Armchair Anonymous: First Responder II

I'm Dan Shepherd, I'm joined by Monica Mouse. - Hello.

“- Today we have first responders, part two.”

- That's a good one. - Yeah, I have on top of this sheet of papers is trigger warning, so the last story. There's four of course in the last one, it's graphic, it's graphic, and P9.

- It's gonna stay with you. - It'll stay with you. - The trigger warning is you are gonna repeat this story. - Probably not for kids.

- Probably not for kids, though I told mine. - Okay, and I also wanna say what the upcoming prompts are, we love hearing from Armchair series, so if you have a story on any one of these four, please submit on our website, armchairexpert.com,

tell us about a crazy spring break disaster. Tell us about a bad date. Tell us a crazy twin story. Tell us about a time you've been scammed. So spring break bad date, twin story, or a scamming.

Please enjoy first responders, part two.

♪ A time's coming up ♪ ♪ Good times ♪ ♪ Take 'em slow ♪ ♪ My life ♪ ♪ I had a move ♪

♪ Remember one thing ♪ ♪ You gotta know ♪ ♪ I'm a kippo chan ♪ - Hi. - What fake names should we go with?

- I figured you could pick one for me. - Okay, well again, you're our second exceedingly handsome caller today. We need a handsome name, Duke. - Oh Chris.

- Yeah, Chris. - Okay, Chris, I'm gonna write that down thing. Remember it. - I like that. - You would've liked Duke, though, right?

That's kind of a strong. - Oh yeah. - Yeah. - I don't think I could live up to the name Duke, if I had it. - I mean, it's not that different than Dax.

- Well, Dax is kind of goofy, too. It could go either way. It's like, what is that? - Tech product or something. - Is that the Germans?

- Right, but Duke, that's the Duke boys. - Oh wow. - Chris knows. Where are you at, Chris? (laughing)

- I'm in Canada. - I almost did it again. I felt like just from the pillow. - Oh, I got it.

Yeah, I got a guy on the third word on the last interview.

- I tried not to say eight, you might. - Yeah, he let one slap. - Yeah. (laughing) You could be in any number of first responder positions,

but I'm gonna guess from the mustache where a firefighter is that accurate? - That is correct. - Yeah, I was gonna go EMT. - Oh, no, they kick your right out of the firefighting

if you're not wearing a mustache. - That's exactly right, yeah. We're just kind of funny, right? 'Cause you're wearing like a regulator sometimes. It can't be the most helpful for keeping a seal.

“- Well, that's why you can only have a mustache.”

If you have any of this, I'm like, there's often a little scruff, but this is where the seal goes. It's kind of a log in the jawline. So you're only allowed a mustache.

- Oh, that's like, what do you mean? - That's like they all have them 'cause like this is all I can have.

- And you know that mustache is also very prominent

in the gate community. You guys talk about that at all, you fire fighters, like we also look like we could be in West Hollywood. - We don't talk about that, but I love it. - That's amazing.

- Okay, great. Yeah, our friend Jess is wearing a very proud mustache. - It's a good mustache. - Well, his is also because he used to have to be clean shaven for his job.

And when you didn't have that job anymore, he was like, I'm going nuts with the facial hair. - Mustest time. - Anytime we're on vacation, we all grow bearded.

(laughing) - All right, so Chris, please tell us one of what I'm sure is hundreds of crazy stories you have. - This particular story happened two years ago, October, it was Halloween, actually.

It was during the daytime. So we're hanging out at our hall and the tones go off. And we have what we call a voice lady. And so she tells us what the calls are.

It's like a robotic voice. - Yeah. - It'd be an alarm call, stroke, or structure fire. So the tones go off and the voice lady says that it's trapped. - That's all we get.

- So we hop in the truck. I'm driving that day, we go off to our call. It's only like two minutes away. It's like around the corner. This batch gets on the radio.

They started explaining what they heard, which was not a lot. They were super vague about it. They're like, yeah, we can kind of hear this guys, like in and out, very quiet.

We're not getting a lot of details, but we think he's trapped, but we don't really know. We don't have a lot of information to go off. - Chef's surprise, whatever you're walking through the door. Exactly, so we pull up to the house,

and there is nothing going on. There's nobody outside meeting us. Nobody's panicking, nothing is happening.

“Are you in a rural part of Canada or are you in a city?”

- I'm in a city. - It's a full-time department. - Okay. - We pull up to the house, and there's construction workers at front, they're working on the sidewalk next door.

But they don't really seem too concerned about anything. They got nothing going on. So I get out of the truck with another guy from the back. We walk up to the front door, we knock on the front door, we open it,

we call out fire department. Hello, is anybody here? And this lady walks from the back of the house, and she's got this confused look on her face. Like, what are you doing in my house?

Simultaneously, as we're saying,

“like somebody called 911, we look to our right,”

and we see a man door that's attached to a garage. So we open the garage as we're saying, somebody called 911 and we look inside. And sure enough, there's this old 60s or 70s sports collectible car, I don't know what kind it was,

and it's pulled in like nose front, so the back of it is facing like the big bay door, and it's teedered so that the back end is like on the ground. You know, from the back of this vehicle is too late. Oh, there's a body under the vehicle.

You bet. So right away, we open up the big garage door. I race back to the truck to get some tools to be able to lift this vehicle off of the person. By this time, another fire truck is pulled up

with four more firefighters in it. The ambulance supervisor pulled up. They're in an SUV, so it's like a single automatic. So I go to the truck, I get the tools. And by the time I get back and down the driveway,

which is only like a regular residential driveway, they've already grabbed this vehicle manually by the bumper and lifted this vehicle off the surface and dragged the person out from underneath. God, it's calmed down.

