The Patient That Wishes He Were Still Dead

Each paramedic, at different stages of their career, has a favorite type of call (i.e. cardiac arrests, pregnancies, traumas). During my cardiac arrest stage, I had a save, but the story behind the life just prior to the patients’ cardiac arrest is far more entertaining.

Roaming around the city in our area was the only thing we have to do at times. This time it made my unit only a mile, at most, from a call sent out for a cardiac arrest. Dispatch assigned the call to my unit and we were off. We were able to find it quickly. I was the first in to find a female, about 40 or so, crying and pointing to the back.

I turned the corner into the bedroom and found the patient about 40 lying on the floor… naked. Not really, someone had been kind and laid a pair of boxers on top of him. I began following protocol: A, B, C’s. I did not do mouth to mouth. The first heart rhythms got the standard stack shocks (old school medicine). On television, it looks more violent than in real life. Waiting for my partner, I began doing chest compressions. My partner came in with the fire department and the rest of the equipment. I turned over the compressions to a fire fighter and began getting my IV and airway secured. Active in a new drug algorithm study I followed our protocols. Slowly the patients’ heart began to respond.

Speaking to patients whether alive or dead, I warned the patient each time prior to a defibrillation or a painful event. I call them by name and if I transport the patient to the hospital play their favorite radio station. I do not transport dead people. Soon I asked the female to come in to the bedroom. I began asking the usual questions: name, age, and birthday. Having a hard time answering the questions, I attempted to calm, reassure, and redirect her to help us. I saw her wedding band. With the missionary in me attempted to reference helping family. That was when she cried that the patient was not her husband. Ooops!

Curious, nosey, or just the real need to know, you pick one, I asked what happened prior to the patient passing out. The patient took a little pill, the one that is needed sometimes by men who are naked in the bedroom. Just prior to the act of, well you know, he literally dropped dead. Many people do not know that pharmaceutical companies discovered by accident that some high blood pressure medications had an unusual side effect that could treat erectile disfunction. Dropping dead is usually not a well-advertised side effect.

In order to expedite transport I asked the female just to meet us down at the hospital and the staff there would get the rest of the story. With the patient in the back of the unit, we went on to the hospital with a patient that had his own pulse and at times breathing on his own.

We arrived at a hospital that has hypothermic treatment study. Walking in the code room and began turn over two females were brought to the room. One I recognized as the female from the house, the other I did not. While I was writing my call-sheet, I sat in the room. Finally, with the adulterer on one side of the patient she introduces the other female on the other side of the patient as the patients’ wife.
The doctors began getting the past medical history from the wife and the current history from the adulterer. There is the story of the patient who wished he were still dead.