Some guy beat me up Christmas Eve.
Many of my friends aren't surprised by this event, it was bound to happen. However, the timing was a little unfortunate.
There I was, on duty Christmas Eve, as we will be New Years Eve. Luck of crew scheduling, it happens. We get a couple of calls, with this one coming through as a traumatic injury. A gentleman fell down 18 steps into his basement, hit his head and was knocked unconscious. That makes it a Medic call, higher than our lowly EMT-B pay grade, but the incident took place in our first due area and it's going to take the Medic unit a while to get there, so off we go to help out until the Medic arrives and takes over.
The police beat us to the house. I suspect they were dispatched because of the nature of the call. Traumatic injury, unconscious, etc. Did he trip and fall? Was he intoxicated, (which is all right in your own home), but he may be a mean drunk and we'll need a little help. Was he pushed? Was he in an argument and intentionally tried to harm himself?
The list of possibilities goes on and we appreciate the cops being there.
The patient was awake and in his living room when we arrive. He's already argumentative with the cops, which could point to intoxication. Again, okay in your own home, but it's never a good idea to argue with people who carry a badge and are trying to sort things out. Argue too much and you could end up getting invited to the White House for a strained beer.
The patient's attitude goes from argumentative to abusive to combative. Contact is made with the police .... and .... it's on. Our role now is to act as spectators. The gentleman may be intoxicated, or suffering from a brain injury, but he's fighting with the cops and that is not in my job description.
As Smack Down continues I start talking to the patient's (worried) wife and another couple who were there celebrating Christmas Eve. I'm doing my job trying to figure out if our patient is a mean drunk or possibly suffering from a head injury. I am not allowed to diagnose, I am not a doctor, but I am working on possible reasons for the combative posture taken by the patient.
The fight goes on, the Medic arrives, and I'm starting to think that this is a case of head injury and the patient needs to be strapped to a back board and loaded up into the Medic unit for a chopper ride to the trauma center.
The fight gets nasty as we, about five of us, grab our patient and proceed to strap him to the back board. It may strike you as a little crude, grabbing a guy in his own home, on Christmas Eve, and strapping him down, but it has to be done. I think it is a little crude, but this ain't Star Trek my friends and we do what we can with what we got. Political Correctness goes right out the window when someone is hurting. There's no Kum by ya. There are few niceties. There is only an injured man who may be suffering a very serious, life threatening head injury, a distraught wife, and deeply concerned friends. And us, the emergency responders; police as well as EMS.
In this kind of fight I normally end up with the right arm. It has become my specialty for some odd reason (see my earlier blog "Never start a fight with a man who works with his hands"), but this time I ended up holding his lower legs, and, even with five people holding him down he was kicking my butt. And somehow, he was also kicking my right hand. As you can see by the picture, he got in his licks.
We were finally able to secure our patient without any one's blood contributing to the holiday decorations. The Medic took our patient to the trauma center. It was decided that the patient was too violent to fly him in a chopper, so off they go via the Medic unit.
I will tell you that there are some calls that, in hind sight, interrupt my sleep and this was one of them. I spent a portion of the remaining shift, until 6:00 the next morning, wondering if there was a better way to handle the call. I don't mind being in a tussle once in a while. It is not infrequent that we wrestle with a patient suffering a diabetic emergency. But those wrestling matches are usually brief and quickly resolved when the Medic injects what amounts to sugar water into the veins of the patient and they snap out of it. This fight was a tough one. Our patient was young and very physically fit but seriously injured and needed expert medical care ASAP.
I believe we did what we needed to do, and we did so as gently and quickly as possible.
But it still bothers me. The wife was a rock star, remaining calm as her husband fought with two police officers and several EMS providers, verbally threatening us each step of the way. The friends were deeply concerned, but did not interfere in any way. Such is not always the case.
Looking back, I am very proud of the wife, and now wish I had taken the time to tell her. I also think, based upon what I was told at the scene, that she is married to a great guy.
I wish him the best.
It is my strong suspicion that this wonderful couple will bring in the New Year together, in love, and staying out of the basement.
Peace.