We're only just getting started in the store. Only get to get excited.

“Once we get this person out and onto the driveway,”

you can already see this guy's in bad condition.

He's basically blue and purple from the chest up.

His arm was kind of across his chest and the vehicle had his arm pin. So he wasn't able to breathe at all. And he had no pulse. Oh my gosh.

Really quick, do you know at that moment from the time the call was made to your arrival? How much time is gone by? Maybe five or six minutes. Oh, okay.

Okay. So yeah, he is blue and purple. No pulse, the paramedic supervisor. He said start CPR right away. So we started, I opened up the medical kits.

Hit the AED hooked up. They start doing compressions and rescue breaths. Two minutes goes by, another ambulance pulls up. They have two paramedics in the back and a stretcher and everything. They come out, another minute goes by and we get a pulse back.

Oh, wow. But it's still in really, really bad condition.

Can I ask you, when you're going through that process,

how long is your window of hope? When do you start getting discouraged? Like at what point? Or does it variable? Yeah, it's a bit variable.

“Like it depends on the kind of heart rhythm and stuff.”

So if we have the like zero heart rhythm, you're going for like 30, 40 minutes and you're kind of hoping that's something changes in that time. But then there's different heart rhythms that you are able to shock and every time you shock,

then there's like a little bit more hope. So two minutes in, you're still pretty optimistic. I'm guessing. One cycle of CPR is two minutes. Oh, OK.

God, I'd be terrible at this. Two minutes in, I'm like, fuck, I don't think this guy's going to-- Oh, yeah, yeah, fuck, he's a goner. I've been driving for two minutes. We get this person packaged up onto the stretcher

into the back of the ambulance off to the hospital. There you go. We're all still kind of standing there. All the paramedics are gone to the hospital. The supervisor got into the back of the ambulance.

So his vehicles still out the scene, which means that we have to take it back to our station. They'll pick it up later. So we kind of walk up to the construction workers and we're like, did you hear anything at all?

And they're like, well, we kind of thought we heard like help me help me, but it's Halloween. So we kind of thought it was a prank or maybe a decoration. Well, skeleton on the porch that goes, help me help me. Or, no, the legs under the--

Sure, even if you saw that. It's not that they do have like witchy legs. I've seen that. The old time for this accident. The garage door was closed, so in their defense,

they didn't see anything. So we go back to the station and during the ride back to the hall. We're going over the whole column, we're thinking, we did the best we could.

We gave this person the best chance of survival. We were all very proud of what we did and the quick response and getting the pulse back. We were very proud of what we did. But whatever the outcome, we drove back to the hall.

We back to Choxin, then like a couple hours later, that paramedic comes to pick up his vehicle. And we're kind of like, hey, any word on this guy? How's he doing? He's like, well, unfortunately, the intercranial pressure

was so high that even if he does survive, he'll have major brain damage. It's not looking good. - Well, so his head too, not just his arm, his head had been under a lot of pressure.

- It's because of all the pressures from the vehicle like actually crushing him. And so then he wasn't getting any oxygen and shoved all the blood up into his head. - Oh.

- So it was all just really back. - In case, sorry, one more question. - You hadn't observed around this classic car that there was like a jackout or anything. - It was upline four jacks, but the jacks were very precarious.

They were up on rollers. Probably so he could move it around easier. That idea, I would not recommend doing this. - Yes, yes, okay. - So the paramedic comes, tells us this bad news.

I have some friends that work in the hospital that this guy went to. So I was like, I'll just message and see what they have to say. They message me back. They say, yeah, you went for CT scan.

Came back clear, but he's still in pretty bad condition. We kind of leave it at that. Four or five days later, he walks up to the hall

- Wow.

- Oh my god, so he was fine.

It's you could be. He was able to walk, so there was some pretty good closure. And another crazy part about this story is that when he works at his vehicles, I guess he puts his phone up on the window sill

about eight feet away. And that's how he was able to call 911. He used Siri. - Oh my god.

“- And that's why all the information was so big”

'cause they could barely hear him 'cause A, he was under a car and B, his phone was eight feet away. - And his wife was inside the house and didn't hear any kind. - Oh, God, it makes me want to enact Siri,

but I don't want Siri to be a listen to me. - Put it on. - Well, maybe I just enacted when I work on ship. - Okay, yeah. - Oh, wow, that's wild.

Smart, thinking. - All right, now I got a couple of personal questions 'cause you drive the engine. Have you blasted through anyone's front end? - Every time I'm watching them negotiate here

in LA intersections and it's like it generally goes well,

but I'm also like, I'm sure it doesn't always go well.

- I've never gone an accident or I'd like to move anybody aside or anything like that. Usually people are pretty good. - Okay, that's good. - Have you ever seen 'em respond in New York?

That's about the most exciting thing you can see 'cause they got no choice. They just blow through cabs, they do all kinds of stuff. - Oh, yeah, once it will, we'll throw that up on the TV just on YouTube.

It's pretty entertaining to watch. - Yeah, I was there once I was like 17 when my buddy Kenny, we watched four or five arrive. You know, people are double parks, tough shit. They got no time in your city.

It's an emergency. - We gotta get through it. - That's right.

“- Okay, last question, have you appeared in any calendars?”

