Thursday, January 22, 2009

leap frog...or something

My last post about finding a person passed out in the snow reminded me of another story, a kind of weird and slightly embarrassing one.  This happened a while ago, but I don't think I ever got around to posting it.  

A coworker and I are driving around on van patrol one night when we come across a person passed out in the snow.  We'd scene this guy earlier in the evening wandering around seeming intoxicated but he had denied our help and since he was conscious, walking and not creating a disturbance there wasn't really anything we could do.  

Of course we do the usual things and try and wake this person up.  We get nothing, so I do the whole 911 thing, or maybe he did, anyway, we call an ambulance and continue our efforts to get the man to wake up and come into the van where it's warm.  Because we'd seen him not that long ago we knew he hadn't been down all that long and we were kind of hoping we could just take him back to the shelter (this before we had to call 911 of course).  

My coworker says the guy is coming around a little and so we try many things to try and get him to get up, or at least get his face out of the snow so it doesn't freeze.  Finally we just stick something under it as he is just not moving...for anything.  Then the ambulance gets there.  The paramedic says to him "get up, come in the warm ambulance".  The guy then LEAPS up, stumbles, and then walks with the paramedics.  It was seriously embarrassing, we looked pathetic with our "unresponsive" guy positively leaping up!  He was definitely on some weird drugs or something, because that is just not normal.  

Much as we love our clients the next time I called an ambulance for an unresponsive client part of me was praying they'd stay that way...at least till they got to the ambulance!  

2 comments:

Brother Frankie said...

lol... he got ya hun..

it is an old trick used by people who choose to live outside.

dont feel bad. i used to drive an ambulance in NY as well as do street ministry. folks use whatever tools they have to get to either the hospital, a shelter, or someplace warm with food and a shower.

Blessings
Bro Frankie

Awake and Dreaming said...

yeah... see the thing is, we offered him the shelter, food, shower coffee thing... that's what bugged me. Oh well. People use it on us all the time and even the best of us get tricked.

blessings to you as well.