Armchair Anonymous: First Responder

0:00Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman and Erin Weekley. This is a fucking nuts episode. We shouldn't put it out and you shouldn't listen to it. This is first responders. And we did hear a story that rivals the very worst of stories we've ever heard. You can't listen to it. You just like absolutely cannot listen to it. It's fucking insane. I'm thinking of the thing when she described him walking. Me too, me too, me too. It's wild. It's fucking wild. Boy, first responders They see it all, but they see more than you think they see I'm sorry you guys aren't going to be able to listen Don't enjoy First responders Can't eat, can't drink, can't operate a vehicle You have to be in a padded room To listen to this With nothing sharp around Don't enjoy First responders Hard times Come and go Good times Take them slow My life, I had a moat But one thing you gotta know I'm gonna keep on shining Hello, hello Hi, you have fun stuff behind you Yeah, what's happening?

1:19You know, BizQuick, Fallout I stream video games on Twitch We got kind of a breakfast theme going on Because my name is BreakfastBot on there What is it, BreakfastBot? BreakfastBot, B-O-D Oh, BreakfastBot Oh, I love this I was about to say this looks like a show. It looks fun. Where do you live? I'm in Charleston, South Carolina. Oh, gosh. Yeah, I kind of want to live there. Do you love it? I like it. But we're full, so don't move here. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you guys are like not into it. Although, who was just telling us that lives there that they like Californians? I think it was another Armchair Anonymous person.

1:52They had some distinction between what groups they liked. Okay, so you have a first responder story. Sure thing. I've got two fun facts, though, for Dax real quick, if we have time. Yeah, we do. Dax, you and I have the same birthday, January 2nd. J2C, congratulations. Every time you say it, I'm like, yep, let's go, J2C. And we both have kids named Lincoln. Oh. You have a boy or a girl? A boy named Lincoln. Yeah, he's nine. Before I was a fan of the show and everything. Sweet. Yeah. Do you want to show your tattoo? I doubt I can. Yeah, I need a good look so I can get my matching one, too. Yeah, exactly.

2:27J2C, what a crew. Some people are just born blessed. Some people are A24V, and that's cool. Oh, what? A24V? Actually, it's cool because A24. Actually, it's really cool. Oh, okay. It only works if you have another. There's no other A24V. I know so many people born on my birthday. On your birthday, but it's the July 2nd cancer that makes J2C so elusive. April 24, I guess you could be. But what's the sign for April? Not V. Fuck, V's the only. All right, Christian. Sorry we ate up so much of your time with that. No, you're good. Okay, hit us with the first responder story. It was 2018. I worked EMS from 2015 to 2021.

3:06So a little bit about the geographics of my county. The lower half is lots of cities, high population. The upper half is very country, very rural. Everything is far apart. So we've already got an extended ATA. We get dispatched to a motor vehicle accident, which is a very common call, you know, neck and back pain type of stuff. We don't get very many details on this call. We're just going in blind. When we get there, the first thing we see is a car with very heavy damage. It's in a ditch next to a tree line and it's got smoke coming out, glass broken everywhere. I mean, it looks like a movie set.

3:39Oh no. Police are already there? No. So that's the weird thing. We show up, there's nobody there. I mean, it's dead silence. But the weirdest part is that there's no caller. Typically, there's at least the caller. I guess this was just a passerby. When I say it's dead silent, I mean, you can hear the squirrels in the tree line. That's about it. We go up to the vehicle expecting to find a patient. We don't see anyone. We're looking around. I'm looking down the street. I'm looking under the car. I'm looking in the car. We're just trying to find this person because they could obviously be very, very hurt.

4:07Me and my partner are very confused. We can't find this guy. So we're asking dispatch for additional information. And I keep hearing these damn squirrels in the tree. Oh, no. I look up and 15 feet in the air, I see my patient being suspended by two tiny branches. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And he's out cold, it seems. I immediately look at my partner and I say, oh, fuck, he's dead. Yeah. Which is not very professional, but that's what happened. Yeah, of course. Desperate times. Immediately, we're like, what are we going to do? Luckily, fire shows up two minutes later. They're asking where the patient is and we just kind of point up.

