Even Frequent Flyers

If you work in a city long enough you start to learn that there are areas that just produce calls. We have a shopping center in our district that has more medical emergencies in it than every other strip mall in the city combined. A lot of the time it's homeless people that are too drunk to stand and someone else calls for them.

We were dispatched to Taco Bell in this strip mall for a man not feeling well.

We arrived right behind the AMR unit. While they grabbed their gurney I stepped up and talked to the manager. He said the patient had walked in and sat down about 15 minutes earlier but hadn't ordered anything. He also said the guy looked sick.

Inside I introduced myself to the patient. I asked what was going on and he said that he felt weak. He denied having and trouble breathing or chest discomfort. That was about as far as I was able to get before AMR had the gurney ready.

We helped the man to the gurney and then loaded him up into the ambulance. Inside the rig they checked an initial set of vitals which were ok. I asked AMR if they needed anything else and they said they were good.

That was the end of that call. I didn't give it a second thought, until later.

About a month went by and we ended up on another call with that same AMR crew. The medic asked if I remembered the homeless man at Taco Bell and to be honest, he had to jog my memory a bit. The medic said that 5 minutes after they arrived at the ER the man had a massive coronary and died.

Food for thought, even your frequent flyers can be really sick sometimes.