One from a paramedic I know

[crazylegs]

I was chatting to a paramedic while doing some first aid training and they mentioned an incident that happened a few years ago.

Three paramedics were working on a person who was in full arrest,so there they were with the kit bag(s) Defib out and in use, Oxygen out and in use, chest compressions, shocking, the works and a guy walks up STEPS OVER the patient, then looks back and goes, 'sorry mate, didn't see you.

How wrapped up in your own little world do you have to be to not see/hear the
Three paramedics in green who were all wearing Flouescent jackets
Huge amount of kit that was out and in use
Defib shouting SHOCKING!
The guy on the floor barechested lying prone.

[BookstoreEscapee]

That is sad and frightening.

[PepperElf]

... it's sad when all you can say is "at least he didn't yell at the guy for being in his way"... O_o

[The Last to Know]

I used to work at a truck stop (where my son works now) a little background - it is open 24hours - even on Christmas Day - there are no known keys for the doors to lock them even if we had to. One of the ladies who worked on the evening shift related a story to me where a guy came in and was reaching into the pepsi cooler to get a soda (located right next to the 4 beer coolers) and dropped dead on the floor from a heart attack. She had been a nurse & told somebody to call 911 & started doing CPR on the guy, but it was too late. The paramedics couldn't bring him back either & they had to wait for a medical examiner to show up to pronounce him dead before he could be moved. In our small country county that apparently took about 4 hours for him to show up. The cops stayed at both entrances & warned people about the dead guy, but most (70%) didn't care & a few even told the cops - oh well, I need my beer & proceeded to step over this guy to get into the beer cooler. I was just shocked - there are two other stores within a 30 second walking distance of this particular store, but it was much easier for people to walk over the dead guy. Still something I can't forget about.

[Chromatix]

Prone ... you mean supine? Prone is face-down!

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Let me guess:cell phone?

[tropicsgoddess]

Let me guess:cell phone?

It wouldn't surprise me if that was the case...or his crackberry.

[Rapscallion]

Reminds me of a time when Drunk Mary (a local elderly lady with a character evidenced by her nickname) collapsed in the entry to the car parking area near the shop. Whilst a couple of schoolboys got their mobiles out and tried to help her (they didn't know her, but they learned fast), I saw three cars driven by peroxide barbies (as I liked to call them) drive around her, and none of the drivers took even a second glance at her as she lay in the road as they got out of their cars.

I'm glad to be out of that area.

Rapscallion

[LewisLegion]

My grandmother collapsed near the railroad tracks while taking her daily walk to the post office. The very first person who saw her as they drove by stopped and helped and got her the ambulance there within minutes. Four days later she passed away from complications due to the massive heart attack that she had had.

If I found out someone had stepped over her or driven past without so much as a glance I'd have hunted that person down and done things not condoned on this board in any way shape or form.

[crazylegs]

Prone ... you mean supine? Prone is face-down!

Yer, that's what I meant....

Let me guess:cell phone?

Don't know, I didn't ask that detail.

[Kalga]

Prone ... you mean supine? Prone is face-down!

I love this site.

[AccountingDrone]

mrAccountingDrone worked for one of the Va Beach volunteer rescue crews when he was duty stationed in Norfolk.

They had some brittle diabetic jackass with cardiac who weighed between 500 and 600 lbs. He lived on the 3d floor of a walkup apartment building [no elevator] and took up 2 transport gurneys, he wouldn't fit on a single. They were there on callout on average once a month.

He refused to move to a ground floor flat, or lose weight. Sounds horrid but they were praying that he would just drop dead. he said that there was literally no way they could do the compressions for CPR on him. They pretty much would slap on oxygen and transport to the hospital, and were heartilly glad that he used some other transport company to return hum as he could not walk enough to climb the 2 flights of stairs.

[Dinguz]

This may not be as extreme as the above stories but my friend once lost control of his car and slid off the road and smashed the side into some trees. There were three of us and we all got out unharmed. We immediately turned on the hazard lights and called a friend who drives a Jimny (not the best of jeeps but it was all we could get) to try and tow the car back up on the road. While we were getting out the rope and tending to the knot and other such necessities, three cars drove by without even slowing down to check out the accident. As if that wasn't faith-in-humanity-reducing enough, while my friend was trying to tow the car some asshole comes along and decides that despite the obviously big enough gap on the other side of the road, my friend's tiny Jimny is in his way and starts honking his horn like crazy, apparently being a too important person to at least offer us some help.

And by the way, the area we were driving in is a nature-preserve-park-thing so if the super-important, hornhonking final stage STD had somewhere important to be before a designated deadline, he wouldn't have taken this road in the first place!

[PhotoChick]

I'm not sure about where you are, but here we (the fire department) can't transport them home from the hospital. They must have some kind of private transportation, (a friend, a taxi or a private ambulance services) of course that didn't stop the people in the big nursing home complex from using us to get TO the hospital for their appoinment, pre-schedualed surgery, etc.

[Gabrielle Proctor]

They had some brittle diabetic jackass with cardiac who weighed between 500 and 600 lbs. He lived on the 3d floor of a walkup apartment building [no elevator] and took up 2 transport gurneys, he wouldn't fit on a single. They were there on callout on average once a month.

He refused to move to a ground floor flat, or lose weight.

That's terrible! What an asshole!

Why do people have to be so stubborn when it comes to their health?