I feel like you really must have. - I sure have. - Wow, of course you have. - What? - You belong in a calendar.

(laughing)

- Which last year's calendar?

- What? - It didn't go shirtless with the suspenders over. I went shirtless suspenders down. - Oh, very provocative. - Right on the edge.

- I was on the cover too. - Oh, you son of a bitch, I'm so jealous. - Are you a listener to someone tell you to write it? - I am a listener, but not as much as my wife. - At my wife.

- Let's see you guys all the time. She was the one who actually saw the prompt and wrote in. And I was hoping that she'd be able to come in and say hello to you too. - Yes, we would love that.

- One more thing, before she comes in, Dax, I have to tell you that I probably watch your hot ones episode every six months. - Oh, oh, oh. (laughing)

- Just for the part where you get the one math question wrong, and then you're just like, (laughing) - It gets me every time it's so funny. - My poor primary identity pieces are

I'm a good driver and I'm good at fast math. So yeah, like I lost half my identity in that moment. - It was incredible. - I lost half of that. - It's like if you looked in the mirror

and you had no mustache off us and you were like, what the fuck? (laughing) - Yeah, devastated. - Yeah, well, lovely meeting you, Chris.

And you'd love to meet your wife. - And thank you for your job. - Yeah, thank you. - He's a star, they spent my souls, yeah, he's so hot. - Really hot.

- Oh, hi, friends. - Oh, wow, look at me. - He had tells about this little person that's here. - Oh, this is our son, he's five months old. - And I think he just had an evacuation. - Oh, yeah, yeah.

- On authorize, I bet no one greenlit that. - He wants to ride in. - Yes, he has a story, he wants to tell me. I thought you might like to see the calendar picture. - Yes, yes, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh my God.

- Oh, oh, this is so erotic. - Can you just send me this calendar? - Yeah, this is top-notch stuff. - I thought Monica would like it, but I knew. (laughing)

- Well, I asked him, I'm like, this guy has to have been on a calendar and sure enough from page. - It's all of the mustache. I just wanted to say hi, I love you guys so much. You got me through a long pregnancy

and having a fresh baby and we just love your story telling it's so nice to talk to you. - Yeah, it's right back, guys, you know. - Yeah, what a lovely, lovely little unit you guys have.

- Thank you so much. - I feel very encourage, guys are all fun. - You guys are all fun. - Yeah, everyone's gorgeous as hell. - Even the little guy.

- Thank you, guys, thanks guys, have a good day. - All right, thank you, yeah. - There's so beautiful. She looked like elf-hanting. - Mm-hmm.

- And he, she is so lovely. (laughing) - This is really, really hell. - He looked like the shirtless for the listener. You got a picture, Hugh Jackman and Wolverine.

I'm a fat caliper. - The stereotype of hot fireman is just real. It's almost like they must only hire. - I know. - And they haven't gotten sued yet.

Guys weren't gonna sue over that. That's not even gonna occur to that. - Well, they just tell them like, you weren't fast enough, they lie. - Yeah, yeah, of course.

“But you should be able to look at the group and go like,”

well, I think somebody's going on. Everyone's at 10 and I'm not. I didn't get hired in their sands 'cause I can't wine the hose well. - Oh.

- For them to have enough hose. Now, we said you don't have enough hose, not that you can't wine. (laughing) (upbeat music)

- We just interviewed a firefighter

He was so attracted. - He was so hot. - Is he single? - No, beautiful. - Beautiful wife and a beautiful child.

- Beautiful little baby.

“He was actually on the front page of the calendar this year.”

- Oh, wow. - Yeah, yeah. (laughing) - Okay, anyways, enough about him, Kendall. How are you? - I'm great, how are you guys?

- Wonderful. Where are you? - I am in South Eastern PA. - That's Pennsylvania. - Yes, Pennsylvania.

That's how you talk about it. You're like, I'm from the PA. - And you're close to what Maryland, how far away is Maryland? - Maryland's probably an hour and a half.

Probably closer to Philly. We're like an hour away from Philly. - Okay, great. Did you go into the city, yeah? - Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

- What type of first responder are you?

- Okay, so I am a volunteer firefighter. I'm a volunteer firefighter as well as an alien. - You don't have a mustache. I can't guess it 'cause you didn't have the mustache. - Sorry, I love that you're a volunteer firefighter

and an EMT. Thank you. - So you have the light that you can at some point put on your dash and get going. - Yeah, a blue light.

- And if you ever abuse that. - We have a strict rule not to, although I have definitely thought about it, actually when people are driving slow in front of you, I gotta get places, you know. - I can tell you a rule fall, although.

- Thank you. - You could not trust me with one of those blue lights. - That's why you're not. - We know, we know, you know. - It's a lot of power to have.

- Yes, oh my God, I'm doing bad enough with all the blue lights. - Comes with great responsibility and you're not prepared for that. - And have you been in Southeastern Pennsylvania the whole ride or did you relocate there? - I've been here the whole time.

- It was mom or dad, you know, a firefighter?

- No, but actually my older brother is and I have a twin sister and she is also a firefighter. - What? - That's so cool.

“- For turnul twin, you would have said I'd den a call, right?”

- I'd den a call. - Wow, I love that, any of the same professions. - Did you hear our twins episode by chance? - Thanks for, yes. - She studied twins or whole career.

- Who was interested? - Yeah, what's the freakyest moment? You got itchy, your sister was getting poison ivy of thousand miles away, anything like that? - I don't think we've had that, but she works out a bar too.

