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.

Nearly Headless

The best calls happen at night. There is the dark, the unknown, and the scary. This call was a combination of all those types of calls.

Sitting on a street corner, which is where we wait for calls, dispatch assigned my unit to a hemorrhage call. Nothing special, usually, about bleeding. It is actually one of the easier calls to work. Someone bleeds we give a band aide. The more they bleed the bigger the band aide. There is nothing like the KISS method in medicine. Keep it stupid simple.

While responding to the call, the only information we would get from dispatch was the address and that the calls’ girlfriend was bleeding, that was all the information call would give. We arrived on the street and in the block of the call; there were several houses dark, no front porch lights, and no one waving us down. My partner and I begin to do our search of the area. The boyfriend made the call from a payphone a few blocks away, so we began there. Hoping to find someone that would show us which house, we found nothing.

We drove back to the block. Two police cruisers pulled up to a house in the middle of the block. We asked the officers if they knew anything and one pointed out the house. One of the officers advised he was just there not an hour before for a domestic violence call.

The house was a small two-bedroom home like most on that block. Everything was dark. We knocked but no answer. The officers led the way into the house. They have the guns, not me, and they would not be in my way if I have to run. The two officers began searching the house and my partner and I followed. Being young and stupid, when the officer I was following went to the first bedroom, I went to the second.

I opened the door cautiously and began looking around. My eyes caught a glimpse of something shiny. Paramedics love shiny things. It was the hemorrhage. The blood was still dripping from her neck. Much slower that it was originally, I presume. With only a few pieces of flesh holding her head to her shoulders I did not even check for a pulse, I pronounced her dead. My partner scared that somehow she still had a pulse checked, guess what, she still did not have pulse.

This was one of my creepier calls and one I share a lot with patients of domestic violence, both male and female.

And the rest of the story… The police officer who state he was just there, gave the story that the female (now dead) was struck to the head with a coke bottle. When the officers began to arrest her boyfriend the female (now dead) refused to press charges or to testify. Frustrated that the female would not testify the officer did not want to waste time arresting the assailant. The got their word that they would behave that night and left without the arrest. The state where this happed has a law on the books that, even if the victim does not want to press charges, the police are to arrest the assailant of domestic violence calls. This time it could have changed a life.