Monique said she ventilated the man with a valve bag and used a bag valve mask to help him breathe “the oldschool way. We intubated him and had a doctor on the phone assisting.”
JL: “So nothing had happened here [in Alert] in sixty years and then you have these two things to deal with.”
MB: “Right. And right after Haiti. I was as numb as numb can be.”
Monique left Alert on the same flight home with the younger man. They had managed to stabilize him enough that for two weeks afterwards, he remained on life support. He later died.
“We managed to get him home …,” the medic said sombrely. “That was the last day I ever worked.”
The man’s wife wanted to invite Monique to the funeral. “But I just couldn’t do it,” said Monique. “I was so broken at that point … I went into mental health at that point and said, ‘I am on the verge of losing it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I need help. This is irreparable. I’m having nightmares.’ ”
Besides seeing the dying man’s face in her disturbing dreams, she saw bugs, the kind of insects she experienced in Haiti.
She would not believe her husband that she was having nightmares until her daughter finally told her, “Mom, you gotta get help.” That plea came after her family heard her screaming and yelling, “I wish I could have saved him! I should have done more!”
Monique vowed she “would never touch medicine again. ‘I’m just going to kill anyone that gets in my hands,’ ” she told herself, at the lowest point in her life. Today, after much work, she knows that is not true, but she no longer practises medicine.
Monique’s drinking got worse after Alert. She reached out for help. Her boss was the person, along with her family, who advised her to seek assistance. She started therapy. She was diagnosed with PTSD in 2010, not long after the Haiti and Alert missions. She was thirty-seven years old. As a veteran medic, Monique said she understood what the term PTSD meant, “but I didn’t understand it was happening to me.”
She was initially embarrassed.
She is now forty-three, six years into therapy. I asked her a crucial question about her PTSD diagnosis, which resulted in an answer that may startle some of you.
JL: “What do you think about it now?”
MB: “I wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s made me who I am. I now know life throws you major curveballs sometimes, but I made it through that. Now when I look back on my story, and I’m educated about PTSD, I’m very proud of myself. I’m very able to say, Thank God I had the strength within myself to keep going. Thank God for Lucie … for my parents, for my family.”
Not everyone who is diagnosed makes it out the other end as well or alive. The suicide rate among varying Canadian first responder agencies is staggering.
Monique’s frankness about what led to her PTSD diagnosis, and how she is now thriving, will most certainly assist others who are struggling, or who have loved ones not as far advanced in their recovery.
While she has shared her experiences to inspire discussion around mental health, she is also hoping a reader may be able to help her. The two medics would like information about Monique-Lucie Marie Pierre. Monique-Lucie would be seven years old in 2017.
JL: “You’re searching … and you want to know what?”
MB: “If she’s okay. We left such a torn, broken country. Is she still alive? There was disease everywhere. We’re six years post now. We both want to know if she … is still okay? Closure maybe. It’s something I feel that would totally give us the ability to say we did make a difference.”
JL: “What if that’s not the case?”
MB: “That’s what scares me a bit.”
At this point, her mother, Diane Doucette, asked her daughter a critical question that had been on my mind since Monique Bartlett approached me about assisting her and Lucie Rouleau to find the little girl.
DD: “Do you still want to know?”
MB: “Yes, I do want to know.”
JL: “You don’t think that would cause you a setback?”
MB: “I will never go back to where I was before.”
DD: “She is very strong and her husband has been amazing.”
MB: “My full-time job since my injury, and I call it that now, is to get well, stay well, and be well … That’s my fulltime job.”
Monique was devastated when she was medically released from the Canadian military on June 14, 2013. “When they handed me the paperwork, it went through me like a knife, because it was all I had known. It was who I am,” she said.
She was angry afterwards. “It took me a long time to see I had to get well, stay well, [and] be well.”
JL: “Do you think the family who came to the [Jacmel medical] gate was put in your path for a reason?”
MB: “Considering you look at the lineup that was there … did he jump the line or what? I do often think, possibly. It had to be.”
JL: “Why him that day with you guys? It could have been other people sitting at the [medical] tent that day.”
MB: “Absolutely. We needed that boost. We so needed something positive to come our way because we were so hopeless.”
JL: “Do you think that interaction with that family and baby saved your life or altered your life?”
There is a very long pause before Monique answered.
MB: “Yes, definitely. I’ve never, ever, ever been suicidal … but I think it altered [my life] in a big way.”
JL: “I don’t mean that you would have self-harmed. I mean the path you were on was not a good one.”
MB: “… we were beyond the ability to find any positive; an inkling of positive had to happen, because it was so negative every day.”
Monique said every day of their Haiti deployment she thought, “I am not going to go home to my family.”
Her mother joined our interview for a third and final time.
DD: “I’m very proud. Both her father and I [are]. [When Monique was young] if I said left, she went right. She never obeyed an order in her life. And when she called me and said, ‘I’m joining the military,’ I said, ‘Yeah, and you’re going to go far with that.’ ”
JL: “What do you think of your daughter’s ability to try and help other people by sharing her story?”