She's a bartender and every time I come in, it's almost like a mislubricity. People are whispering to each other like, "He looks like the bartender." - Ah, that's fun.

- That's kind of what we get a lot. The local celebrity vibe. - I love it. - The little robbed, if I hadn't had the like, she cut her leg on vacation, I felt it.

- But we don't even know if it's real. Maybe we should do an experiment and see if it's real. - That's okay, yes. - It was gonna be double blind, you got it here. - And then you see that.

- Bring her away. - Monica will smack her.

- Okay, Kendall, tell us your crazy first response story.

- This story takes place about three years ago. I had been a firefighter for about four years at this point and an EMT for about three. So I kind of know what I'm doing, but still a little new at things. So this story takes place in rural Pennsylvania,

where I'm from, it happened on a Friday night in the winter time. - And you guys have shitty witters, right? You get the eerie effect? - Yeah, it was definitely really cold

and not a nice night for everybody involved. So around 7pm, we get this batch from the fire company for what we call a wires down call. It's gonna be anything involving a power line. So think power lines on the road, low hanging wires,

anything like that. And they dispatch the fire company first. So we can mitigate the hazards before the electric company can get there. So sometimes it does simple as like putting up caution tape

and leaving. Sometimes we have to sit there for a while and wait for the electric company to get there. - Sometimes I imagine a fire's already in progress, right? 'Cause they cause a lot of fires.

- Yes, so sometimes we get this batch to maybe like a brush fire. This dispatch comes out and full disclosure. Most of these calls are pretty boring, but it's not our favorite dispatch. It's kind of like, okay, right at the mill.

We're not doing a lot. We get to the station. I get on the truck and then we make our way to the scene. On our way to the call, the only other information we get from dispatch is that there's low hanging wires

over a roadway. We continue into the scene. And what we see is two telephone wires that had been sheared off at the bottom and that they're now suspended over the roadway.

So the wires are kind of holding the telephone fulls above the roadway. - Okay. - So it's a little bit more interesting than what I think.

“You must wonder immediately how did these telephone poles break.”

- Yeah, unless someone's running around with chainsaw is cutting out telephone poles. I'm really assuming that this is a vehicle accident 'cause nothing else is gonna cause that. So we get out of the truck.

We start investigating and to give a little bit more of the lay of the land of what I'm seeing. The road continues about 100 yards straight and then turns into a Y intersection. In the split of the V of the Y is a cornfield

and then 100 yards past that is a tree line. We're walking down the road and there's nothing else wrong. There's no debris, there's no tire tracks, no skin marks, no nothing.

So I'm very confused. I have no idea what happened. Maybe they fled the scene, we don't know. So we continue walking and about a quarter mile down the road to the right.

I see red and blue flashing lights. So my mind's like, okay, police officers down there. Something must have happened down there. Maybe the cars down there. And as we're kind of walking towards them,

a group of people is now walking towards us.

and then there's a young man and a young woman.

“And the young woman is holding a towel to her head.”

My brain kind of switched from firefighter mode to EMT mode because now we have a patient. I approach the young woman. I'm kind of giving her a glance over. Don't see anything else wrong with her other than the fact

that she's holding a towel to her head. She's walking, she's talking. She has a little bit of blood on her face but overall looks okay. So we walk her over to the bumper of one of her trucks.

At this point, there's no ambulance on scene or anything. And I'm basically the only EMT on scene. So I'm really kind of in charge of this. We sit her down. The first thing I want to look at is the wound on our head.

So I was like, do you mind removing the towel so I could see the extent of your injuries? So she kills back the towel that she's holding. And when she does that, she kills back about a palm size portion of her scalp as well.

Oh, okay, you're gonna get in somewhere. Oh boy, cool. So now, instead of this boring call that I'm thinking I'm gonna be on, I'm now staring at her skull.

Yeah. But not her brain, kind of comforted it that we're not seeing brain. And that seemed brain.

“But few thoughts were running through my mind”

at this point. The first was like, oh shit, that's her skull.

Just because I have never seen anything like this at this point.

But second thought was fleeting, but it was like, this is kind of cool. It's not cool that she's hurt, but the injury is kind of interesting. And then the third thought was,

I'm the only EMT on the call. This is my problem now. Can I tell you my thought? And you can be really mad at me and everyone can scold me,

but I'm immediately thinking she was blowing the guy. And they got in an accident. She hit the top of her head on the steering wheel. And that's why it ripped. That is not what happened, but it is a good guess.

Okay. So I calmly told her, maybe we should put the towel back on our head because at this point, she doesn't know that that's her injury.

I had to make the game time decision and I got to tell her that her scalp's missing. That's probably a bad idea because she's probably gonna freak out. So we have some medical supplies on the truck.

I started wrapping her head kind of keeping the wound clean, keeping her scalp in place until the ambulance could get there. Shortly after, the ambulance arrived. And we were able to walk her over and get her into the ambulance. The MS providers at that point take over a patient care,

but as we're in the ambulance, the young man that was with them comes in. He sits down, he has no injuries. What we find out is that young man was driving was drinking driving way too fast in his truck.

“I think trying to impress his girlfriend,”

lost control of his truck and slammed into both telephone poles. - Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. - And the reason there was no other debris or it's good marks or anything is because he just kept going. He kept going straight through the split of the Y intersection.

He went straight through the cornfield and into the tree line. - Oh, wow. - Also, what we didn't know and what he didn't know was directly past the tree line was a 60 foot drop. - Jesus.

