If anyone has startling stories to tell from work, it's definitely first responders. They’ve got tales of blood, gore, party tricks, gnomes...TV remotes? From finding questionable items in unexpected places, to being exposed to strange acts, these first responder chronicles are entirely outrageous.
1. Don’t Do It
The worst one happened while I was on a difficulty breathing call. I arrive and I find myself having a hard time breathing myself, due to the smell of excrement. I then see the patient who seems to be all doped up. We stand her up and her pants are clearly full of excrement. We walk her to the ambulance and I begin to start an IV on her.
I grab her arm to find a vein, and as usual, I place it in my lap. Big mistake. The paramedic shouts at me to wait, then throws a sheet in my lap. She had excrement all over her hands and arms that I hadn't spotted earlier. She had been playing in the excrement, but then it got worse. That’s when I saw her smile.
2. The Curious Seaman
I once responded to an emergency call on base. The elevator was broken so I had to run up eight flights of stairs. My bulletproof vest constricted my breathing a bit so by the time I got to the door, I was very out of breath. The call was a vague medical emergency where the patient was crying and kept saying they needed an ambulance.
The dispatcher had called ahead and the barracks manager was waiting with a key. We opened the door to find a young seaman with his pants and underwear around his ankles surrounded by…adult content and lube. He was just standing there on his tiptoes, with tears running down his face and softly moaning. I walked over to him only to realize that the doorknob to his bathroom was both up his bum and still attached to the door.
But that wasn’t as surprising as what he said next. Dumfounded, I looked at him expectantly and he said, "I backed up into it by accident." Being already out of breath, I had to sit down as the laughter began. When EMS arrived they couldn't believe it either. They ended up cutting the door around the knob and transporting him with the knob still up his bum.
As it was, they had to take him down eight flights of stairs. With each bump down the steps the knob would move and he would yelp. By the fifth floor, it wasn't funny anymore.
3. A Decent Way To Pass
One day, I was working the day shift, riding with the EMS supervisor. We were in the lower 9th ward of New Orleans helping load a 500 lb. patient into the EMS unit on the call. They were requesting that we follow them to the hospital to help unload the patient, when a new call came out for a cardiac arrest at a racy club in New Orleans East.
We left the scene and quickly arrived at the club. It was about three in the afternoon, and the place was packed. I hopped out of the truck, grabbed the defibrillator, and went inside. Several patrons flinched notably at the prolonged open door/sun exposure. I asked where the patient was. The manager told me the patient was in the “champagne room.”
I walked back there with my equipment as the entire club watched. Even the girls on the bar stopped dancing briefly. The "champagne room" was really a square area with high walls that didn’t reach the ceiling with benches around the side. On those benches were three girls, only in G-strings, looking anxiously at the scene on the floor.
An old man was on the floor with two girls on top of him performing absolutely PERFECT two-person CPR. One was doing mouth to mouth, the other was bouncing up and down doing chest compressions. I stopped for a second to just take it in. The EMS supervisor next to me let out a low "whoa." We moved in and took over. I placed the defibrillator on the patient.
He was in ventricular fibrillation, one of the rhythms that we shock. I asked everyone to get clear, then I shocked him. When the patient jumped, all the girls squealed. We repeated a few shocks and continued CPR, intubating the patient. Several paramedics were doing this while I looked through his wallet for a medication list.
He was on several medications for heart failure and high blood pressure. He also had $700 in a separate pocket, which is far too much money for this particular club. The girls all seemed to know him, so we assumed he was a regular. I suspected that he was getting a bonus service in the champagne room, during which he experienced cardiac arrest.
But the surprises didn’t end there. We got the patient into the ambulance and continued CPR, but there were no signs of life. We took him to a hospital nearby. The doctor working there that day was a woman who had recently been divorced and was very angry at men in general. She didn’t speak highly of the patient. Then, his family arrived. It turns out that he was a Baptist minister from the countryside nearby that came into town monthly "to help the kids" with donations.
I suspect, but cannot prove, that some of the help was diverted to the kids’ moms at the club. The wife asked me, "Where did you find him?" in a tone that suggested she had no idea where he went on these trips. We said, "A restaurant," in a thoroughly unconvincing way. His son-in-law took us aside and asked where we actually found him.