DD: “I think it’s a good idea, because she’s a positive outcome to a sad situation. She was as bad as a medic could feel. The only thing she’s lost forever, I’m assuming, is her ability to be a nurse or nurture like she could.”
JL: “Have you ever thought she is nurturing people [now] in a different way?”
DD: “She is.”
JL: “Did you ever think she could be healing people in a different way?”
Monique answered for her mother.
MB: “I never [did think that.]”
JL: “Did you think about that?”
MB: “No.”
JL: “Being able to save, heal, or nurture people takes many forms.”
The revelation that Monique Bartlett is still helping countless people, in her own way, ends our interview.
It is a message people across professions need to consider.
JL: “Despite the fact you’re not in a hospital setting, that’s exactly what you are doing. You will never know how many people you are helping. It’s just in a different way now. That’s a huge gift.”
MB: “It’s a good thought.”
Monique Bartlett’s Legacy Letter
Greetings to Monique-Lucie and family from Canada:
Six years have passed since our medical team brought you into this world. I often find myself wondering about you and how you have grown.
The deployment to Haiti has forever changed my life in so many ways.
I have had major struggles coping over the years, but when I look back on the mission to Haiti, I find it so comforting reminiscing about the day you were born and [when] your dad announced to my colleague, Lucie, and I [that] they had decided to name you after us.
The timing couldn’t have b
een better, as I was truly losing all hope, and feeling overwhelmingly helpless at all of the devastation [after] that horrific earthquake.
Jacmel, your hometown, was the hardest hit, as it was reduced to rubble all around.
I smile and glow with such a feeling of happiness and pride when I think or talk about you, your mom, and your dad. I know my whole medical team feels the very same way, as we are all in touch on social media.
We remember your birthday every year.
The experience for each and every one of us working together to bring you into the world, safely, is a memory we will forever share so fondly.
I wonder if you have any brothers or sisters now?
How are Mom and Dad?
What do you look like?
What is your favourite colour?
Have you ever been to Canada?
These are just a few questions I would ask you, if ever I were able to talk to you.
I would love to meet you and return the “thank you” to you and your parents for that very special day. It truly gave me the strength to get through such a devastating and difficult mission.
Sending you lots of love,
xoxo
Lucie (Rouleau) Giocondese’s Legacy Letter
Letter for the little Monique-Lucie,
January 2010:
It was a beautiful sunny day. My team and I were posted on the [Jacmel] jetty, since [a] couple [of] days, to treat injured people from the earthquake.
We were Team 2: the best team ever … My best friend, Monique, was in that team, too.
She was my lifesaver.
We share fun, good laughing moments, but also the worst one of my life.
Your birthday was obviously the best one.
So early in the morning, I think it was around 7:00 a.m., a car arrived to the back gate with people screaming and very stressed in it. Since Monique and I spoke French, [and] Creole and French are quite similar, we became one of the interpreters of the team. We ran to the gate to ask, ‘What’s going on?’
Your father came to us and said that your mother was in labour. He was sooooooo stressed.
So we brought your mom to the tent and the team took care of her. Since your father was very nervous, Monique and I took him [for a] … walk and sit [him down] a little further [away] to keep him calm. He was happy that we spent time with him and explained what was going on with his wife.
We shared our own pictures of our kids [with him.]
At that time, mine were only three years old, four years old, and fifteen years old. By showing those pictures to him, [it] brought me back to the reality that I was avoiding since [a] couple [of] weeks.
During the time Monique and I were with your father, our team took care of your mother – carefully.
Monique and I came back to the team [to] continue the care on your mother. I hold your mother’s back and hands with my friend Pettra, and Monique was doing the delivery.
You came in [to] this world in that beautiful day, [just] like that, in our Canadian military tent.
Your father was so excited and decided to name you after us.
I was excited for a while, but realized later, in what [a] world you just came.
I was thinking about you for days after that.
I was always wondering if you were okay, if you will survive.
At a certain point, I was thinking to bring you back home with me in Canada.
I had to stop thinking.
I had to stop my feeling[s] and wanderings against this disaster to protect myself and [to] survive.
I came back home after 42 days in Haiti, but I left my spirit there for a while.
It took myself a lot of work, time, and patience, but I’m fine now.
There is a lot of time where I’m thinking about you – little Monique-Lucie.
Are you okay?
You are seven years old now. Wow. Time just fly. You must be in school.
Do you have any brothers or sisters?
How [are] Daddy and Mommy doing?
Monique-Lucie: hopefully one day I’ll be able to meet you and get answers to my questions. Until that day, you will be in my prayers, when I ask … God to protect everyone that I love.
Postscript
It was a revelation during our interview, for both Monique Bartlett and her mother, that the New Brunswick medic is still performing a vital and nurturing role, post-PTSD diagnosis, and after leaving the military and her day-to-day medical technician career.
