Kevin Smith

Hello, My name is Kevin Smith. I will be 57 in October. I’m from Broken Arrow and graduated in 1983. I joined the Oklahoma Army National Guard when I turned seventeen and went to boot camp in New Jersey. This was a big leap for a kid that had never been on an airplane. After boot camp, I came home on leave to finish High School before leaving to travel to Georgie for Infantry school. I ended up with 11 years service and decided I had enough playing Army. I was an E-6 Platoon Sgt. of a light Infantry Motor platoon in the 279th Infantry Division of the 45th Infantry Brigade at the time. I finished my enlistment and was Honorably Discharged in 1993. In the service, I obtained my E.M.T. license and took a job working on an ambulance in Coweta. I’ve worked at many ambulance services after obtaining my Paramedic license, first at St. Francis Hospital in the Trauma/Emergency center for 16yrs, Tulsa Life flight for five years, and the for Broken Arrow Fire Department for 15 years before forced retirement after my second injury which left me permanently disabled to the point that I could no longer do my job. The injury resulted in multiple surgeries and chronic back pain from a fusion at L5 and Neuropathy in my legs and feet. Nothing a hand full of pills can’t take care of right? 

I’m married to a wonderful woman, Tyleen  (definitely the better half). We met on a blind date. She was a new nurse from Iowa working at St. Francis and I was a new Paramedic working for a local Ambulance service in Glenpool. We eventually were married in Iowa and have lived in Oklahoma ever since. We have a daughter Payton who is 20 and she just graduated from NEO (May 2021) with an Associates degree in Criminal Justice and is still a starter on the soccer team with a few games left to play. Our younger daughter Addie is 17 and is attending Broken Arrow High School. Growing up, we had our girls riding bikes and playing soccer since they were five years old. Addie eventually converted to gymnastics but we let her stay in the family anyway. It is that discipline, commitment and teamwork plus good parenting that has made them who they are today, strong, fit and very independent young  women. 

So what is my personal connection to suicide? I haven’t lost a close family member or best friend like some others on this team. My connection is that over a 25+ years in the medical field, I have personally run into so many suicide attempts that I cant remember them all. I would guess that number would be in the 150-200 range. But I remember most of the ones that were successful! I can still see their faces from time to time. I always wondered what was so bad in their life to make them do it. As a Paramedic, you get up close and personal with all the bad stuff and that’s your job. You can’t let it effect you on the job or you’ll lose it. As a Fireman, you have to be the strong and macho type .You compartmentalize it as just doing your job and file it away deep inside thinking it can’t hurt you ever. You also think it could never happen to you. You get so use to it and burnout when you lose all sympathy and empathy for people. It all comes back later to haunt you when your mind says - I have to deal with this now.

In 2009, I sustained a complete non-contained herniation of the 5th lumbar disc while carrying a patient and by the time I had jumped through all of the city’s proverbial hoops, I was dragging my right leg around and was in the worst pain I’ve ever had in my life. I had a successful fusion and after four months of rehab, I was ready to go back to work. But the city didn’t want me back. They made me take a fitness for duty test which I passed and hired an attorney to go back to work. They were forced to let me go back. In retrospect I probably shouldn’t have. Two years later I injured my back at level 4 and had to have another surgery to remove hardware, scar tissue and extra bone growth. The injury damaged the L5 and S1 nerves. So now I have chronic back pain and neuropathy in my legs and feet. I can’t run, and walking very far is not fun. My feet feel like I’m walking on hot broken glass and I have to take a crap load of meds to function. I retired from Fire service in 2012. And just like that, I was unemployable and lost our family insurance plan.

Not knowing my future, I became very depressed and angry and felt as if I had let my family down. I was put on a high dose of Lyrica for the neuropathic pain and narcotic pain medication/muscle relaxers and anti inflammatory drugs. Lyrica, for people who don’t know, works quite well for neuropathy but has a ton of bad side effects. Two of the worst common are suicidal ideations and depression . I started to feel like the best thing for my family was if I had died and they received my life insurance so they wouldn’t have to worry about mortgages and bills piling up and continue to live the lifestyle that we had. I was put on an antidepressant that helped some. But what really changed things around was when I stopped the Lyrica and started taking Neurontin which had less side effects. Depression and Lyrica is a cocktail for disaster.

Fast forward - since standing and walking didn’t work for me anymore I started riding my old mountain bike and found that I could still do that. Then I bought a used road bike off of craigslist and was hooked. No,  riding is not pain free but at least it doesn’t hurt as bad while I’m doing it like standing and walking does. I met Bill Tiatano and started riding with him a lot since we were both retired. Through Bill, I have met the most caring and amazing people in the bike community. One day he asked me if I wanted to ride RAAM with him. Without even knowing what I was getting into I said yes. This is how I can still help people who are thinking about suicide - Raising money to promote awareness by riding my bike. So there it is.  I have not shared most of this with my team or anyone until now. That is my connection, to help people by supporting awareness and other entities that support awareness.

Kevin Smith