We told him, and he thanked us for not telling his M-I-L. I thought to myself that if there is a God, he loved that man, because instead of drowning in his own lung fluids, having a stroke, losing limbs or some other terrible way to die, he went out getting a hummer.
4. Following The Scent
I got a call that came through as a concern for welfare. The victim’s neighbors hadn't seen the dude in a few days, and there was a funky smell in the area. So, we got sent to check it out. We got there and noticed that the area definitely didn’t smell good, so it was not looking good for the guy we were looking for. There was no answer at the door when we knocked, so we called for officers to break it down.
The officers were en route and we were thinking about what to do next. We thought, “Let's hop the fence in the backyard and see if the back door is open.” I gave my partner a leg over the fence, but the next thing I heard was him barfing in a hedge. I climbed over whilst laughing at him, and promptly copied my partner.
This guy had passed, in his hot tub, during a heatwave. The smell when you were over the fence was like nothing I've ever smelt before. He looked as if you'd left a joint of meat in a slow cooker too long. Hot tubs are basically a perfect temperature for bacteria, so turns out bodies rot really fast in them. It was like human soup.
5. Every Lock Needs A Key
This story comes from a friend of mine who is now an ER doctor. When he was a resident, he had two distinguished gentlemen come to the emergency room who both had padlocks on their scrotum. Apparently, these guys were drinking and one thought it would be hilarious if he locked his balls. Without hesitation, the other guy agreed and did the same.
Neither, of course, thought about whether they had the key to take the locks off before it was too late. Because the locks were quite tight, there was a risk of cutting off circulation, so staff needed to act quickly. When they discovered they didn't have the equipment to cut the locks safely, they actually had to get emergency locksmiths in to take them off.
6. Save It For The Salad
I was working as a CNA in an emergency hospital when a woman came in nearly dead and was running a 104-degree fever. They begin questioning her husband. They finally got it out of him—and the answer to it all was unbelievably gruesome. They had been using ranch dressing as a lubricant for three months. It turns out the wife had toxic shock from a massive infection.
I refuse to eat ranch dressing to this day.
7. The Naughty Lawn Ornament
We got called out to a house in Fremont for a “man having a seizure.” We were right down the street so we were first on scene within a minute. As we pulled up we saw a little old lady nervously pointing to a man on her front lawn. The guy was disheveled looking, face down on the ground with his pants down around his ankles.
He was moving up and down in a rhythmic fashion. It took a little bit of time, but after a few moments, we figured out the man is making sweet love to a gopher hole in the lady's lawn. Then, Fremont PD showed up, grabbed the guy, and threw him in the back of the squad car fully aroused. The little old lady was so confused.
I think she sort of knew what happened but didn't want to admit it. The gopher was not available for comment.
8. Not The Smartest Idea
I’m an EMT. I got called to a bar for a traumatic injury. A guy had decided to give an airplane ride to a woman. He grabbed an arm and a leg to spin her around a few times, but ended up bouncing her head off the corner of a pool table. Nobody calls us because they did something smart.
9. Not Your Child’s Sidewalk Art
I was a medic for a little over a year, working downtown in a decent-sized city. I haven’t done a lot in my career so far, but just recently used chemical restraint for the first time. We got a call from PD requesting assistance on a mental/emotional call, which was a pretty common run for us. In our service, the fire department usually doesn’t accompany us on these types of runs. So, we were on our own.
My partner and I showed up to the scene, which also happened to be a Shell gas station, and saw a lone female officer standing facing the wall next to the front door of the business. She was blocking our initial view of the patient. We parked and opened the door to loud screaming and crying. The officer then turned around and looked at us with pure panic. At this point, I can now see the lady who is our patient, laying in the fetal position on the sidewalk.
She was grinding her knuckles into the concrete. It sounded like sidewalk chalk. In fact, she was grinding her knuckles so hard she had exposed bone. As soon as she saw my male partner, she lost her mind and spat at him. She then proceeded to hit her head repeatedly on the concrete wall of the gas station to the point she had a nice little blood waterfall pouring off of a laceration on her face. The injection we gave her at least helped her to not hurt herself up anymore than that.
10. Saving A Snack For Later
I got called out to a private residence for a woman complaining of chest pain. Imagine a June Shannon from Honey Boo Boo-type character, sitting in a well-worn velour chair just...living the dream. Anyway, what she was describing didn't seem like it was of cardiac etiology, but I decided to do a 12-lead regardless.
