Thinking more on what PSac said. In fairness, I realise that you have seen some pretty awful things, Paul, and that changes you. I think I can empathise a little bit, although I realise not nearly as much as I could if I had gone through what you have when you were in the service. Your experience almost made you atheist. Mine certainly helped my transition along.
Not long after my mother died I was a first responder on an accident scene. It was a Thursday night at the end of January in northern Canada, it was pitch black and cold. Askew on the road was a 3/4 ton Ford 4x4 with its front end pushed in and in the ditch was a Volkswagen Jetta. The driver of the VW had spun out on ice and was t-boned by the pickup. The accident happened on shift change on the road to the manufacturing facility I helped to run. I knew both drivers personally. The driver of the pickup was rattled, but unhurt. The driver of the VW, who I will call D, was unconscious but alive. Another coworker and I climbed into the wreck through the broken windshield because the doors were seized shut. When I lost D's pulse I started doing pulminary rescuscitation while the other man in the wreck with me pumped D's chest. As I held his head in my hands I could feel the bones in D's face and skull moving and grinding together. Blowing into his lungs produced a deep gurgling sound and it became clear that he was drowning in his own blood. So I sucked the blood out of his lungs and spat it out the broken windshield while dozens of agast people looked on. D's pulse returned but only fleetingly and he died in my arms. When the paramedics arrived and saw my mouth red with blood they told me that I needed to get to the hospital to get tested for HIV and hepatitis. They kept up with the CPR but the look in their eyes said it all. It was hopeless. I left the scene with the ambulance not far behind and was sitting on a guerny behind a curtain in emergency when D's wife, pregnant with their fourth child, arrived. The scene was heartbreaking, although all I could do is hear.
A nurse drew a few vials of blood from both me and D and they were sent off the next day to a lab in the south. A doctor came in and examined my hands and the inside of my mouth, expressed relief that I had no open sores or gingivitis but still serious about getting the blood samples tested. But things don't move very fast north of 55 in the dead of winter. When the results failed to arrive by Friday afternoon I was summoned by one of the doctors on staff who handed me three vials of pills and told me that I had a choice. We might expect results from the lab by Monday, but by then I could be infected. The pills would kill the HIV virus if present but they would make me very, very sick and would damage my liver. I said I knew D to be a fine, upstanding family man who was a sort of deacon at the local nondenominational church. The doctor smiled and made a rather unarguable observation that I did not know the man when he was a teenager or a very young adult and therefore could not know for sure about his sexual history or potential intervenous drug use. He also said that the incidence of HIV/AIDS in the area was 1.25%. I asked him if he would take the pills. He said that he did, once, and that he'd never do it again. I took the guarded advice and the odds and the results came back Monday morning as negative.
Sorry this has been a long story, but it goes to how I got to where I am. An experience like this focuses you and gets you thinking, at least it did me.
