Although being a health care provider should provide powerful motivation to be in good physical shape, I’ve successfully dodged the temptation.. This lack of motivation coupled with my full time job as a mostly deskbound engineer has caused obesity which led to an interesting ‘sticky’ situation recently.

While on duty one evening with a superb paramedic partner we were called to one of our frequent fliers with mental health issues. The call came in as a suicidal female. Recognizing the address with the dread appropriate to a large and often combative female with a propensity for inappropriate nudity and willingness to use fecal material as a weapon my partner immediately directed me to be lead medic since EMT-I skills fit the need. Since the call was within city limits both city fire and ambulance responded. Upon arrival we made our way to the patient’s bedroom. She was fully clothed (whew!) and sitting on the bed. Assessment was negative for any physical ills, but the patient was very depressed, not well oriented, and as reported, suicidal. Our rural health care system isn’t great and this patient is well known enough that she’d be out of jail or the hospital before we finished paperwork, so we decided to spend some time talking with her.

So, this led to me kneeling next to the bed talking, my partner behind me, with two firemen behind him. Bear in mind that being overweight makes me less than agile. However, adrenaline can work miracles. Since I was closest, I was the first to notice when she reached under her pillow and came out with a gun. We’ve been trained to handle this situation by running away. Although furthest from the door, I got off the floor and beat everyone to the door (almost). My partner arrived at the door right as I did and, you guessed it, we got stuck in the door with two antsy fire gods behind us. We were stuck long enough to look at each other, and for the thought that “this isn’t happening” to run through my head. Neither of us threw any elbows, but neither of us were taking that one step back and saying “after you”. So after what felt like an eternity I felt a fire god’s hand in my back pushing, and pop!, through the door we went and out of the house. We immediately ran and hid behind the ambulance and waited for police. As the adrenaline is wearing off my partner looked at me and the two less than thrilled fire gods and said “It’s ok Tom, the firemen would have stopped the bullet”.

The patient was disarmed and transported and I’m considering Jenny Craig.