For this test, you have to place the chest leads in specific locations, and as I was doing this I found the source of her chest pain. I pushed her breast out of the way and I found...I found an Oreo. Yep, an Oreo cookie, lodged in between her rolls. Who knows how long it had been there, festering, but let's just say it had begun to take on the appearance of the people in the Alien movies that got encased in that xenomorphic chrysalis stuff.
There it is, I said it. I can’t believe I revisited this memory.
11. Drinks Over Everything
My roommate was an EMT and told me a story about a Halloween where a guy was so out of it that he fell off a two-story spiral staircase, crashed through a glass table, and got up and walked to the bar covered in blood and glass to order another drink before the EMTs came.
12. A Massive Surprise
As an EMT, I went to a call for a woman in labor. When we got there, she was sitting on the toilet, holding the baby. She said she had no idea she was pregnant. A friend of hers had commented that she looked like she had put on a few pounds. She came to the bathroom to take a pregnancy test, which was still on the sink next to her.
She called her husband at work to tell him she just had a baby. He came rushing into the house and the look on his face was priceless.
13. An Earned Nickname
My sister is an EMT and currently going to school to get her paramedic certification. She earned the nickname Slash this past winter after, as a trainee, she got two very interesting calls in consecutive weeks. The first was a guy who attempted to take his own life after being dumped by his girlfriend. He did this by trying to stab himself in the heart. He is still alive today because he was mistaken about which side of his chest it's on.
The second was a cab driver whose throat was slashed in a secluded neighborhood. After the perpetrators fled, he managed to get out of the car and start banging on the nearest door. The homeowner opened the door, closed it in his face, and called the officer about a man trying to break into his home. Despite the resulting delay in ambulance dispatch, this man also lived.
14. Just Him, His Animals, And Cupcakes
There was an older man living in a house with no windows, no floor, and no ceiling. In fact, the house had been abandoned for a while now. He was found sleeping undressed in the bathroom, with claw marks all over his body from a raccoon or possum trying to nibble at him. He had also been eating nothing but Hostess cupcakes for months.
15. Knock, Knock, I’m Violent
As a brand new EMT, I was doing a discharge from an ER with a 90-year-old man going back home. The man had dementia and was pleasantly sitting on the cot. My partner got us lost, which was not good because this man didn’t want to stay in one spot for more than 10 minutes. I told him to stay seated multiple times. He complied gladly the first few times, but then he started getting really restless.
We finally got to his house on a narrow street in the woods, with not much room for error to back the medic on his driveway. After a few times of going back and forth, he started unbuckling the straps on the cot and stood up, completely ignoring my polite requests for him to stay seated. I looked up front to ask my partner what he was doing and asked him to hurry up.
I looked back at the man, and he had pulled out a pocket knife, ready to open it. Being a brand new EMT, I panicked and told my partner, "Just drive on the grass, I don't care, let's get this guy out of here." Once we stopped, he put the knife back in his pocket, started climbing out of the medic, and I walked him to his door.
I assured he was safely inside the house and got out. Then after straightening up the back of the medic, I noticed his bag of personal belongings was still there. I told my partner, since he was the idiot that got us lost, that he would be the one bring the bag to him. The patient decided to grab a weapon before he answered the door.
My partner just dropped the bag at his feet and backed away. I never worked with that guy again.
16. Third Time’s Not A Charm
I got a call for a "jumper" from a rather low bridge. The bridge goes over a small waterway that isn't even deep enough for a boat with a motor on it. This was about 3 AM in the morning. I pulled up to one officer’s car, while he was sitting there with his lights on and reading a newspaper. I got out and asked the officer where our "jumper" was.
Without even taking his eyes off his paper, the officer said, "She jumped...three times. Now she is just sitting down there in the water." I looked over the side and sure enough, some intoxicated lady was just sitting in the water. I asked her how she was doing while she said, "Tell him not to shoot me." It turns out she jumped when the officer arrived, walked over to the other side, and came back up on the bridge.
As the officer got close, she jumped again and did the same thing. After she jumped for the third time, the officer told her to sit there, wait for us, and that if she got out of the water he was going to shoot her.