That awakening marks a new chapter.
It is my hope our conversations will enable Monique, Lucie, their families, and the wider public to better understand, appreciate, and value the potential of each person, regardless of their past or a diagnosis.
The fact remains: Monique and Lucie are helping people; they did then and they do now.
Their call to service and ability to serve and help others did not end in Bosnia, Alert, or Haiti, or after their PTSD diagnosis.
Their roles as caregivers have morphed. Both they and their work continue to evolve. The medics have become educators and role models, perhaps by happenstance, perhaps not.
Do things happen for a reason?
The timing of Monique-Lucie’s birth, at that specific medical camp, is uncanny, given how low the women were feeling at that critical juncture in the Haitian mission. The additional fact they, specifically, were approached by the desperate father at the gate, and communicated so empathically with him, in both English and French, leaves one wondering – what forces were at play that day, and why?
Theirs is a beautiful and hope-filled story that leaves many questions, asked in their legacy letters, unanswered – for now. The trauma Monique Bartlett and Lucie (Rouleau) Giocondese have heard, witnessed, and experienced does not define who they are nor does it define the quality of their work, lives, or person.
Trauma does not define any of the extraordinary Canadians in this book. Their decisions, words, and actions define who they are.
Trauma does not define them, but it does shape them. They are people who endure and continue to serve. They’ve acquired profound self-awareness and are able to amplify their humanity, rather than have the trauma they repeatedly encounter blunt or erase it. Their words speak to the incredible strength of the human spirit. Their stories help us question and re-examine what it truly means to be “called to duty.” Duty and service take on many forms, across professions and roles, a handful of which have been discussed in this work. How we educate, support, and serve one another evolves, as do all people over time. What would you write about in your own legacy letter? How do you try to serve your fellow man? How can we, collectively, “turn the table” on trauma, death, and loss – and funnel that dark energy and pain into something helpful, healing, and motivating? The people in The Legacy Letters have found a way. If they can, given what they have faced, the rest of us can at least give it a try.
Acknowledgements
A heartfelt thank you to all of those in The Legacy Letters who have revisited highly charged and often devastating incidents to facilitate conversation about resiliency, self-care, trauma, and mental health. Their willingness to discuss their own pain and grief is motivating.
Special thanks to Ann King, Dave Worrell, Kate Lines, Morgan MacDonald, Erin Alvarez, Bill Sandford, Dave Ralph, John Bredin, Al Tweten, Tracey Hilliard, Michael Hilliard, Monique Bartlett, and Lucie (Rouleau) Giocondese for their legacy letters, as well as Phonse Jessome for his, in the amazing foreword.
Special recognition to Ann King, whose immediate response to me of “How can I help you?” will never be forgotten. It underlines how we should live our lives – in some form of service to others. Ann’s immediate agreement, without hesitation, to speak with me after nearly twenty years and to write the first legacy letter, allowed this challenging work to unfold.
Much of what Phonse Jessome has written he has disclosed publicly, for the first time, in The Legacy Letters. I am honoured. For the record, I never asked Phonse to
write the letter, foreword, or to say anything. Phonse offered to contribute after he heard me speak about this project over coffee in his home. Phonse is one of the most talented writers and fearless journalists I know. His late uncle was my writing mentor. Bill Jessome would be thrilled that Phonse and I have collaborated to try to educate, support, and help others.
Thank you to Megan Adams for communicating with me. She could easily have chosen not to, given what has transpired. Her frankness has resulted in self-reflection, for both me and likely many others. I sincerely hope her words and messages spark much-needed discussion and debate.
I would also like to publicly thank Angela Gevaudan for sharing her powerful speech with me, and for inviting me to the private unveiling of her late husband’s RCMP memorial statue. I will never forget the love and support shown to her, her daughter and family, the New Brunswick RCMP, the City of Moncton, and the wider first responder community. Being present in Moncton was beautiful and healing.
I am also publicly recognizing Nova Scotia Elder Joe Michael for writing about his aboriginal teachings and wisdom surrounding smudging ceremonies and talking sticks. It has been a deep honour, sir. His immeasurable talents are gifts.
Thank you to Tracey Hilliard for her gifts, including the poem “The Other Firefighter.” Michael Hilliard’s family and several other firefighting families in Cape Breton welcomed me with open arms. My late firefighting father would be pleased. Basil Landry’s father, the late William (Bill) Landry, was from River Bourgeois, Cape Breton.
The actions and words of these remarkable Canadians collectively honour the fallen, deceased, missing, and the victims of crime (which includes their loved ones), and those who serve and help the public in the face of danger, conflict, and adversity.
They are to be commended.
Our words can either lift people up or tear them down. These participants’ words, either spoken in conversation or written in letter form, have been carefully chosen. They give us hope. There is nothing more powerful, motivating, or inspiring than hopefulness.
The Legacy Letters Page 24