Where are my patients now?

During this Christmas I find myself looking back on this past year and the hundreds of patients I’ve come into contact with and wonder where they are now. One of the bizarre parts of my job is, you are with people during possibly the worst time of their life. You find out intimate knowledge of them. You see them in their home and varying states of undress. You see them cry, vomit, bleed, etc. And then you never see them again.

As an EMT, you follow up with patients when you can, usually when you’re back at the hospital later that day for another patient. But after that day, they disappear into the world and you have no idea whatever happens to them.

The alcoholic man who I talked with for an hour about his life and how he was going to die if he didn’t get help and detox. Is he clean now? Is he dead? Or is he still in his penthouse, lying in his own filth, drinking a fifth of Vodka every day? Did he ever reconnect with his wife?

The beaten prostitute I gave a blanket to and talked with at four in the frigid morning. Did she get outa town? Or did Linda’s pimp catch up with her? You’ll only know if you get that assault call, which are long odds.

The teenage girl who tried hanging herself? Did my words have any effect on her? I have no idea. She was a scared girl, angry with her parents. I don’t think she’ll try and kill herself again, but there’s a whole world of trouble she’ll most likely get into.

I find suicide attempts are the ones I wonder about the most. Because after that traumatic situation, they are either never going to try it again, or they’re going to go home and do it right that time. Like the father who tried overdosing on Claritin pills. He thought if he took a bunch of pills, any pills, he would die. Instead he got really drowsy. Later that day, I found out he escaped the hospital, and now he knows how to properly kill himself. Is his daughter spending her first Christmas without her father?

It’s easy to say to yourself “what’s the point?” cause, honestly, this job can be heartbreaking at times. Whether you made any difference at all, you’ll never know.

I really hope I get to meet some of these people in heaven. Maybe then I can ask them how it all turned out.

The gang banger with the gunshot wound to the head that I helped save. Did he just get shot again and killed? Or did he find retribution and kill someone else?

Perhaps it’s best not to know.

That’s the trouble with life and death. You don’t know how much of history you have changed or set in place. I have to believe that a just God is in control. I think that’s what I’m celebrating this Christmas.

A Thrill of Hope. The Weary Soul rejoices.

For Yonder Breaks. A New and Glorious Morn. 

My Egyptian Sidekick

Many times in my life I’ve found myself in situations I swear was straight out of Indiana Jones. Sometimes this is of my own doing and other times, God just drops it in my lap. Such was the time I got to ride a camel around the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt with my best friend, a beautiful Egyptian girl, and most importantly, a sidekick named Short Round.

I was on a mission trip in Cairo working with different orphanages and centers for disabled children. (Note: I am a good person). 

At the end of our time there, we went to visit the pyramids. Well, an Egyptian kid of about 12, who was a friend of the pastor’s, wanted to go to the pyramids. I have no idea where this kid came from. So we brought him along and for some reason, out of the team of 15, this tenacious kid decided to cling to me and by my sidekick for the day. Seriously, he would not leave my side for the entire day. He even wore a baseball cap. 

Rather than get irritated by his relentless questions, I decided to go with it. He was my sidekick. I called him Short Round cause, well,…he was short and round (Note: I am a terrible person).

Sure enough, we rode camels, had lunch, and climbed the pyramids. We became fast friends and by no doing of my own, I had my very own sidekick. 

When Clay got him to yell to me “Dr. Jones! Dr. Jones!” I fell to the floor crying with laughter, as did the rest of the team.

I miss Egypt. 

My Grossest Call

Being an EMT in South LA, I have seen some gross things. Active vaginal hemorrhage. Facial trauma with missing teeth. Cut off nose, etc.  

My tolerance is pretty good. I’ve seen scenes that belong in a horror movie. Despite my tolerance,  I’ve got nothing on Nurses. Nurses will talk about things that make my stomach turn, …while they eat.

To date, my grossest call came during my training. We got a call to the third floor of a hotel in Inglewood. Not the worst place, but not where you’d want to stay. My partner and I were first on scene and, as we busted in the room, we found a man in his forties lying on the bed. He had been tripping out on heroine for 3 DAYS. He was altered, but alive.

Because he was lying on the bed for three days and hadn’t moved, he was lying in his own filth. Days of incontinence and, as a result, HE WAS COVERED WITH ANTS. Ants were feeding on his flesh and were in his eyes.

