaching people the truths about Jehovah’s Kingdom under Christ and healing them spiritually, even helping them come to life spiritually, is far more gratifying. The good done as a paramedic is temporary; that done spiritually can become everlasting in a Paradise earth. In my work as a paramedic I see much suffering; in my work as a Witness I can show how this suffering will be replaced by permanent health, happiness and everlasting life. My heart aches when I see so much mourning and pain and death, but it fills with joy when I remember this promise of Jehovah:

“The tent of God is with mankind, and he will reside with them, and they will be his peoples. And God himself will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.”​—Revelation 21:3, 4.

How glad I am that I came to my senses, like the prodigal son, and returned to my heavenly Father, Jehovah God!​—As told by Larry Marshburn.

[Blurb on page 6]

During this training I realized how fragile life is

[Blurb on page 7]

I went right through the chest cavity and into her heart with an injection. We got a faint heartbeat!

[Blurb on page 8]

“Isn’t this the home where six months ago a small baby had stopped breathing and was thought dead?”

[Blurb on page 8]

I just held his head and kept talking to him until he died

[Blurb on page 9]

He took me by my shirt and literally threw me over his head and onto the ground

[Blurb on page 10]

He snapped the chain that linked these two cuffs together!

[Picture on page 11]

As a paramedic I see much suffering; as a Witness I can show how this suffering will end