Thanks for sharing your experience. It mostly matches the things I saw within the last weeks and months, currently doing my internships for the German EMT equivalent.
"No one ever runs" has become untrue within the last shift when we got called for a CPR. I could also say "having not to run makes us too slow compared to the firefighters who answered the same call. Did you ever run through an opera house while the concert has its break? There has been at least one "first" in every shift so far.
People who denied having a reason to keep on living - yes, I met two of them too, when I voluntarily assisted the intensive care staff one day of my hospital internship. I'm suffering from a certain depression myself so I didn't know how to talk the first guy through those negative thoughts. Both had suffered from multi-organ failure at an age between 50 and 60.