light as a feather, stiff as a board

For those of you who are my age or a bit older, you probably remember that after the movie the craft came out, people used to try and do the "game" "light as a feather, stiff as a board". Well, an IPDA I had a little while ago reminded me of that, at least the stiff as a board part.

So, in IPDA we do breathing checks every 15 minutes and then wake ups every two hours. It's our death prevention plan. One of the reasons for having a drunk tank is to supervise people coming down off drugs and alcohol and keep them safe. That means checking breathing and rousability.

When I went to wake this IPDA up, I started by banging out the door and shouting their name. No response, fine, that often happens. Open the door and shout, nothing. Shake the person at the hips with my foot, nothing. Kick their feet and shout, nothing. So I get my coworker and he "observes" (makes sure I don't get killed) while I pinch the persons shoulders, nothing. I pinch harder with both hands while shouting, still nothing. Finally I make a fist and rub the persons sternum, still nothing. I rub AS HARD AS A CAN (which is quite hard I do think), nothing. Now consider this, that is a very painful thing to have done. I can inflict pain on myself by rubbing my sternum far less hard with my knuckles (try it, you'll see). My coworker tries the same things; no response.

So, I phone an ambulance (we get to dial direct and skip 911, which is awesome). Emergency services though seems to have this delusion that I can be in two places at once. We phone them at least once every two days, maybe more like once a day, there can't be that many operators, and yet they never seem to realize that if I'm on the phone with them, I'm not with the person because we don't have a cordless phone. I guess they're following a script though... oh well. Anyway, they ask me a million questions so they can fill out their form. And some of them are SO dumb. Bah.

me: "Hi, I'm calling about a person I can't wake up, even with a hard sternal rub, they're breathing okay, but we can't get any sort of response" them: "are they consious?". "are they breathing". Then we have to go through a process of steps which I have to yell to a coworker because our radios aren't working (but that's a different ramble).

Anyway, EMS responds much faster to this then to my stabbing incident on the weekend, and try the same things I have. The fire fighters say they've never seen anything like it (i believe one was a paramedic), then though, the guy tries to put some sort of air way in, and my IPDA's teeth are clenched, apparently, this isn't normal at all, and he lets me no descretly "their faking"... Vitals are all normal, and paramedic dude is getting some sort of painful stimulus response. When the ambulance gets there, they realize the persons faking it too. So they sit them up, person stays sitting up and the paramedic says "if you were unconsious that would be impossible. Get up, and stop it, we'll take you to the hospital.

So they take them to the bench, walking I might add. The IPDA is still really...odd though. Second one in recent history I've had who plays sick and then doesn't want hospital. It's hard to figure out. Most people want the hospital. They beg us to send them for non existant complaints.

I think this particular IPDA was tripping on something weird and was still high. Becuase seriously, it was odd. When I tried to roll them on their back to assess breath they stayed completely stiff. It was the total opposite of an unconsious IPDA who normally is limp. This person was literally stiff as a board...