- Into a living. - Oh my God. - Was it a cartoon, telephone poles, trees? - Because it was also dark outside. It must have been very disoriented to run into the forest

and now you're following 60 feet. - Oh, yes. - After the call was over, we actually went over and looked at the truck. The truck was standing straight on its grill.

Its grill was mashed and almost to the cab. They were able to self-extricate out of their truck. We assumed that the wound on her head was because her head hit the windshield. And it kind of scouted her.

- Ah, but they were both able to climb out of the vehicle. Climb us the ravines somehow, get out of the ditch and then walk the quarter mile down the road to the first house that they found. - What's the same?

My mom always says that God loves drunks and some things.

Like the kind of stuff some drunks survive. It's really miraculous. - He had no injuries. - He had no injuries. - What?

- Yeah. - Mike, it feels impossible. - I got to buy that brand truck. I mean, Mike. - Very easily.

- He was upset about what happened, but yeah, he had no injuries. She went to the hospital and got stables in her head, but other than that, she was fine. - Wow.

I wanna know if they kept dating. I mean, I hope for her that was a wake-up call. - I hope so too. - Yeah, but people make mistakes. - That's a pretty size of the day.

- Yeah, but people make sizable mistakes. I mean, the fact that he didn't stop or like try to stop, I don't really know how that happened. - Yeah. - Well, he's like, I gotta get out of here.

I gotta get home. I gotta not get in trouble with this. I'm wrong. - I gotta get to. - I'm drunk and I gotta get off the road.

- They were coming from McDonald's. I do know that. - Oh, so they were all drunk and they got hungry. - Course, that happens. - Now, do you live in a small enough town

that you're liable to bump into these people? - Yeah, I didn't know them, but some other members were aware of who they were. - Wow. - Yeah, I'm thinking of like anything like this

that happened to me in my hometown. Like everyone knows everybody. They were like, oh, Dax did this. - There's definitely been calls where I've known the people involved.

Makes it interesting. - Yeah. - Is it harder to do the job when you know the people?

You don't get to dissociate from what's going on. There's a lot of emotions involved. - I bet. - Oh, this is back to that thing.

“I've been more and more fascinated by lately”

as how anonymous LA is versus how not anonymous, most towns are. And you just get really used to for me 31 years of know whatever know if I crash something. - Well, it depends.

It's like it's anonymous if you're not a celebrity. If you're a celebrity. - I mean, I can't do anything.

- The odds of a first responder arriving

and knowing anyone of us is zero virtually. That's kind of what I'm saying. Like if we were to have any kind of episode, the people that arrive would be total strangers. But not in and most towns of America,

you're probably going to have gone to high school with one of the people. - That has happened. - Well, I'm so grateful that you're into this. - Yeah.

- Thank you. We need people who are like, "Ooh, scalp. This is interesting." That's the vibe you need. You can't be like, "Oh, fuck."

- Exactly. It was a very interesting call for sure. - Yeah, oh wow. Well, thanks for telling us that. - Yeah.

- Of course. Can I give a quick shout out? - Yes, of course. - My sister would have been really mad if I didn't mention her.

So my twin sister Jordan, she wanted to say hi. She wish you could have been here. - She's an armchair as well. - Yes. - During our weekly debriefs,

we need to talk about armchair a lot. - So, I love that you're a twin. - I'm grateful for that, too. - Yeah, yeah. - Let's add it to the gratitude list.

- And you guys should do a twin episode for armchair Jordanus, twin prompts. - Oh, that's a great idea. - This is a good idea. - Admit to the list.

- Oh, well, lovely meeting you and shout out to your sister and keep doing what you do, please. - Was great meeting you guys. Have a good day. - Have a good day. - Hey, I have new folks.

- Hi. - We're going by Chuck. - Yes, we are. - How did we come to this name as a numbed of floor? Is that it?

Numbed of floor? - Numbed of floor. - We're going about from my brother's wedding. There were a bunch of people in the wedding party with my same name and so everybody got assigned a nickname.

- Oh, I got it. - Oh, I got it. - Oh, I got it. - Chuck, stuck. - Oh, Chuck, stuck. - The strongly discouraged by my girlfriend

from using this says, "I'm on a curline here." - Oh, what was her issue with it? - I use it for a lot of things. - Oh, she's just like now everyone knows. - Have you seen Dave, do you watch that show, Dave, by chance?

- I don't. - There's a whole episode where they start calling each other, Chuck. They both go by Chuck. - Okay, so Chuck, can you tell us what part of the world you're in?

- I live in Wisconsin. - Oh, okay. - Okay. - The neighborhood that I heard you slander Wisconsin in a previous episode, but I'm well in a move past the way.

- Oh, what did I say?

“- I only remember that you were joking with him in a soapy.”

And that it was just about us being the intermediary neighbor. I just don't understand why we're not targeting Illinois. - They're the obvious enemy. - We can't rob his here. - I think the joke I made.

Well, I don't even think it was burning Wisconsin as much as making fun of Michigan. Like if I was in Wisconsin, I'd be like, what are you talking about the U.P. as yours? That is connected to Wisconsin is not even connected to Michigan.

- That's fair. - Yeah, you guys have a real grievance on your hand, I think. It doesn't make geographical sense. Okay, so are you in a rural area or a city area? - I live in a city area now.

- Okay, and you're a firefighter? - EMT. - Okay, the mustache. - You thought you were a firefighter 'cause he has a stereotype about moustaches.

