FIREFIGHTER TELLS HIS STORY

“I see colors again,” Geiselhart said during his talk at the Iron Range Mental Health Task Force meeting at Essentia Health-Virginia Monday morning.

Until receiving help, Geiselhart’s vision had been clouded by posttraumatic stress disorder.

The father of two sons, auto repair shop owner and 20-year member of the Frazee (Minnesota) Volunteer Fire Department, is also “a PTSD, meth and suicide survivor.”

Geiselhart now travels around the country, sharing his story of survival and hope, in an effort to “help others by speaking out and informing emergency responders about PTSD, mental health and suicide awareness and prevention,” he said.

Virginia Fire Department Chief Allen Lewis and Dustin Erickson, training officer, brought the fellow firefighter to the Range, where he spoke to the task force, a group of health care providers, mental health providers, law enforcement, fire and ambulance staff, and community members who promote positive growth in the mental health system of northern St. Louis County. He also offered a public presentation Monday evening at the hospital, attended by a number of emergency workers.

There remains a stigma regarding mental health issues, and “I want other emergency responders to know if they are struggling, they are not alone and there is help available,” he said.

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“You see a lot as a firefighter,” said Geiselhart, who was instrumental in his small fire department of implementing the use of Jaws of Life vehicle extrication and ice water rescue.

Being involved at the scenes of “a lot of bad car accidents, with a lot of fatalities,” including those where youngsters didn’t survive, severely affected his mental state.

He recalled a particular auto accident involving a high school kid who he helped rescue, only to learn that the student died a month later of an unrelated infection. However, “I believed I killed him,” Geiselhart said.

“I had a lot of nightmares and I drank a lot. I didn’t want to get close to anybody. I wasn’t close to my girlfriend or kids. I was angry all the time.”

Geiselhart said he had many angry outbursts, yelling at his family and blaming them when they did nothing wrong, and he turned to meth, “so I never would go to sleep and have nightmares.”

The firefighter said he worked up to “a line an hour” of meth. “I realize I was trying to kill myself, but it wasn’t going fast enough.”

So one day in July 2014, Geiselhart went in the office of his auto repair shop, loaded “my favorite revolver … because it never misfired” — a .44 Magnum — aimed it as his head and pulled the trigger.

What happened next has stayed with him ever since, said Geiselhart, who tearfully told his story to the mental health professionals gathered in the hospital auditorium.

“The hammer came down and just clicked,” he said, recalling how he unloaded the gun that had never before malfunctioned, and “stood there shaking so hard.”

After the suicide attempt, Geiselhart began researching his symptoms, typing words such as “nightmares,” “yelling” and “flashbacks” into his computer. “PTSD lit up the screen.” Reading about it “was like looking in the mirror,” he said, adding that he wrongly “thought only people in the military got PTSD.”

So excited to tell his family that his condition was treatable, Geiselhart said he rushed to the apartment where his, by then, ex-girlfriend and sons were living. But, “I had hurt them so much” that they backed away from him, mistaking his enthusiasm for rage.

Following that reaction, “I was in worse shape than I ever was in,” he said, relaying how he contemplated blowing up his shop “with me in it.”

Instead, Geiselhart began making calls — to a suicide hotline that no one answered, and numbers the fire department had provided but that were disconnected.

He was about ready to give up when “I had one last number” — 1-888-731-FIRE (3473) -— the Fire/EMS Helpline.

“Someone picked up right away, and after I told him what happened, he said, ‘Scott, we’ve got you.’ … It was like he reached through the phone and picked me up.”

At the recommendation of one of the people at the helpline, Geiselhart began Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy. “EMDR is a type of psychotherapy that helps process negative memories through sounds or movements while you talk about the trauma,” he said.

And “it all came loose… It was like I had been wearing a trench coat made of tar … and it all ripped off.”

With the help of therapy, the firefighter began to recover. That fall, “was the first time I saw colors in the leaves,” he said.

Geiselhart is now meth-free and “I haven’t had a nightmare in two years. … I started caring about my kids and ex-girlfriend. I wanted to live.”

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Suicide rates for firefighters are skewed, in part because “weird accidents” are not counted as suicides and many firefighters work on a volunteer basis, so their deaths are not recorded under that occupation, Geiselhart said.

PTSD is a common issue with firefighters, EMS workers, dispatchers as well as doctors and nurses, he said.

“We are the ‘help’ person. We are the tough people. We aren’t supposed to need help.” Thus, many emergency workers do not seek assistance, he said.

Geiselhart said by telling his story he aims to show that it’s OK to ask for help. During his talks, “I’m a train wreck in front of them,” and often someone in attendance tell him afterward, “Scott, you gave me permission to go get help.”

“I fell into this,” he said of his speaking engagements, adding that he is proof that someone suffering from a mental illness can turn their life around.

“I can love people again — and let them love me.”

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The Iron Range Mental Health Task Force meets bimonthly. If you have any questions or would like to be on the email list to receive information about meetings, contact Sandy Wallin at 218-404-5420. A video of Scott Geiselhart’s story can be found at: https://youtube/NEBf_M_lr18.