17. Stuck In The Stench
A few years ago, at around 3:30 AM, my crew responded to a house for a patient with chest pains and shortness of breath. As we walked into the house, we were immediately engulfed in the foul stench that was produced by the combination of both urine and vomit. I could see three cats running around and assumed that was the source of the stench.
However, as we climbed the stairs of about a 3-inch wide hallway, the stench intensified. We opened the door to make a terrifying discovery. We find a woman covered in her own filth. Not only was this the worst thing that I have ever smelled in my life, but to top it off, my shoes stuck to the floor...and I mean really stuck. The two officers who responded on scene refused to enter the house due to the smell.
I have never smelled anything since then which has ever even come close to the smell.
18. Life Goes On
My dad was a fireman/EMT/cop/jailer for most of his life. Needless to say, he has the best stories. He told me that one night, it was wicked rainy and dark, and they got a bunch of calls about a truck that ran through a couple of telephone poles. When they got there, they found that the driver had been flung through the front windshield and wasn't moving.
The puddle of blood under him was just getting bigger. My dad told me they were almost certain the guy had passed, but they couldn't go up and check because a powerline was down right by the accident. There was no way he could get anywhere near until the power company shut it down. It took a long time, but they finally pulled through and got the power turned off.
My dad and his partner went up, and my dad jokingly said, "Hey, I think this guy is dead. How about you?" That’s when the guy raises his head and goes "No I'm not!"
19. Not The Cute Kind Of Prairie Dog
My friend got a call to a house with an old man. The man said he was constipated and was on the toilet for two days. He was in serious pain. My friend said they didn't have a chance to get him off the toilet and to the hospital, so they were forced to do something at that moment. So, they helped him with his problem. By any means necessary. If I remember correctly, the patient was okay and finally made it to the hospital, though he went through a couple of serious surgeries.
20. A Weird Way To Celebrate Mardi Gras
A friend of mine, who is an EMT, responded to a call in which an elderly man was having pains in his man muscle. Fast forward to when they got to the hospital, a nurse came up to my buddy and asked him to look at the old man's x-ray. It turns out that the old man's wife had shoved Mardi Gras beads into it and couldn't get them out.
21. The Worst Kind Of Love Story
I'm an EMT. One day, we were transporting a pretty hefty lady that was bed-bound. I was driving while my partner was in the back. I heard something clatter to the floor, then there was silence. I didn't think anything of it. I parked, got out to help my partner unload her, and found him holding a TV remote with his gloved hand and staring in horror.
From five feet away, I could see how foul this thing was. There was cakey white stuff that I assumed to be dead skin and hair all over the remote. The patient was chatting about how she hadn't seen the remote for a few days, and was so happy to find it back. I shot 'the eyebrow' at my partner, and in a completely dead voice, he explained it fell out from under her breast when I hit a bump.
Putting together the patient’s comment about how the remote had been there for a few days, I asked the patient if I could check where it came from to see if there was anything else or a wound. I found a perfect imprint of the remote, and a little decubitus ulcer that had formed on one side. I managed to hold it together in front of the patient, but couldn't keep a straight face when I reported my findings to the doctor, who also couldn't keep a straight face.
What made matters worse was when I asked my partner about it afterward. He said that up until the remote had dropped, she had been hitting on him incessantly and telling him about how she was going to write a romance story featuring the two of them. I was laughing hysterically for hours afterward. He did not see nearly as much humor in the situation as I did.
22. The Worst Party Trick
I work in the Emergency Department. The recent case we had was a 67-year-old lady who came in because she, somehow, got a bottle cap stuck in her nether regions. She told us she had been drinking all day for the football game. We just assumed she was showing off a party trick.
23. Hypo-Hypochondria
My friend called me at 3:00 AM to say she had a terrible sore throat and no other symptoms...She called for emergency services and immediately told them she was Covid positive. She wasn't positive and had no other symptoms. She doesn't drive and knew Urgent Care wasn't open. The busses weren't running and she decided she had to be seen RIGHT then.
Essentially, she called emergency services over a mild sore throat...The ER diagnosis? She had a mild case of strep throat and a sinus infection. I drove her home while she cried about how the doctor yelled at her for taking advantage of the system. Of course, she lives in a small town with only two full-time emergency trucks and one crew on.
She also has a history of calling for emergency services over trivial things. She's called over toe pain, ear pain, sore throat, and at one point a stubbed toe...That's the short list.
