Telling stories to non-medical folks

Brandon O

Brandon O

Puzzled by facies
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What's your approach when you get the cocktail party question? "What's the craziest/grossest/etc thing you ever seen?"

So if you go to a party, or something, people want to hear, you know, 'Oh, what's the grossest thing you've ever seen, man?' People want to hear it but to an extent, sometimes you want to tell it, sometimes you don't. You get a feeling that either you're just gonna come off sounding like a rescue geek, 'Oh, yeah, one time, I remember...' Or, you don't want to come off sounding like an a-hole, one of those, 'Oh, man, my job's so rough, I don't want to talk about it.' So you're caught in a catch-22. You either talk about the job and tell people everything they want to hear, and you run the risk of sounding like some kind of dweeb, whose only real thing in life is, 'The time I went Code 3 for whatever.' Or you sound like some kind of stuck-up a-hole who's so hung on himself that, 'Oh, my job's so rough, I can't talk about it.' And, in reality, people like that want you to ask you about it, they want you to drag it out of them, 'Come on, man, share, tell us!' F-ck you, whatever! So, either way, you run the risk of sounding kind of like an a-hole. (Tangherlini)
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I just mutter to myself, shuffle my feet around and wander off... saying something like "you'd never believe it anyway, and I saw it twice..."
 
"Spaghetti sauce on toast, still gives me shivers thinking about it."
 
Just make something so wacky up that they laugh, but keep a deadly serious face on the whole time.

Like...

I came up on a middle age guy who tried to inflate a rubber boat in his butt to see if he could float...He said he wanted to be a super hero, and no he wasn't on drugs or mental.

Keep a dead serious face and then look whoever asked dead in the eyes and go, "He looked just like you..." Even if its a chick.

I've never done that, just saying...If you wanna make them uncomfortable too.
 
I've got my go to: a large lady in an untied hospital gown stuck to a leather lazy boy on a humid summer day. Which might still by the strangest call without context I've ever run.
 
Making it funny will make people listen...
 
burnsmh said:
Keep a dead serious face and then look whoever asked dead in the eyes and go, "He looked just like you..." Even if its a chick.
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:rofl:
 
I usually tell the one about a patient who got drunk and in some deluded state of sexual fantasy decided to shove his wife's vibrator up his *** and then couldn't get it out..... Paramedics crying with laughter while trying to take him seriously and transport to hospital:rofl:
 
"I really don't want to tell the details, but let's just say I will never look at guacamole and salsa the same way again. Nor will I ever eat them again without thinking of that infected open sore."

I said this at this year's Cinco de Mayo party, when asked that same question.
Needless to say, the chips and dip were pretty much un touched after that.
 
Generally I just tell people; I mean there are one or two really horrifying things that I've seen that get stuck in my head and will be forever but the majority just all blend together and get forgotten so it's not like I have a great list of "really gross stuff" in my head ready to tell.

I think because I am not some big burly man that people don't expect me to have seen lots of really unpleasant stuff, I dno ....
 
Just load it with as much jargon as possible. "We ran priority 1 to a difficulty breathing... when we got in the door the guy was tripodding and slightly cyanotic, satting at around 80 and capnography at 70 millimeters of mercury. We threw a non-rebreather on him with 15 liters and got him on the truck. His sats weren't going anywhere and he had a history of COPD so we put him on CPAP but he barely tolerated it while we ran lights and sirens to the hospital."

Guarantee no one ever asks you again.
 
Remember don't talk very loud in a restaraunt, you may clear out your section, and piss off the wait staff if all their customers leave
 
The stories that I take home with me and think about are the ones where I've seen the beautiful side to humanity.. Those are the ones that I'm proud to share..

Strangers stepping up and literally taking the shirt of their back to help another, a person pulling bravery from somewhere deep inside them that they never thought they were capable of. A skateboarding punk-looking teenager cradling an old woman who fell on the sidewalk...

In EMS, you see the beauty that binds us all together as people --if you look for it. That's what I share with people.. Sure it's not as "cool" as seeing someone sit up after slamming them with Narcan, but I'm green enough in the field where I can still fart rainbows and find the happy-happy-joy-joy of every shift.
 
Household6 said:
The stories that I take home with me and think about are the ones where I've seen the beautiful side to humanity.. Those are the ones that I'm proud to share..
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Great freaking answer.
 
Household6 said:
The stories that I take home with me and think about are the ones where I've seen the beautiful side to humanity.. Those are the ones that I'm proud to share..
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This, the story that I go to is assisting in delivering a baby. I generally try and brush the question off but if I have to answer or tell a story I try and come up with a positive experience on a call or just a simple community assistance or welfare check that made a difference for someone.
 
My answer always varies on how drunk/annoyed I am. For me, strangers always ask ,"So what's the worst thing you have seen?" And that ticks me off.

Happy me: Oh no one wants to hear the sad stuff when were having a good time. The funniest thing I have seen is....

Indifferent me: I'd rather not share that, but something cool I have seen is....

Drunk/Annoyed me: I tell them in vivid detail. They usually leave me alone after that.
 
I politely decline to speak on the subject, and avoid these people in the future.
 
I usually make light of it, telling them that the things that disturb me might not bother them and the things that would make them queasy are run-of-the-mill to me. I try not to offer too many specifics. Instead, I'll turn around and talk about how important bystander CPR is or how it's important that we take care the old people in our lives. I save the war stories for the people at work who can appreciate it.
 
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