- Well, military. - Okay, okay, okay. That works. You were a medic in the military? - I was.

- Okay. - Now you're an EMT. - No longer. So I was medic in the military. It was an EMT for a little while after that.

Try the police officer thing as well. And now I do absolutely nothing for a firefighter or an accident. - Okay, okay. - I have the game.

- Okay, you saw enough action in your tenure. - You could say that. - Yeah. - Okay, so hit us with your crazy story. - This is during my time as an EMT.

EMT is generally where part of the first responder wheelhouse.

One of the other things that we do is interfacility transfers. So moving somebody from one hospital to another just making sure that patients get the right care that they need.

So fairly early on in my career. I was working with a new partner that day and get a call to just do a normal interfacility transfer for a neuropatient which is fantastic because usually

in this person's case they're completely knocked out sometimes completely unresponsive right and so to nice quiet drive to wherever you're going. - Yeah, and what is that transfer generally? Like someone's come in with a neurological injury

or they were already admitted and something goes wrong and they need to go to a place with more tools. - Yeah, I mean, it can completely depend for this individual.

I think they were in home care and it just got to be too much I think the person taking care of them. They didn't have a mental, physical, emotional or financial means to continue caring for this person.

So they had to go in. They got stabilized and then we were just moving them somewhere that can not provide better for long to care for their needs. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) - So, arrive.

You get basically a very brief kind of informational

download from the attending nurses

“and they kind of let you know what you need to know”

for the brief transfer. So, you know, neuropatient, the sky's completely out and is not aware of anything that's going on around. A and O time zero is what we would call it

he's got a couple of bad source on him.

“So just be careful when you're moving him.”

Be gentle, that sort of thing. He's not going to feel any of it but you also don't want to aggravate any injuries. So walk into the room and this is a much bigger person than we were expecting.

They left this part out.

- Yes, and typically you'll send a second ambulance

to help with the lift in a situation like this but we have nursing staff there. They're going to help us move them totally cool which is also probably why we didn't get the second ambulance. - And if you had to ballpark their way,

what are we talking to you thing? - I'm thinking 400 plus. - Okay. - We're able to get them onto our cut and get them out to our ambulance.

Load them in and we start driving down the road it's probably about a half hour transport and about five minutes in a little bit of a smell starts coming up and it makes sense. They're completely out, so a little bit of incontinence

with this individual. I don't really get screened around bodily fluids. Everybody kind of has their one thing. That's not mine. - Oh good.

What a blessing in that role. - Very lucky. Get about 10 to 15 more minutes in and I can just hear my partner up front kind of crack his window

and just hear a little bit of like sniffling. This is one of his triggers. - I understand incontinence to just mean urine or does it include sitting in yourself as well?

“- I think it does honestly it's been a while”

since I've been in a EMT, so maybe I'm misusing. - No, no, no, no. - You're probably right.

That's I always associate it with Piddleston.

- Yeah. - Okay, so we think he's on authorized evacuation. - 100% and has continued to have them. - Oh, by the time that we arrive, I mean it is a very overpowering stage.

- Oh, oh, oh, oh. - We're able to unload them and it's winter, so we haven't bundled up pretty tight. So I'm sure a lot of that smell was probably saying sealed in there.

- Gotcha. - But we're able to get them in the next facility and get ready to slide them over and it's me, my partner, and just these two tiny old ladies. - Oh, not the backup you needed.

- So fortunately, they have a little mat that we can use and kind of helps mitigate the surge of sliding the new of all that. So they will slide them onto a bed that goes super smooth.

And this is our last call of the day.

It's a 16 hour shift, we're like this is cake. This is amazing. And as we're getting kind of the paperwork signed and getting ready to clear out, they go, hey, we're really sorry to do this,

but we're really short today. It's just us and we have to change those dressings. - Would you guys mind helping us roll him? Normally not something that we're allowed to do, but my partner and I were like,

there's no way that you're gonna be able to do those. And it's our last call. So we agree and somehow I end up on the push side of this individual flag. - Oh my god.

- Okay. - I have a knot in my stomach. - Get them rolled up and sure enough, there's an ulcer that needs to have the dressing changed and it's right around his tailbone.

And there's just folds of skin, it's not solid. - It's like an enormous baby has pooped themselves. - With a blowout. - Yeah, yeah, not baby poop. Maybe about the same consistency.

- Yeah. - Put your hand in baby poop, yeah. - Good rolled. - They start unpacking this ulcer. And like I said, we get a minimal brief when we receive them.

So we didn't know how bad this ulcer was. It is significant. - Now we have a new smell on the scene too. - Yes, new smell, new visuals, new sensations. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- As we're going to kind of reposition him a little bit. I put my hand on his back and go to push. And it slips and part of my hand goes into this person's second butthole. - Oh, what are you going to do with the ulcer?