We immediately brushed off what we could, but we had to quickly pick him up and put him on the gurney to get him out of there. That’s when I heard my veteran partner say, “I got the legs”.

Being the new guy I of course got the short end of the stick and had to get behind this guy’s chest to pick him up with his head against me. Gross.

He was given an IV and taken to the hospital. He made it, but it was one of the worst examples of drug abuse I’ve ever seen.

At the hospital, all the nurses would talk amongst themselves saying, “Have you seen Ant Man”? When ER nurses are grossed out and tell each other the story, you know it’s bad.

And for the rest of the day, I was picking ants off me. They were in my ear.

…Yeah.

Combative Patients

I get paid to fight people. It’s one of the perks of the job. Not because I like hurting people, but rather it’s excellent practice for if you are in a situation where you need to.

Many patients, after having a seizure or a diabetic coma (these are many of our calls) become altered and combative. They don’t know what’s going on and in their confusion, they think this group of men is trying to kill them. Thus, their instincts respond with full fight-for-your-life adrenaline and they fight us, sometimes viciously.

This is the reason why I fight old women. It’s for their care….I promise.

My favorite combative patient was a man in his twenties who had a seizure. My partner and I got the common call in South Central and as soon as we rolled up, a fire fighter came out the door and yelled to us “Get the restraints!!” This is when we knew it was going to be a good call.

We entered into a bedroom where this 6-foot 200lb beast of a man was thrashing on the bed with 6 Firefighters trying to hold him down as sweat poured down their faces. My partner, a small scrappy Italian with braces, immediately RAN INTO THE ROOM AND JUMPED ON THE GUY’S BACK AND ROAD HIM LIKE A BULL. I swear I remember him giving a Howard Dean “YAAHHH!!!” before he jumped.

I would have laughed, had I not been in the middle of serious wrestling mach. I jumped in and went to work on trying to restrain the man’s flailing arms. It was near impossible. He was rolling, flipping, spiting and screaming. He tried to bite me multiple times and I almost had to put an elbow to his face.

I used joint manipulation to control him without hurting him. Meanwhile, my partner, still in full Rodeo mode, put soft restraints around his wrists.  All 8 of us were working in total chaos.

It was a blast.

We hit him with a sedative. It didn’t work. A normal patient with full adrenaline is difficult to control, but this guy was a Bear. After 10 minutes of wrestling, we got him strapped down on a backboard so we could move him safely to the ambulance. The police never showed up.

The Fire Medic and I jumped in the back and although the Patient was strapped down, I used my entire body weight just to hold his hands down from ripping the Medic apart, who was trying to place and IV. The guy jerked so violently, his IV ripped out and blood started spraying everywhere.

Remember, all this madness is happening in the back of a speeding ambulance veering through traffic. So we in the back were getting thrown around as sirens and the patient screamed. Total chaos. By this point, the medic and I were drenched in sweat and laughing.

I realized then, I love my job.

Worse Than Death

Honestly, I do not fear death. It’s not scary to me. But there are two things that I consider worse than death. Babies and Prison. These are two things I don’t mess around with and don’t take any risk in happening to me. Both take away your freedom and ruin your life (Note: I want to have kids but way down the line).

Here is the case and point for Prison:

I ran a call to a courthouse jail for a male difficulty breather. I was first on scene and when I entered the jail I came upon a six foot five three hundred pound brick house of an inmate, sitting on the floor crying hysterically.

Amidst my confusion, the Sheriff came over to me and whispered in my ear that this man just learned he got 50 to Life in Prison. He was hyperventilating so much they had to call 911.

This man was sobbing in a way I’ve never heard before. His life was over and he knew it. I don’t know what his crime was, but to warrant that level of punishment it must have been violent and substantial. Yet at that moment, there was no pride, no disregard for society, or contempt for the establishment. Rather, pure sorrow and regret. He had ruined his life, and he knew it. Normally a rather imposing man was broken down to a bawling child. It was incredibly sad to watch.

Looking towards a career in law enforcement, I don’t really sympathize with people who commit heinous crimes. But in that moment, I genuinely felt sorry for this man. His life was over. He will die in prison, all for mistakes he made.  Mistakes I could tell he genuinely regretted and would do anything to take back. But time only moves forward and the choices we make in a single moment can destroy our lives.

Now that is scary.

