23 Stories Of Calls That Went In A Completely Unexpected Way, Shared By Those Who Were There

Infant "status seizures"

Arrived to a sobbing family and happy, giggling baby.

Later the mom screams "look there he goes again!!"

Kid was straining to poop.

Definitely worth the lights and sirens on the way over.

Echo cardiac arrest, full response. Notes say “9 month old. Choking. Now pulseless, not breathing.”


Show up. Pt is very much alive, does not understand what was happening.


Pt was a puppy. Very friendly. Best code ever.

Got called out for a medical alarm. Entered the residence with PD after no response to the doorbell. In the back bedroom, we found the patient and her husband, in all their natural beauty, with the life alert button mashed between them.

A friend responding to a mental health call had an actual python thrown at him. Apparently it only went downhill from there.

Almost called one myself yesterday. Heard my old lady neighbor yelling “Somebody help me!” through the wall. And loudly. Considered calling 911 and then realized it would be a stupid refusal if I didn’t do the bare minimum of investigating first so I knocked on her door and she opened right up, no problems, everything fine. Turns out her meds cause her to have crazy nightmares that she forgets as soon as she wakes up.

We had an MVC that, as we were walking up, we thought it was a multiple DOA based on their blood and guts spattered all over the interior of the car. Turns out their takeout Chinese traveled from the backseat to the windshield and exploded.

This is in like 2015 (which is very important).

Got dispatched to a residence for a fall with injury. Met the pt. (20 something male) in a room on the second floor with an obvious leg fracture. Turns out the pt injured his leg doing the “watch me” dance by silentó. Watch me whip… watch me nene. Anyways us and fire that were there had a good laugh at his expense before we loaded him up in the ambulance. In route my partner asks if I want her to encode via radio to the hospital because I was busy with the pt. She encodes “In route to ER with 20 something male with left leg injury post status NENE DANCE.” We get to the hospital and there is literally all the ER nurses waiting for us going “is this the nene patient?”

Poor guy was so embarrassed.

Responded to a guy in his mid 20s who was galloping on all 4s and eating grass straight out of the earth like a horse. bystanders said this has been occurring for an hour. he choked and we had to do the hemleich. he was puking half digested grass the whole transport. that was a first.

Dispatched for cardiac arrest after choking while eating.


7 years old.


internal *oh s**t*


Dispatch gives us the update a couple minutes later to cancel, pt now breathing, no longer choking, got modified abd thrusts by someone in the house and is now ok.



Pt was a golden labrador. Sounded cute but never made it on scene.

Got called to a psych of a 40s female. When we knocked on the door the woman answered and was positively incandescent with rage. Turns out her deadbeat 19 yo son was arguing with her about moving to Montreal (no job, didn’t speak French, no prospects, PLANNED ON LIVING IN A HOMELESS SHELTER) and when the mom started poking holes in his plan he called 911 to try and get a cop to psych hold her.

Refusal obtained, family was wished a nice day

I stopped at the end of the street and asked my partner “should we stick around to treat when she [ends] him?”
We laughed all the way back to station.

A drunk frat guy hoping across roof tops downtown fell into a light well, which for those unfamiliar is a pocket of space within an apartment building to give the inward apartments windows, but is inaccessible on the ground level.

He was miraculously walking around like he was completely uninjured, but trapped. It was a whole process to get him out.

Meanwhile, I transported a woman with nausea and general weakness for having a hangover yesterday. No other medical complaints.

Middle of an ice storm. Some time after midnight. (The shift had already been a s**t show). We're dispatched for a fall. En route, dispatched tones out another engine for mutual aid for a structure fire. The Lt on the engine self-dispatches to the fire, leaving us to fend for ourselves.

We arrive, the driveway, lawn steps, porch are basically glass. There's about 3/8" of ice on everything. There's a multi generational family, all very worked up. We have a bit of communication challenge, as neither my partner nor myself speak mandarin.

We eventually get the story: 75yo patriarch, went out to the car to get meds, slipped and fell (shocker), c o neck and back pain.

Son offers to get meds, runs out the door, hits the ice, face plants and stops at the snowbank on the other side of the road.

We get what we can for info, package patient (in the "everyone gets a board era. As we're about to leave the son gives us the meds and away we go.

A few minutes into the transport, partner (whose teching) asks: "want to know what meds he went to the car for at 0130?" "As a matter of fact, yes. I do." He passes the bottle through the pass through.

Sildenafil.

Got called out to 'pediatric dog bite to face'

We were expecting blood, possible airway issues, trauma.....

It was the most superficial bite ever.

Not the story.

I was translating Spanish to English, but I'm not fluent. I don't know all the words.

Aublita says something to me a few times while I'm talking to Mom, but i just don't understand.
Finally Tia grabs my arm and says 'She dizzy!'

Just as mom passes out in my arms.

Some guy had a live grenade with him. i did not know. took him to the hospital and when they were putting him in his gown they found it. thats probably the craziest thing i tell people when they ask.

I’ll keep it short and sweet to the point. Dispatched for generic sick person. Get there mom and 13 YOF PT sitting next to pool. “I’m concerned because my daughter was swimming and she swallowed pool water. I want to make sure the chlorine won’t k**l her”. Me -“did she swallow water or a chlorine tablet?”. Mom- “just the water”. Me “I’m no a doctor but I highly doubt the heavily diluted chlorine is going to even make her ill”. We cleared the call on a RMA obviously.

Few people outside EMS hear such stories from me. My go to subject matter is s**t people say. For example, this last shift a woman introduced herself as the patient's niece and girlfriend.

I don’t mind answering that like I mind “worst call” questions. We see some very odd stuff. The real problem is that (probably like most of us here) I sometimes trip over the line between funny and EMS funny, aka “oops I made you puke”.

For instance, my partner and I still laugh when someone mentions ice cream because we had one poor fellow who had been quite ill, and had laid out tidy little piles of what looked like chocolate soft-serve with strawberry sauce in trails throughout the house.

Anyway, my wife’s mad because we don’t get invited out by that friend group any more. I still say it’s not my fault that I didn’t know one of the guys owns a Dairy Queen.

Got dispatched for a frequent flyer homeless dude that hangs out in the subway stations (never any complaints - transit workers just figure somethings wrong since he'll sit there for like 10 hours). Walk into the subway station and within 2 minutes we're activating our alarm buttons as some random dude carrying a crowbar bursts into the station with a strong desire to see what the inside of my head looks like.

We get tapped out at like 0400 for a delta fall, not alert. we roll up half asleep and find poppop splayed out in the foyer adjacent to the bottom of a long staircase. poppop is like 85 and fully clothed - i'm talking slacks and a flannel buttoned all the way, including the tie button - and clearly went a*s over t**s on the way down. while we're assessing poppop, mommom is frantic at the top of the stairs running back and forth. poppop was so f****d up we considered flying him out, but we're so focused on poppop that we neglected to even consider assessing the ambulatory mommom. i hear the other paramedic say, loudly, 'holy s**t' and pointed at mommom's f*****g softball sized hematoma on her forehead. both got transported to the trauma center. the story as i heard it as follows:

poppop had a hankering for a handful of shredded cheese (patrician choice of late night snack) and didn't want to wake his wife of 60+ years so he didn't turn the light on and promptly ate s**t down the stairs. mommom, hearing a commotion and not finding her husband in bed, for some reason did not turn on the lights, tripped over a vase and ate all of the s**t on the bannister leading to the stairwell. mommom called her daughter who called us and, of course, both were on thinners.

all that for a handful of shredded cheese at 0400.