- Oh, so it was bad enough that it threw bone into his colon. - No! - And that is where the majority of the smell was coming from. - No! - Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

Unfortunately I was kind of pulling back at the time. I don't go terribly deep, but deep enough

“where this is not the best thing in the world. I'm just driving, as we're continuing to”

build this person while they're changing the dressing. God bless this woman who is back in this dressing because I don't think I've ever seen anybody do with that fast. High quality did a great job, but she was like this guy is fighting for his life over here next to me and just starts feeding gauze into it cleaning it up. This is where their age became an asset. They've probably seen this a couple times. I'm sure that there's a reason that she wasn't on the push side of the

legs. Unflappable though. Wow. Absolutely. Fortunately, it was able to hold it together. I'm sure it had something to do with my diet of caffeine and nicotine for the last 16 hours. So didn't avoid my stomach until after we loved. Oh my god. Why man? Do you go do a surgeon scrub on your hand arm? They're out de-con, snap the gloves off immediately and this was during a period of time where I had a couple buddies who were laid off and so they were texting me about hey what's going on

in your life. Tell me about the outside world. I've watched too much Netflix and tons too many job interviews so I keep them updated. Yeah. I kind of like on a day-to-day basis and the only thing

God, it's so gnarly. I'm so blown away and impressed that folks. I think most people just look at the scenario and go like I can't and I don't know what to do. Thank god for you guys. Whoop. Yeah. I'm super impressed with people who are still part of the profession while their military first responder or nursing staff anything in between to make a career out of that they're just amazing folks. And do you have any curiosity like are you tempted in three months to call the nurses and say like

is this dude still alive? Is there any improvement in this scenario? I generally was never somebody

to do any sort of patient follow up just the number of contacts that you get and this sounds

“a little cross but like trying to keep your investment low. Yes, I think you probably have to really”

monitor your reserve. Even that adrenaline fatigue you probably would feel. One exciting thing after another for 16 hours. Absolutely. So I got to admit I started listening to you guys like a week or two ago my girlfriend finally wore me down. I think it was into an episode and it's been like crack since then. Amazing. Thank you. I've been absolutely binging it and she's been like an arm charity since day one when she heard I was doing this. She sat me down and showed me

that she had listened to every episode. I'm my apologies to be the love one of an arm cherries you know it's its own experience. Is she around? She's not. She is on a family vacation but it would mean the world to me if you guys be able to do like a shoutout to her. Yeah, what's your name? Her name? Her name's Danielle Daniela. Thank you for turning. Chuck. I know you don't love the moniker but we appreciate you sending him our way. Thanks for being an arm cherry. Thank you for doing that guys. Lovely meeting you

and thanks for all the stuff you've done. Jesus. Likewise guys. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Hi. Take care. Do you think they have to screen MTs for Pica? But do not but continue. After the one with the woman with the twin I was like if she had Pica she might want to eat that

“this sketch. Yeah, the piece that came off. She might want to eat it. I think you want to eat it.”

Which is why you thought of it. No, I don't know. It's like when I said I wonder if anyone drives over these curves and exits this parking crowd without paying. If you wanted to do everything you said what if that would be very bad and skilly. No, this is just I think I'm really scared of Pica. Yeah, yeah. My guess is that Nicole's her childhood best friend. So she's doing her under the bar? No, she's honoring her by using her name as a code name. Hi. Nicole. Hello. Okay, I made a

relief out there. Yes, but my guess is that Nicole's one of your childhood friends. Krinda. Yeah, that's a no. I didn't get it. That's okay. I take a lot of guess. It's okay. It's a good guess. How did we pick Nicole? It's my middle name. Oh, okay. That's probably a smarter guess. Where are you? The Midwest. Oh, good for you. So you are or were a first responder? I was a paramedic working for an air medical service. Oh, on the chopper. Yes. Wow. Okay. That's high state. Did you have any

fear of flying before you signed up for this? Terrified. Still terrified. Really. And helicopter's not the safest mode of air travel. We can acknowledge. It's terrible. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't have

the best tracker. People are always doing things that contradict them. Well, we find ways to

submergent therapy or something. Yeah. The aircraft that I flew on was very small and it was held together by what they called the Jesus piece. Oh, okay. You don't want to call it that. Right. That's comforting. Jesus take the stick. Yeah. Hi. Yeah. Okay. So would I be inclined to think that you're dealing with generally the most severe and traumatic issues that require air lift to a very qualified hospital for the most part. Like no one's going in that thing with a broken arm,

right? Sometimes they pay him memberships. Oh. Okay. I don't want that. This membership. No.

“Don't you think of all people I need it? Well, I think then you might also feel weird. Oh,”

I want to get what I paid for. Yeah. Yeah. That's your right. It's a bad idea. I had idea. So how long did you do that? I did that for five years. And what was the overall experience? Obviously you stopped doing it. My little list kept asking me if I was going to die every day. I went to work. That's the scary thing for your mom to be doing. Yeah. So I finally said,

did you have any harrowing flying issues? Weather was always a factor. Most of the pilots were great.

Some had chips on their shoulder, but they mostly X-mail a Terry. Most of them. All right. So hit us with your crazy story. Okay. When we're told about what our flights were, they don't tell us exactly what the call is until we lift just because they don't want us to make any rash decisions on the ground in case of weather any other factor. That's really smart. I love how many things they think through. Yes. So we lift and we head towards the coordinates and they tell us that it's a

penis computation. Oh, what a blessing. What a blessing. That's a sin because earlier,

That would never happen. Okay. Okay. So you just made my dad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You made 20,

26. So early, but so far. Yeah. This is great. We're like penis computation. So it's either it is or it's bullshit. Oh, okay. We land. We meet the ambulance. Where do you land? Are you in a rural area? We're in Tim but two. We are where the hoodies meet the chickens. Okay. Okay. We open the ambulance doors and there he lays in the fetal position. Oh, boy. And he is cut from top to take. No. And his little testicles are laying there. Oh, displayed out, divided in half. Like

oh my god. And there's no penis. Is there blood everywhere? He waited a while to call and we'll get there. Don't worry. Oh my god. The best part is he kind of looked like carrot up. Oh, okay. That's just the kitchen situation. So the gentleman had placed a turnicate on his cut ball sack. And their medical director had told them to release the turnicate. So that is what prompted him to be laying open with his little balls hanging there. And he's alert oriented,

“kills a cucumber. What? How old is he? He's not even in his 20s. No. No. No. Where is that drug?”