Brazilian Dance Off

This is the story of how I got into a dance off with Brazilian street kids.

I love dancing. I am by no means great at it, but what I lack in talent, I make up for in what the Spanish call “fuego”. So much in fact, the fire Marshall won’t let me dance anymore. Not after what I did to the roof of that club.

The last time I was in Brazil, I spent a day in the city of Manaus with my medical team. We went to check out the opera house and in front of it were a group of Brazilian teenagers dancing. I made a crack about “Look, it’s Step Up 3: Brazil”, or some nonsense as I often do, and they must of seen me because they started calling us out.

Now, we all know the rules of taking it to the streets.

1. If someone calls you out, you have to step up. It’s a matter of honor
2. If you get served (God forbid), you got to serve them back.

They called us out so, representing my team, I stepped up. Fortunately, I had already learned to salsa dance on the streets of Brazil, so I had some experience in this environment. 

So I go up to this group of renegades and call out their boy (literally. he was 12). He does his moves. They hoot. They holler. I got served.

Everyone waited to see what I would do. I went up to one of the kids with headphones on, put one of his ear buds in mine to get a beat, then I BUSTED OUT MICHAEL JACKSON MOVES IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET. 

The kids were FLOORED. Not because the moves were particularly good, rather I think it was just the last thing they expected this white American to do. Clearly these uneducated kids don’t know of our lack of shame. They couldn’t believe it. 

To my team’s amazement and laughter, this Brazilian kid (the one in the yellow shirt) and I went back and forth a couple times to the gasps and cheers of the crowd until--- after one particularly impassioned set I did, the kid threw his hands up in the air and walked away. 

He got served.

I couldn’t believe what just happened. I was in shock and quite confused. So I taunted him (as I often do to children) and immediately convinced my team to leave before I was found out that I’m not that good a dancer. Yet somehow I won the dance off against this dance crew of teenagers. The only time I’ve EVER clearly won a dance off and it was on the streets of Brazil. We all laughed the whole way home. 

Everything in this story is 100% true….. except for the part about the fire Marshall. 

The Hot Nurse Scale

The beauty of a Nurse is relative to how many hours you’ve worked and how disgusting your patient is.

You see, in this field of emergency services, you are constantly surrounded by ugliness, especially working in poverty stricken south LA. Your day is filled with death, disease, sickness, poverty, crime, vomit, blood, and many other bodily fluids that need not be named. For this reason, when at a hospital, a female nurse with any resemblance of feminine beauty is made all the more gorgeous by comparison.

A woman who, if seen on the street, would garner a rousing “meh” quickly turns into a “I want to marry her” when your regular company consists of a vomiting homeless man with ulcers living in his own feces. Because my field consists almost entirely of men, most of the females I am around are nurses, and thus are the best example.

So I have figured an equation to show how much your view of a nurse’s beauty (b) is influenced by how many hours (h) you’ve been working and how disgusting (d) your patient is.

If the nurse is normally a 6 on the American beauty scale, when you’re on your 22^nd hour of work, and your patient is a drooling elderly obese diabetic, she can easily go up to an 8.  Here are the steps of the equation:

1. Take the number of hours (h) worked on your current shift (1-48) and Divide it by 10.
2. Take the disgustingness (d) of your patient (1-10)
3. Add the two numbers together and divide them by 10
4. Add that number to the normal base beauty (b) of the nurse (1-10) scale.
5. This gets you’re the relative beauty (rb) of the nurse

h/10 + d  +b = rb        example:       19/10 + 8    +7 =  7.99 (round up to 8)

     10                                                      10

Here, I learn better visually. Basically, in simpler terms…

This

Plus this

Equals this.

So thankyou to all you nurses, who brighten up our day after a bleeding crack whore with missing teeth tries to stab us . Beauty is essential to the soul, and God knows we need it.

Don't Go In The Water!

We rarely see what dangers lie beneath the surface.

A couple summers ago, I was traveling along the Amazon and working with different village communities. One day, my team and I were painting houses and it must have been 200 degrees out; plus the horrendous humidity made it feel like 300. 

After sunset, we went to the bank of the river where we had swum earlier that day. We were hot and drenched in sweat. The water looked so appealing and we just wanted to dive in and feel that refreshing coolness. The water was good and was meant to be pleasurable. But as soon as our feet touched that water, one of the locals came out yelling at us to get out of the water. We didn’t understand, but he said it with such conviction. So of course, we didn’t go in to the river.

