Violent and abusive patients; watching people die; 14-hour shifts without breaks, two days in a row - and that doesn't include overtime.
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Keeping awake at the wheel of the ambulance, just to nearly fall asleep driving home.
Being a paramedic is no walk in the park.
One ambulance worker bravely told us he was sexually assaulted by a female patient: the person he was trying to make better making him sick.
Unlike hospitals, there are no security guards in an ambulance.
It's a tight squeeze, with nowhere to escape if the person you have sworn to help wants to harm you.
And the highs of saving a life aren't always enough to make up for the lows.
Patients aren't the only broken ones anymore, as ambos start to fall apart under the strain of overwork and under-support.
Canberra's ambulance workers feel grateful they aren't part of the health directorate, waiting with sick and dying patients in ambulances outside hospitals and unable to respond to call-outs.
They are instead ruled by the Justice and Community Services Agency and the Emergency Services Agency.
But paramedics claim the very bureaucrats who are supposed to support them, back them, fight for their funding and welfare, are blocking any attempts of progress.
Trying to cut costs from a system which has little more to give.
Why do these healthcare workers have such resentment for someone who is supposed to represent them at the highest level of decision making?
The Minister needs to take their calls for help seriously, and publicly commit to serving the people who serve us.
The Transport Workers Union says it wasn't until they started covering ambulances with chalked messages - such as "We are not triple OK" and "Canberrans deserve better" - that they had any movement from the government on their concerns.
People don't become paramedics for fame or fortune, because there is little of either. They blaze their sirens for everyone else.
But out of sight can mean out of mind: ambulance workers are the unsung heroes and heroines of the health system.
They don't get the same media recognition as doctors and nurses, and might not come to mind when we think of pressures on the health system.
That is until you feel a tight squeeze across your chest; you can't get up, or are thrown off your bike by a car, and you need the people in green.
Because when the ambos don't come to work, the ambulance won't come to your door.
And then we will all be sick.
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