Flashlights over at Burned-Out Medic reminded of me of a call from a few years ago.

I was working the day shift out of central division… Oh wait, that’s the opening from yesterday’s Dragnet on RTV. Let me start again.

I was working a rare day shift (OT is a terrible goddess) and we were dispatched to a stabbing call in a mostly residential neighborhood. At 0800. On a weekday. Generally that type of call ends up being more drama than trauma, but this one turned out to be totally, 100% legit. Just as even a blind squirrel occasionally finds an acorn, once in a while dispatch gets one right.

The patient was 37, female, naked, drunk, coked out, had sliced her own throat, AND was covered with dog feces. Oh yeah, she wanted to fight too. She was about 5’0″ and weighed maybe 100 pounds.  Apparently a week of drinking and doing coke with her boyfriend had made her suicidal. Or maybe it was homicidal but she missed and cut herself. We never did get the whole story because  her boyfriend was locked in the bedroom with the dogs. Which dogs had not been let out for a week due to the drinking and cocaine use of their owners. Which, in case you didn’t figure it out already explained the dog feces on the floor.

And on the patient.

Lovely.

As I mentioned in addition to her suicide attempt, she was coked out and wanted to fight the world. Which, being busy sent me, my partner, two EMTs, and two of Sorta Big City’s finest. One of whom was a former EMT and guy that I had trained when he first started on our job. It was good  to have him since he’s big, he knows how we work, and he’s not afraid to jump in and help out. His partner that day used to date one of our EMTs, so she knows the drill and isn’t afraid to get dirty either.

So now you have the picture. Six of us, none of us particularly petite, and all we had to do was restrain a very petite woman without causing her to bleed more, get her on the scoop stretcher, take her down a flight of stairs, get her into the ambulance and thence to the hospital for treatment of her various maladies. Simple, right?

Want to guess how long it took us?

Twenty minutes just to get her secured to the scoop. Although wrestling with a naked woman covered in blood and dog feces MIGHT just be the stuff of some of those web sites, the reality is far less exciting, more dangerous, and not the least bit titillating. It’s actually rather difficult because there is nothing to grab on to. Well, nothing we wanted to grab on to. It’s also exhausting.

Restraining her consisted of using a scoop stretcher, a number of sheets, and six nine foot straps. Which she squirmed out of several times before we were able to get her tied in place. We finally managed to get her restrained, treated, and transported without anyone else getting hurt.

Which some times is an achievement of it’s own.