Is anyone up the penis? He's definitely on drugs, right? He's messed up. Oh, he's meth stuff. Yeah. You're not chill in that surgery? Well, I was wondering the ambulance already given him a ton of morphine. Okay. They're letting them meth do the work. We load them up on the way to the ambulance. We were trying to figure out medication dosages. And we do that by asking height. We asked him how tall he was. And he was like, well, I was six, two. Look, until a little bit ago, I lost a couple

inches. I wasn't making a joke about his penis. Yeah. Oh my god. He's a jokester. Also, we grabbed his penis. That was on ice. That was my question. Where? Where did the penis go? But we have the penis and it's on ice. It looked like so. Oh, you have a water. I bought an example. We take it and

it's sitting in the bottom floor board of our aircraft. This is amazing. What is my life? This is

like the ultimate call of calls. We lift. We're heading to the hospital. The aircraft is very small and his head is basically sitting in my lap. I have to check bleeding. So I'm leaning over him towards his junk. But I'm looking at the bleeding. I feel my partner grabbed the back of my flight suit and pulled me back down to the seat. And I'm like, I need to look at his

“bleeding. And she's like, no, you need to sit down. And I'm like, oh, well, why? I'll tell you when we land.”

Oh, no. We gave him some medication called ketamine. He kind of got a little crazy eye. My partner was like, I need you to put the crazy back in your eyes. That's what I'm looking like that. We asked him how it happened. He told us that he was an elevator on a scaffolding and the ceiling fell in the elevator pinned him and ripped off his penis. You said he was out in the middle of nowhere. Did you see any scaffolding with an elevator? No, he said initially it happened in Oklahoma

and then he traveled home and brought his penis. Yeah. So the cut was too clean. We knew it was bogus. He said his girlfriend was outside the ambulance. His wife was at home. We initially thought it was like a luring a bob at type deal. Yeah. So we give the hear report. We call it a hear report. And anyone within a large radius that's an ambulance or another helicopter or a fire to print whatever they can tune in and they can hear. And so we say we're bringing in a penis amputation. We're going

to a trauma center. We land. We go in. There's a trauma surgeon. There's a urologist. There's every nurse probably in the hospital and it's like a circus. Every EMS crew and every ambulance within probably a 50 mile radius has now shown up at the hospital and they're doing like the circles through the ER rooms. Oh my god. And to the point like the charge nurse is like stop. This is not a side show. Yeah. One needs to grow up. The trauma surgeon's like that's too

“clear of a cut. Your story is bogus. You need to tell us what you did. Oh no. No. No. This is what”

happened. So we leave on the way back. My partner tells me that he was pretending to have his way with me while I was leaning over him. What a blessing he was this high. I mean you know how you got to be. That your dick is gone. Your balls are displayed in your like oh this is a

69. I mean you're gone. Yeah, but that's also what got him in this position in the first place.

True. But it gets better. Oh boy. We land at our base and the sheriff's department

He journaled while he was doing this. What? Like doing what? Well he wanted a fake penis. So he thought

“that he would take it off. And that he would be given a prosthetic penis or something. Yeah. Oh,”

it was a whole plan. Like I'm going to get rid of this. So they have to put a fake one on. So what he did was he inserted a bolt into the head of his penis, pulled it back by the pair of pliers. No. Cut off the section with a box knife. Oh my heavens. Shoot it up. But it was the condom. That was what was done ice for us. Was this chewed up penis in the condom? He spit into the condom and then

“would re-insert the bolt. Pull it back. Cut off another section. Oh my gosh, it's going. I hate to say”

this is a ding ding ding because I did just talk about Pica. Oh you did, you did. Wow. Oh my god. Feel like bath salts was involved. I mean there's something real. Yeah, but he journaled throughout the entire thing. This feels like the guy from home. I mean, this is very serial killer. But thank God. Yeah, he's doing it to himself. He survived surgery. He obviously doesn't have a wee wee now

and he has a tube. When he didn't get that prosthetic penis he was looking for. He was always

dreaming about. Wow. That is horrifying. Talk about a bottom when you're an addict. That would be the top story I'd ever heard in a meeting. Yeah. And I got my partner a golden dick trophy. You were able to order that off the internet, I guess. Yeah, they have everything. They got it all.

They got it all. Oh, what a story. Never heard one like it. No, won't soon hear one. I don't think so.

Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. You're welcome. I mean, I want to talk to the guy. How many years ago was this? Well, he was 2016, 17. Well, he's either dead or so. That was about to say. Last I knew he was still alive. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, Nicole, that was a wapar. That was a real wapar. We appreciate you calling. Thanks for having me. Yeah, is it the light? Hope you have a great weekend. You guys do. Well, she had the perfect personality

“to deal with that situation, right? She had like a good dose of sense of humor. That's what you”

need. You have to. Yeah. I'm going to go to bed. Cherishing my penis a little more than you don't want to bite it and chew it up. No, no, I'm going to keep it right where it's at. Stay sober. Oh, wow. A lot of things do be grateful for after hearing that story. Woo. All right. Love you. Love you. Do you want to sing a tune or something with a theme song? Okay, great. [BLANK_AUDIO]