EMT Paramedic Stories

I don’t remember much about how the day was going, mostly because this run kind of over shadowed every thing else. My partner and I were covering an area near Interstate 70 that had a small truck stop located at the nearest interchange.

My partner was a new EMT, and had not had many experiences yet. I think after this run, he quickly learned that there was not much glory, or modesty, in emergency medicine.

We got our dispatch to the truck stop and the report said there was a sick man in the restroom. Didn’t sound to serious, and really nothing out of the ordinary. If you are not in the medical field, you may not realize just how many people die or call for an ambulance from a bathroom. It just seems to be the place everyone runs to when they are feeling bad.

This run was different. As we arrived at the truck stop, one thing became very clear. Inside was someone that was very very sick. There was a trail of fecal matter leading from the back parking lot all the way to the front door and inside. Whoever or whatever was in there was surely not having a good day.

The truck stop had a restaurant built into it, but when we entered, we noticed it was empty. The smell of human feces filled the air and nobody was hungry anymore. We proceeded to the bathroom, and I can honestly say that it was one of the most shocking sites I had ever seen.

The bathroom was an area about 15×15 and the floor was literally completely covered in fecal matter. It seemed like about half an inch deep of brown smelly water, and we had to make our way through to the stall where the man sat.

I opened the door to the stall and found a very large man sitting there unconscious. He was breathing but did not respond to even painful stimuli. We quickly got him on our cot and to the ambulance, for more than one reason, where we began to work on him.

A couple of IVs and heart monitor. His vitals were not well and this man was in hypovolemic shock. Hypovolemia is a state of the body being depleted of fluid. Either blood or water and can be cause by various reason, even without actual fluid loss.

I started pouring IV fluid into the man and trying to warm him up. We were about 15 minutes from the hospital, but I was getting a lot of fluid in him in a short amount of time. After about 2 liters of Saline, he began to show some signs of life. He started to moan a little and even opened his eyes.

We were nearly at the hospital when the man said his first and only words to me. His words were, “I had a roast beef at the (gas) station.” I am leaving out the highly known name of the gas station, but this chain of station often has franchise restaurants built into it. Ahh, it was becoming clear now. This man may be suffering from some kind of food poisoning. If it was the case, it happened awful fast. The place he was referring to was only about 40 miles away. Either he slept a little since then, or this was some of the fastest acting food poisoning I had ever seen.

As we rolled up to the emergency room, I tried to wake the man to let him know we were at the hospital. The man looked at me, and just as suddenly as he woke, the man went into cardiac arrest. Resuscitation efforts were started immediately and we quickly got him inside.

The ER staff worked on the man for more than an hour. However, nothing helped this soul, and he was pronounced dead in the ER.

I’m not sure what happened to the place that served him the food. I did get confirmation from police that the food had been found to be tainted, but I never heard what happened as a result or how many people had gotten sick.

I can tell you one thing though. Ever since this run, I just do not have the stomach for roast beef and truck stops.

We received a call from dispatch one day that a teenage girl had been reported missing and presumed to be seriously considering suicide. The caller stated that the girl had been missing for almost 48 hours, and despite all of their searching, had yet to be found.

The setting was a very rural farm house, with about 300 acres of land, mostly wooded, behind it. The girl was last seen running off into the woods, and the only sign of her since was a suicide note found laying on the trail near the woods edge.

Many county agency units had been mobilized, including about 20 deputies from the sheriffs department, 2 ambulances, 2 K9 search teams, a few fire departments, the Red Cross, and lots of civilians. The command center was set up in the driveway of the girl’s home, and the search was on.

The search started at about 10 AM and lasted throughout the day. Groups of searchers were formed, and the land was searched in grids. By the end of the day, much of the home owners land had been covered, and the hopes of finding the girl that day were rapidly dwindling down. Eventually, the State Police was able to send a helicopter with Infra-Red capability. This gave the crew the ability to detect heat in large ranges on the ground. It took about an hour for the helicopter to arrive, once they had permission to head our way, and we were glad to hear that better search help was finally coming our way.

The entire search crew was pulled back to the command center, so that the ones monitoring the infra-Red were not confused by searched or the missing girl. The helicopter arrived and immediately started their mission. It took only about 10 minutes for them to find her from the helicopter. Once they did, they hovered above her location, so that rescuers could know where she was.

It was only a short trip to the girl’s location. She lay hiding just 10 feet from where her suicide note was found. The girl had been hidden there all day long, and watched searchers come and go. She would move from one side of a log to the other to avoid detection.

A few things became grossly obvious. The biggest thing was that finding a person in the woods can be very difficult. Another was that we need better K9 dogs. However, the most important lesson we learned was this. Never ever forget to search the area near you. You see, the command center was located in the driveway, but that driveway was only about 20 yards from the edge of the woods. The girl had been sitting and listening to every conversation at the command center the entire time.