When we asked him why, he didn’t give us the reason. All he said was, “No. You can not go in after sunset”, in the most mysterious foreboding tribal accent you can imagine. It always kills me when someone tells me no without saying why.

Aggravated and frustrated that we didn’t get what was good earlier that day, we went inside the boat.  That night as we moved down the river, we heard the captain call out, “Jackadae!”

Jackadae is Portuguese for Crocodile.

We looked to where to the water met the land and saw pairs of red eyes just above the water, illuminated by the spot light. As those red eyes submerged into the water, we realized why we couldn’t go in after sunset.

        

In that situation, the local was infinitely wiser than us and had our well being in the front of his mind. We just had to trust him. I think it’s the same way with God. He wants the best for me and knows what will hurt me. I just have to trust him. Even when he creates something good and pleasurable, like the river water, it may not be the appropriate time or scenario and he says no. 

I realized then that the jungle is a perfect example of this world. A place that is beautiful, exotic, and deadly. Wisdom keeps you alive. I think much of the bible is akin to worn map There is a rhythm and nature to this land and if you obey it you will live. As my Old Man taught me, "We don't break laws, we break ourselves upon them." If the world demands obedience of us to survive, like in Jungle Law, so then, wouldn't this be true of moral law as well? We don't always see everything. We'll never have all the info. But God does.

What I’ve found is, if I don’t listen to God, who is perfect, and I take my own way, sin can creep up on me and destroy me.

… Much like the Jackadae. 

My Saddest Call

To date, my saddest call I’ve ever ran was watching someone lose the love of their life to death in front of their eyes.

I was in a hospital in Inglewood, and a patient a co-worker of mine brought in was in full arrest (heart stopped, not breathing) as a result of a heart attack. I hopped in and started doing chest compressions.

This man was a police officer in his early sixties. Emotionally, the hardest part of the job is not the patient, but the family and loved ones who are breaking down while you’re trying to save their loved one. In this case, the police officer’s wife was in the room while I worked on him. As I furiously pumped this man’s heart, trying to keep him alive and get it to start again, she was bawling. She cried out to God and repeatedly asked Jesus aloud to save her husband. She spoke to her unconscious husband, begging him to not leave her. It was the saddest thing I think I’ve ever witnessed, but I had work to do.

I think there’s something different about chest compressions. Physically touching, you are connected in a way to someone as they’re dying. You feel them as their life passes from them, but at the same time it’s such a violent act. You are using all your strength to keep someone alive. Him being a married police officer, I felt an even greater connection to him than I do when we’re working on say a gangbanger. I pumped and pumped, almost breaking this guy’s ribs as his wife watched, completely powerless to stop death from taking the love of her life.

Despite everything, he slipped into death. It’s very rare you can bring someone back. The doctors told me to stop. I relented. We called it. She lost it.

The nurse gave her a chair to sit in. As I took off my gloves and left the room, I stood in the hallway watching this woman. I had a front row seat to the worst moment of her life. This job gives you a view to a side of life few people ever see. It teaches you what’s really important. I don’t know how long they were married. I don’t know what her name was. But I do know she must have loved him with fierce conviction. Her life had just changed forever, and I was there to see it.

It’s the only time I’ve ever gotten choked up on the job.

Despite her praying, and crying out to Jesus, he did not answer her. People die. It’s what happens. I do not believe God ignored her cries. I believe his heart broke as much as hers.

This was my first week on the job.

My Craziest Call: GSW

People often ask me, as an EMT, what was my craziest call? As of now, it is my first Gun Shot Wound (GSW). My partner and I awoke at 2am to a GSW call in Inglewood. We threw our uniform on, kicked on the lights and sirens, and hauled to the call. We arrived to a chaotic seen of flashing red and blue police lights, caution tape, bystanders, and fire department rigs. The body, a male in his early twenties (could have been a teen) was lying on the front lawn of a home. I looked him over but couldn’t see a gunshot wound, but I did see blood pouring out onto the lawn. This meant the gunshot was to the back of the head.

We rolled him over to check the trauma on his backside. As we did, blood shot out the back of his head, almost spraying my partner. I checked for ID, but he had nothing on him other than pepper spray. With the utmost urgency, we put him on a backboard (gunshots can cause spinal trauma) and put him on the gurney while trying to stop the bleeding.