4:46Now, there's no protocol for getting a guy out of a tree. We just reach for the largest ladder on the truck, lean it up against the tree. I think these ladders are made for like one guy, maybe two guys at a time. So weight distribution was kind of iffy. But we ended up creating like a human pyramid under the ladder with all the guys we could while me and my partner climbed up there with our gear. How come they didn't send the firefighter up? It feels like that's their domain. I volunteered. I wanted to be up there. Okay, okay, okay. So I went up there and we packaged him as best we could. We lifted his legs and we slid a backboard under his belly between his belly and the branches.

5:25We had to slide him face down onto the backboard, get a collar on him as best we could, strap him in, and then basically create a human chain to slide him down the ladder. Oh my God. This seems impossible without losing him and him flying down the ladder and taking people out. Yeah, and keep in mind, he's also very injured. He's hardly breathing at this point. Oh, God. So when we do finally get out there and get him looked at, we can obviously smell the booze. He had been drinking and driving. We get him down. We get him onto the stretcher. And then we start our assessment and everything. We immediately call for a helicopter, a medivacum, because again, we're out in the country.

6:04It's about 25, 30 minutes to the nearest trauma center. We get fired to set up an LZ landing zone. His breathing started declining very drastically. So we have what's called a rapid sequence intubation, an RSI. I've only assisted in maybe three RSI's in the five years that I was working there. It's very invasive. Basically, what we do is we give them a paralytic and a sedative, and we put them in a medically induced coma. We stop their breathing, and we have to intubate them. This has got to be a hard call to make. Yeah, it's not done lightly, but when we do it, we do it right. So we get them intubated.

6:37We drive them to the LZ. The helicopter's waiting for us. And then we turn them over to the flight team. They take their report. And of course, he's transported to the nearest trauma facility. As far as his injuries afterwards, he ended up having a massive brain bleed. When we showed up, I didn't see a big hole in the windshield. I think he was ejected out of the driver's side window. Oh, my God. As the car was rolling. And how did he get that high up? Fucking momentum. Well, think if you were on a seesaw and the seesaw went up at 60 miles an hour. Because that's how fast the car is probably tumbling.

7:08I would just think you'd get slowed down by your body getting out of the window. I've seen a lot of videos of people getting thrown out of vehicles because dumbasses that off-road don't wear a seatbelt. And I've seen that a bunch. It's crazy how easily the body just flies out the window. I think he was probably less injured because he was drunk. They say that when you're drunk, your body's more relaxed. Not telling anyone to go drunk dropping. No, don't do it. But if you're mid-crash, do drink a fifth of Jack really quick. This is very ER. This is very the pit. I love it. You love it. I mean, I'm sorry for that guy.

7:39Don't you like how gangster Christian is? Like, I like these EMTs. They're just like, let's get going. That's what the job is. You RSI. And you stopped doing it though? Yeah, I went into business for myself in 2021. So now I'm self-employed and that allows a lot of freedom for me to do Twitch. I probably stream about 80 hours a month. That's a lot. You're busy. Now, have you ever been anywhere post this career and some shit's gone down and you've got to get involved? Yeah, much like you, I feel like I have a hero complex. I want to get in there when I want to pull over, but luckily my wife is reasonable and says, listen, you can see them.

8:14They're good. No heroes needed. Oh, wow. Thanks for sharing that. That's wild. What a thing. Great meeting you. Have a great rest of your day. All right. Take care. Take care. Bye. I don't want anyone to have hero complexes, but I also get it. Yeah. Because it is attractive when someone's a hero. Of course. I just watched an episode of ER. Uh-huh. George Clooney rescued this boy. He was stuck in a sewer tunnel, and then it was starting to flood, and he was starting to pass out. He got him out just in time. But then the water rushes, and he can't find him, and then he finds him, and he lifts him up, and he's a hero.

