EMS Tales

Paramedics Julie and Matt encounter several different types of emergency calls in Final Sin – it is very real life that one never knows what kind of situation they might be dispatched to. Even when your dispatcher includes information about your call, it doesn’t always match what you find.

In the excerpt from Final Sin posted on May 25, Julie and her partner Matt are dispatched to a possible heart problem. What they find instead is a woman who wants them to use their defibrillator on her car battery because her car won’t start! (By the way, this is a true story borrowed from an EMT that we know)

To complicate matters, the woman believes that she has been poisoned by her beloved cat!

No matter what the call, EMS professionals know that any crisis, real or imagined, is of tantamount importance to the patient – and they are all trained to provide high standards of care. Still, there are some calls you can’t help but chuckle about afterwards –

Here are some TRUE stories that have been overheard in conversations between Julie, Matt and scores of EMS professionals:

The dispatch information was “a woman complaining of severe stomach pains” = about half an hour later the EMT called dispatch to let them know that she delivered an “8 1/2 lb male stomach ache”.

The Paramedic was trying to get the female’s health history when she was told the woman was pregnant with Elvis Presley’s baby – the year was 2004.

The crew was dispatched to the scene of a tractor trailer accident. When they went to apply MAST trousers (anti-shock garment) and removed the driver’s jeans, he was wearing very dainty and frilly pink panties… It seems a husband came home early and the man left in a hurry!

The call was for a man “complaining of pressure in his chest” – when the crew arrived, they found the man’s two grown sons sitting on his chest because he had gotten angry with his wife over some shopping bills.

If you are an EMS professional – share your humorous stories in the comment section (…just please remember HIPPA when you do):