24. It's Not Over ‘Til It’s Over
I was kneeling down over a victim, tending to his wounds. A man came up behind me and my partner and asked if the victim’s going to make it. I replied with, "We're doing the best we can, he should be able to make it," at which point the man pulls out a firearm and puts a few more rounds into the victim. We got out of there as soon as possible.
25. The Consequences Of Poor Hygiene
My mom is a nurse in the pulmonary and lung unit. One day, there was a 700lb. woman brought in for breathing problems. She stank like something unholy, so they took her to get cleaned up. When they lifted up her rolls, cockroaches scattered everywhere. They were nesting in the sores in the creases of her rolls. Now I'm off to lunch! Toodles!
26. Talk About Building A Dookie Castle
I’m a firefighter/medic. This patient had been in his dirty motel room for days, rolling his own excrement into little balls. There were balls of poop of various sizes all around the place. I doubt he'd moved from his chair for at least two days, as it was full of excrement running down the front. Oddly enough...not my worst call!
27. The Worst Dental Care
A friend of mine was dispatched to a call for a man high on something at his mother’s house. His family was worried about him. When my friend arrived, he said it was the bloodiest scene he had ever seen. There was blood all over the floor, on the walls, and on the ceiling. When he walked all the way into the room, he saw a naked man sitting on the floor flossing his teeth.
Apparently the guy was flossing his teeth with piano wire. It ended up destroying the guy's teeth and gums.
28. A Blinding Accident
There was a guy doing laundry or cleaning his apartment when he dropped a bottle of bleach. The gallon container landed perfectly square and shot the bleach straight up into his eyes. I’ve seen more gore and things of that nature, but I think of that guy every time I see a gallon of bleach.
29. A Circus Act In Real Life
One of my calls involved a stabbing. We walked into the house and found a woman who had a very long knife pushed through the back of her neck, with the pointy-end sticking out of the front of her neck. She was conscious and even talking to us, which just blew my mind. I just remember her talking and watching the tip of the knife blade jiggle with every word she spoke. We couldn't risk taking her by land-transport, so she was medivac'd out.
30. The Shocking End To A Date Night
My grandfather, who was an EMT prior to being a firefighter, had some horror stories to share. This one always stuck out to me. He was on a late shift on a dark rainy night in Fresno CA, when they got a call about a disturbed man in a residential area, walking around covered in blood. When my grandfather got there, the man was sitting on the curb in a trench coat.
He was very much in shock and not responding to any questions. As they checked him out, he noticed he was naked underneath the trench coat, but had no wounds to be found. It didn’t make any sense as to why he was covered in so much blood. My grandfather noticed that the majority of the blood was coming from his pocket. He opened up the pocket, revealing a human heart.
The man in the trench coat and his lover had a home invasion that ended in one of the men's hearts being cut out of his chest, then sending the other off into the night in shock. My grandfather sleeps so well too, I just don't get it.
31. Not A Very Good Cowboy
Once, we had a call where a guy got kicked in the face by a horse. Half of his face structure basically collapsed. It was extremely scary since I had just started maybe a few weeks earlier. The patient was really nice and tried to joke around though. I would have passed out if I were him.
32. The Smelly Surprise
I had a homeless man come up to my rig while I was posted in Santa Monica. He was complaining about a terrible headache radiating from the back of his head. The necrotic stench coming from him clued me in on some kind of lovely surprise awaiting me. I checked the back of his head and, sure enough, I found a 4-inch diameter wound, infested, with cranial bone visible. Suffice to say I did not finish the rest of my burrito bowl.
33. Where There’s A Will, There’s A Way
I was a volunteer firefighter/EMT for a while. A guy fell off of his roof and landed on both feet. It broke both his legs and both bones broke the skin. He was home alone without his cell phone, so he dragged himself from where he fell approximately 30 feet to the closest phone in the garage to call emergency.
34. Proving Maturity Through Immaturity
I went on a run where a girl wanted to prove she was an adult to her dad. She repeatedly ran her head into a telephone pole. Eventually, she aimed wrong and hit herself in the head with a nail left over from some flyer that was there.