As soon as we got him into the back of the ambulance, he went into full cardiac arrest, meaning his heart stopped beating and he stopped breathing. At this point he is considered clinically dead. We take off for UCLA. With these calls you have to go to a trauma center, and this part of Inglewood is the furthest you can be from a trauma center in West LA. With a long way to go, I started doing chest compressions as the fire department paramedic but a bag valve mask over the patient and forced air into his lungs.

As I was pumping this guy’s heart, it caused the blood from the back of his head to go spewing out and for blood to start pooling on the floor of the ambulance. We threw down towels as to not slip on the blood. Doing CPR is much more rigorous that it would seem and after five minutes, you’re sweating. I looked through the window, and we were only at the 405 and the 10. There was not much hope.

Finally we made it to the UCLA ER. We pulled him out the back and I continued to do compressions while stuffing towels under his head to curb the bleeding all the way to the trauma room. In my field, having a full arrest is rare and so is a gunshot wound, but having both at the same time is near unheard of. We got him into the trauma room, threw him on the bed and a team of 12 trauma ER doctors went to work. They pumped epinephrine into his system, and he regained his heartbeat and started breathing. The guy made it. It was a good night,… except for cleaning the ambulance.

On A Wing And A Prayer: A Testimony of God's Providence in the Amazon

Recently I went with a Bel Air team to Brazil intending to work on a Medical Boat traveling up the Amazon River giving aid to the native villagers. Unfortunately, Brazil kicked me out.

On the 4th of July, our team flew from Los Angeles to Panama and then to the city of Manaus, Brazil. While going through customs, the Federal Police informed me there was a fine on my passport from an earlier trip – which turned out to be a clerical error. I offered to pay the fine, but it was no use. The Federal Police forced me on to the plane going back to Panama. I waved goodbye to my shocked team. I was going home. I knew that even if I could work things out to return, the odds of finding my team in the middle of the Amazon were slim to none.

As my flight to LA didn’t leave from Panama until the next day, I convinced the airline to put me up in a hotel for the night. They begrudgingly agreed, but inexplicably put me up in a hotel twenty-five miles from the airport. Traveling in a taxicab through the foreign county at night, I realized not only did I not know anyone within a thousand miles, but also no one knew where I was. I was on my own. Upon arrival, I received an email message from fellow team member Kyle Collier. He sent me phone numbers for Pastor Dejard, our Brazilian contact. When I called, he told me to work out the fine with the Brazilian Consulate in Panama, get back to Manaus, and he would somehow get me to the medical boat. As it was now midnight, and my ride to the airport leaving the next morning at eight thirty, this plan was ludicrous. But after a little investigating, I discovered the Brazilian Consulate was literally three blocks away from my hotel!

I now had a choice to make. Go back to LA, or attempt the most insane Hail Mary pass of my life and try to get back to my team. After much prayer that night, I decided to go for it. The next morning, the Consulate gave me the necessary paperwork so I could fly back to Brazil. I quickly hailed a cab and raced to the airport. Late for my flight, the airline Attendant ran me through the airport security and we made gate just as they were closing. Once on the plane, I knew I needed a Portuguese translator. I turned to the gentleman behind me, told my story, and told me that he and his newly wed wife not only knew Pastor Dejard, but they went to his church. By this point, I knew God was behind this.

After working things out with immigration, the newlywed couple drove me to the church office where I met pastor Dejard. He figured I had exactly one shot at meeting with the team. The next day I journeyed with a Brazilian guide, who didn’t speak a word of English or Spanish, 200 kilometers up the river. We took a ferry to a taxicab that drove for 2 ½ hours on a lone road through the jungle. Arriving at the river, my guide pointed to a speedboat, waved goodbye, and drove off. I got into a speedboat with a cross-eyed driver and we journeyed up the river for the next hour and a half.

Being on that glassy river, with the setting sun and brilliant cloudscapes, was one of the greatest moments of my life: a moment of experiencing God in all his beauty and providence. We finally came to the village and the driver pointed to a small chapel up on a hill. I took my guitar and walked into the back of this chapel to looks of disbelief from my team. I thought this stuff only happened in movies. After 48 hours and 2,000 miles, my journey had come to a close. I stood there realizing that God had worked in a real specific way in my life. Also, that I should have studied more Portuguese.