Losing Two Fights In One Day

We responded to an apartment a couple blocks away. The sister of the patient called us because she saw her 25 year old brother come home looking like he had lost a prize fight with Evander Holyfield. She also noticed that he could barely walk. We arrived to find PD standing in the hallway talking to our patient through a locked door. And, shockingly (statement dripping with sarcasm), the brother was angry. According to his sisters he was jumped by a group of guys at a party the night before.

After 10 minutes of trying to get him to open the door PD picked the lock (not a difficult task because it was a lock that you could open with a coin).

Once PD had a few words with him they asked us to come down and evaluate him. The young man was laying on his bed, arms wrapped around his blanket, in stubborn refusal. He told us that he was hit and kicked in the head but that he was fine. After several minutes of arguing, he agreed to stand up so that we could see the extent of his injuries. As he tried to stand up he nearly knocked over one of the police officers. He couldn't stay vertical for more than a few seconds. He quickly resumed his position on the bed. We were informed that there was no way he was going to the hospital. He also said that he couldn't remember things from the night before such as the location of the incident.

We tried to reason with the guy. We told him that we had a legal obligation to evaluate him before we left or we would have to take him to the hospital. I think it's a little bit funny when someone thinks that they can over power 3 firemen, 2 cops and 2 paramedics. I mean seriously. If it got real nasty the cops could tase the guy or we could sedate him (say nighty night). I digress.

Eventually we had to restrain him and put him into full spinal precautions. There were a lot of obscenities used as he tried to fight us off. We also had to calm down his little brother and explain why we were taking such actions. Because of his violent tendencies, I got to ride to the hospital with AMR.

Once in the back of the bus he was still being belligerant. I made a deal with him. If he would behave and let us evaluate him and start an IV on him I would release his arm from the restraints. I wasn't sure if he was going to uphold his end of the bargain. Surprisingly he did. He mellowed out. I was able to do everything that I needed to do. Had he been this cooperative back at his house we probably would have let him stay there. I told him what to expect from the doctors and nurses, that they would be doing much of the same stuff that we already had done, but he needed to do it again. And I told him not to lie. If he remembers something but doesn't want to talk about it, say exactly that.

Once we had transferred him to the hospital bed my punching bag of a patient apologized to us. He ended up being quite a different patient from the one we had to wrestle.