35. Running For His Life
I was told this story from a visiting EMT for career day in high school years ago. He got a call out to the shady part of our town by the local PD. He arrived to find a guy tackled by four or five officers, with both of his feet and half his shins missing. Yet, he was still resisting somehow. Apparently, the guy was high, ran from the officers, and fell over some train tracks just as a train was coming.
The train cut off both of his legs from half the shin down. He got up and continued to run on the bloody stumps until the officers tackled him.
36. Not The Best Place To Get Your Jollies
My friend Chris was an EMT for years. His top story involves a man that was found passed on the toilet. Chris and his partner tried to lift the guy off the toilet seat, but he was stuck. The cop that was in there with them shined his flashlight down the backside while they tried lifting, and noticed that there was a plunger in the toilet bowl with the handle going straight up…you know where.
That’s when they figured out just what had happened—and it was utterly disturbing. They looked around the scene more carefully and saw that the toilet paper dispenser was broken off the wall. Apparently, the guy was getting his jollies from placing one hand on the sink and the other on the toilet paper dispenser, and raising/lowering himself on the plunger.
At some point, the toilet paper dispenser broke from the wall, so it caused him to drop too far down, and he essentially impaled himself with the plunger.
37. Picking Up The Wrong Patient
A few weeks after my cousin’s father passed away, my mom was drinking with my cousin at our house. They were just downing drinks. I went to bed, but at about 4 am, I heard my mom screaming. She had fallen in the bathroom and had just pulverized her femur. My dad called an ambulance and was totally freaking out. My cousin passed out on the living room couch.
When I say passed out, I mean his feet were on the floor and his upper body was on the couch. When the EMTs arrived and entered our home, they started getting the cart ready to take MY COUSIN to the hospital. They saw him all messed up on the couch and without skipping a beat, they thought he was the injured person they needed to pick up.
On the ride to the hospital, I was sitting in the front passenger seat next to the EMT and I saw him holding his laughter. When I asked him what was so funny, he just burst out laughing and apologized for thinking my cousin was the person they were there to pick up. Even my mom had to chuckle between the whining of pain.
38. The Missing Ponytail
A guy picked up a girl at the bar and they both, while intoxicated, sped off in his T-Top Camaro. After a few miles, he goes off the road flipping end over end. The female patient was ejected out of the T-Top and the back bumper caught her head. Unfortunately, her head cracked the bumper enough to grab her hair. Long story short, we noticed the avulsion on her head, but didn't know why, until the car was loaded on the flatbed.
Then, we saw that it had a long blond ponytail hanging from the bumper...still with a hair tie in place.
39. All That Over A Lizard
I was getting ready to get off of my shift when a call came in that a woman shot her husband several times. We got there, then had a short little stand-off before she gave up. Obviously, she got taken into custody. We went inside and found the husband passed on the kitchen floor. He got shot about 14 times. She shot him because he didn't want to take his grandkid to some lizard attraction.
40. To Strain Or Not To Strain
Once, there was a guy sitting in a folding chair on the third floor outside his apartment door, with the skin on his upper body just hanging off. He didn’t have a care in the world. Then, he said, "Hurts a bit, but not too bad." I guess when you are whacked out, losing your skin is not as painful as you would think. My partner wanted to go get the stair chair, and I said, "Nah, he ain't feeling a thing, no need for us to strain our backs."
I walked the patient down three flights of stairs as the skin just dangled. But, man, did it STINK.
41. Never Judge A Book By Its Cover
I met with law enforcement to pick up a psych patient they found trying to kick in an apartment building front door. Now, I LOVE psych patients. Not to be cruel, but they really are fun, some of them. This particular dude was top-notch fun. We ended up transporting him to the hospital for a psych evaluation and he had some blood on him that he wasn't sure where it came from.
I rode with him in the back of the ambulance just talking away about all the crazy stuff in his head. He really seemed like an alright guy, all things considered. But then I learned the horrifying truth. After we dropped him off at the hospital, he told the psych doctor he was all bloody because he beat his girlfriend until she passed, and that when the officers found him, he was trying to get into his mother’s building to get her too.
His story 100% checked out. So, kiddos, never judge a book by its cover.
42. Blood May Not Be Thicker Than Water
My dad is a retired cop after working in Charleston, South Carolina, back in the 80s. One story that stuck was when he came up on to a scene of a teen bleeding from a stab wound in the chest. He goes inside to find the teen’s family and extended family in the living room cheering on the Dallas Cowboys. My dad asked what happened to the patient.
