K so if you have any interesting stories from your job, share 'em here. Could be anything you like, from stuff out of the ordinary, dealing with stupid people, or just cool shit you do for your job. To get things started I'll post a few of my most eventful calls to date.
So I'll begin with my currently most eventful 5150 psychiatric call yet. I'm working a graveyard shift as a driver and me and my partner are dispatched at around 1am to pick up a patient at West Med Anaheim ER who's on a 5150 psychiatric hold with a history of schizophrenia. We get restraints ready in case we'll need them and proceed inside for a report from the nurse. The RN tells us the patient (she is early to mid 30's in age) isn't so much combative as seriously repetitive and confused, and really likes to move around and take off her clothes (lol). So once my partner gets all the paperwork ready, we go inside to get the lady on our gurney to take her to a mental hospital. She was sleeping but once we started releasing the hospital restraints she began to wake up, and was instantly pulling up her gown and revealing her lady parts. We try to tell her to stay still and cover herself up, but she's schizo'd out and not really paying attention too much, so we have to pull down her gown for her. Then she starts saying some super stereotypical stuff. She looks at my nametag and goes,
"Midget... Midget? Is that your name"? *she grabs my arm gently*
"Yes ma'am that's me, I'm your driver for tonight. Could you please hold still for a moment so we can move you to our gurney?" (We have to use a method called a draw sheet, where we slide the patient across from the hospital bed to the gurney because they're unable to stand or walk. She could, but once again, she was just schizo'd out, so we had to move her ourselves. She was around 225lbs plus).
"Midget, I'm doing this for you. I can see you're not saved, I'm doing this to save you. Hell is bad. You're not saved, I'm trying to help you."
"Yes ma'am, thank you. We're gonna' be sliding you over to our gurney now, okay?" *we slide her across and she now gently grabs my partner's arm, too, and looks at his nametag*
"Slash is your name? Listen Slash, I can tell you're not saved and I'm helping you. Hell is bad!"
So we restrain her because she won't stop moving around and won't stop lifting up her gown. Given she's repetitive, she continues saying things like this until we get her out to our ambulance, where things begin to turn. She had apparently been a nurse or someone in the medical profession before and was asking for some ice chips for her mouth that was apparently getting dry. Because we were already loaded and about to go, we couldn't get any ice chips for her, and I don't believe the hospital had any ready at the time anyway. This made her very agitated and she started screaming.
"I need an ice chip! My mouth is dry! I worked as a nurse I know they have ice chips!" *yelling at my partner, who's trying to take her blood pressure* "What are you doing? You're an EMT? You're incompetent! Why do you have to take it twice? You're incompetent!"
At this point her blood pressure rose because of how agitated she was, up to 157/113 (the diastolic is what had us concerned, that's high for a diastolic. Systolic BP moves around much more so it's not uncommon to see it in high and low ranges). I called out supervisor asking about transport protocols for high blood pressure (which we don't really have) because the receiving facility might not accept her with a high blood pressure. We talk to the ER nurse and they take our patient's blood pressure again in the ambulance to confirm what my partner already did twice. The patient slowly began calming down (quote - "It's okay, they're not incompetent, they just don't know what they're doing. It's okay...") and the blood pressure began to lower, so we were cleared to transport.
During the transport she went back to her "Hell is bad" slogans. My partner would call up to me saying, "Hey, Midget? You hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"She wants you to know that Hell is bad!"
"Oh, okay. Tell her I know."
When we arrive at the mental hospital she starts talking about hearing trumpets and the second coming of Jesus and the Rapture.
"Are those trumpets I hear? It's the end, it's the Rapture. Are those trumpets? J - E - S - U - S!" *she closes her eyes, sticks out her tongue, and flips the bird with both hands*
So I ask her, "Hey, who are ya' flipping off?"
"Jesus!" *I almost couldn't contain my laughter*
"Why Jesus? I thought He's supposed to be saving us right now!"
So we get a facility employee to let us in and bring her to the section she'll be going, all the while with her talking about trumpets and the end times. After they clear her for admittance, they assign her a room, but we run into a problem - our gurney won't fit through the door. It's a bariatric gurney, so it's larger and wider and made for Roman-tier sized people. We now have to carry her in on a break-away flat (this thing:
http://cdn3.volusion.com/dpgcr.dshea/v/vspfiles/photos/JSA-900-2.jpg?1391945049) to get her inside her room. Carrying people,
heavy people on this, is not fun, plus the fact it's risky with how active she is. We have to take unrestrain her from the gurney and restrain her to the break away flat to move her in.
We ask for help from the facility because the more hands, the better, and we need people to hold her still while we put on the restraints again. So while we were getting her prepped, about 5 employees, a mix of nurses and techs of the hospital held down her extremities while we worked to get her ready. Then, for some reason, the nurse holding the patient's right arm let go of her (extremely stupid thing to do), and I just see her hand fly straight into the side of my partner's face with a loud THWACK and a yelpish scream from him.
"Slash you okay?"
*with noticeable irritation* "Yeah I'm fine, let's just get her into her damn room." (She hit him perfectly over the ear, giving him a nasty ring and screwing up his balance). We lift her up and even with help Jesus FUCK she was heavy, and get her into her room. From there, it was the facility's responsibility. We were tired and ready for a break (it was now 3am). I start heading back out to decontaminate the gurney when I hear singing from down a hallway. I peek the corner to see who it was to find another patient already admitted spinning in circles in the middle hallway going,
"I crucify myself eeeeeeveryday! I crucify myself eeeeeverday! I crucify myself eeeeeverday!"
And that seemed to seal up the call. My partner had a nasty headache for the rest of the night and needed some time to let it settle before we could clear for any more calls. We didn't get any, so we slept for the last couple hours of the shift.
Anyways that was my most eventful 5150 so far, and have a couple other stories, but I'd like to hear some from you guys.
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