Stupid Keeps Us In Business

A few weeks ago, we were leaving a medical call when we heard a dispatch for "breathing problems" at a nearby gas station. It was only a couple of blocks away so we asked dispatch to add us to the record and headed that direction. I'm not sure what caused it but while en route, I started to get one of those bad feelings. It's somewhat of a sense you acquire after a while, although it happens more with fires than it does with medical runs. Right out of the blue, my mind said "cardiac arrest" and as I thought that, the medic who just arrived on location called CPR in progress on the radio. Just my luck, we pick up a call and end up with a cardiac arrest.

We arrived about a minute later and went to work on the patient who was laid out on the concrete in front of the store. A few people gathered around to watch the action, with one jackass recording it all on his iPhone. As for the patient, he did not make it although we tried for 20 minutes on scene before loading him up for the hospital. I am clearly not a doctor but i'm willing to bet that the all around poor decisions by him and his wife greatly contributed to his death. As I worked on my time sheet, I tried getting the story and patients history from his wife which turned out to be quite an interesting one. (The time sheet is something that the officer fills out during a cardiac arrest to log the times that drugs are administered)

According to the wife, they were driving down the road when he said that his chest hurt. Thankfully she was driving because he went down fairly quick. She told me that once he went down, she attempted doing CPR while driving him around. Can you visualize that? Didn't pull over, didn't call 911, just kept driving and doing CPR for the next 3 miles!!!! The funny thing is that the hospital was only about a mile and a half the other direction from where they started out. Now as for the man, he had a history of heart problems and had been taking un-prescribed Vicodin, Cocaine, and drinking Four Loko. Now i'm no expert but i'm pretty sure all of those things are extremely bad for your heart, especially if it's already a ticking piece of crap. So this guy's poor choice in recreational activities has landed him in a gas station parking lot getting his chest mashed on while some idiot stands there recording us on his iPhone. What a way to go out.

Oh and one last thing as we were wrapping up, one of the paramedics hands me a bloody needle and tells me to hold on to it. Bloody needles are not uncommon during a cardiac arrest but it wasn't one of our needles. It was laying next to him to what we can only assume fell out of his pocket. Stupid keeps us in business.