Apparently, the kid ate the last of the rice. So, his uncle decided to stab him. My dad found the uncle in bed, just relaxing. The uncle told my dad that the knife was in the drawer. My dad took the knife for evidence, but apparently, no charges were ever brought up and the son went to the hospital alone. That's when I learned that simply being family doesn't mean anything.
43. Lost & Found
I was driving home on a cold rainy evening. At my off-ramp, I saw emergency flashers and a couple of stopped cars. It turns out some 20-year-old girl had rolled her Ford Fiesta and was now screaming nonstop, "My baby, my baby." There was a child seat in the back, and all the windows were down, so we assumed the baby had been thrown out.
Together with three others, I searched the whole hill in the dark, slipping and sliding on the wet steep slope, expecting at any minute to find a passed infant. We found nothing until officers arrived and started another search effort, this time with lamps and everything. We were all soaked by the rain and were sent home by the officers.
A couple of days later we learned the chilling truth. The stupid woman had .2% BAC but fortunately, the kid was with relatives. The mother also had a previous charge and no license. I am glad the kid was safe, but with this mom, she probably has no chance in life.
44. Big As Heck
My brother was an EMT for a while and told me this story. His ambulance was called to pick a guy up from a halfway house to take to the hospital because he was going crazy. When they arrived, it turned out that the officers were already there, and had called an ambulance because the crazy guy was so big that they didn't want to deal with him.
My brother is pretty big, but his partner that night was a 5-foot tall girl, so he decided he was on his own. He got in the elevator to go up to the floor and found this guy in the hallway, yelling at anyone who tried to take him in. When the elevator door opened, this HUGE guy was standing right at the door glaring at my brother.
My brother stared back for a moment, then broke the silence: "Dude, you are big as HECK." The guy's glare softened, then he started laughing. My brother says, "Look man, everyone's just a bit worried about you. Would you mind just coming with me and we'll just get you checked out at the hospital for the night?" The guy stopped laughing and said, "Yeah, all right."
He got in the elevator with my brother, voluntarily got on the stretcher waiting outside, and went to the hospital without incident.
45. A Human Anatomy Lesson
My friend and his EMT partner got a call that a woman just had her water break while having intercourse with her boyfriend. They rushed over to find this young woman freaking out, complaining she has liquid oozing from "down there", and that she believes she broke her water. My buddy calms her down, puts on his gloves, and does a quick examination of her nether regions.
After a moment down there he says, "Ma’am," holds up a finger, "This is sperm. Your water isn't broken. How long have you been pregnant?" She replied, "No, I am not pregnant, but I thought he broke my water!" After a quick explanation of human anatomy, they left.
46. The Epitome Of Bad Karma
Once, I had a call for someone that collapsed and was unresponsive in a public space. I kept asking the woman who was there with my patient about the patient’s history. She didn’t seem to know anything. I soon realized that my patient was suffering from a heat illness. I rapidly cooled the patient. When the patient started turning around, I kept asking him questions to assess his mental state. I never expected to uncover his dark secret.
When I asked him his wife’s name, he kept saying something different than the woman he was with. The woman realized the guy was actually married and was totally stepping out on his wife. She got out of the bus and walked away to a cab while we transferred him. I always wonder if the wife found out.
47. We All Make Mistakes
I'm now a brand new paramedic. We got called to a nursing home for a respiratory issue. This guy had a history of dementia too, so he's not all with it. He was coughing his lungs out. I got him in the back of the medic, gave him oxygen, put him on the monitor, started an albuterol/Atrovent breathing treatment, and I got ready to start an IV.
This guy had THE BEST veins I have ever seen. Then, I blew the first and second vein. I went to a smaller size needle and went for a third attempt. The guy started yelling and shaking his arm. I yelled back at him, pretty sternly, that I needed him to hold his arm still so I could get it. Anyways, I got that one, secured it, and went about the run, no problem. Everything was going fine, so we dropped him off at the ER.
Afterward, I go over his paperwork, and in his mile-long list of diagnoses, towards the end, I see "Parkinson's Disease." I totally overlooked it when I was looking for history pertinent to any respiratory issues. I yelled at a guy with Parkinson's for shaking his arm. Ugh, so embarrassing.
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