8:54Hi. Is it Eliza? It is. Eliza, where are you? I am actually in L.A., in Culver City. Oh. Monica was just stranded there. That's where I met Ted, my AAA driver, who is an angel. I do feel guilty because we haven't reconnected. I haven't called him. Yeah, you're going to have to for the Arm Cherries because they were pretty invested in that. Oh, my God. There was a lot of people wanting an update when you guys have lunch and get married. Oh, okay. And have a family. Oh, great. Okay. If you could just send us screenshots and, you know, post those, that would be great. Maybe live stream that lunch.

9:31Okay, so you have a first responder story. I have a first responder story that takes place here in L.A. And the reason I moved out here is because my boyfriend and I were doing long distance between L.A. and New York for three years. He will feature heavily in this story. This story takes place August of 2024. I am not a trained first responder. My boyfriend is not a first responder. We stumbled into becoming first responders for an emergency. I'm not an adrenaline junkie in the way that I want to step in. I shut down. You don't have a hero complex. Absolutely not. So last summer, my cousin, who is a musician, was having a choir concert with his group downtown, and my boyfriend and I decided to go.

10:16I work sometimes from downtown LA, so I'm familiar with downtown proper, but not all of the neighborhoods. So this was somewhere that I'd never visited before. We are driving around looking for parking, and you guys know how horrific parking in LA can be. This is more of a residential area that we can't find anything. We're turning down all these side streets. We finally are on a side street that looks promising. So we're going kind of slowly along to try to see whether there's any spots. I'm driving. My boyfriend's in the passenger seat. There's a nice silver BMW and its front window and back windows are smashed in and there's little licks of flame on the front hood.

10:56And then notice there's two men near the car on the side of the road, one standing, shouting over the other one who is now rolling on the ground. And I'm clocking. Clothes are on the ground. Fire is now on the lawn. And I don't know at this point if this is a hate crime, if there's an attack. This is happening within like 0.5 seconds. We notice, okay, this man is on fire. My boyfriend, who was an emergency responder in college. Oh, wow. That's helpful. Goes back into full hero mode. I shut down. So he gets out of the car. He's like, call 911. I'm going to go assess the situation. The man who was standing over is kind of standing to the side.

11:45There's gasoline. And the man who was rolling on the ground has now stood up. Two things I clock immediately. He is fully naked. Oh. And covered basically in third-degree burns. Oh, wow. Oh, my God. There's a can of gas in the mix, too? That the guy's holding. There's still little embers on the lawn. I now get a hold of the police. I'm trying to tell them where I am because I'm not familiar with the neighborhood. I look over. The man, who is fully nude, is now stumbling to my car, trying to get into the back seat to have me take him to the hospital. If I was witnessing this tableau, I have no guess at what's going on.

12:26Normally, I'm like, oh, I can see what's happening here. Now, not to be stupid, not to like, but did you feel that these people that you came across were potentially unhoused or on drugs? No unhoused, no clue on drugs. The guy is trying to get in my car. I'm like, hey, thank you so much. Please. Thank you. Thanks for trusting me. It's such a female response. response yet. I'm so sorry to impose.

13:09I'm still on the phone. They now cross the street. His person follows him. My person follows him. They're now all going around the corner and down the street. So they're out of sight. The paramedics finally come. At this point, the lawn is still going. The fire is now completely engulfed the car. The entire hood has melted off. It's a huge fire. All of the neighbors now are coming out. We realized they were watching and filming from the inside, but no one did anything, which I was really angry about at first because I was like, how are you watching someone in an emergency? But also I recognize my privilege in that when I call the police, I feel safe.

13:55Yeah. Not everyone feels that and everyone has their own reaction. So I think that's important to say. I am now watching the police try to get this car under control, try to get the neighbors to give some context and calling my boyfriend because I have no idea where he is. Right. And you've got a choir show to see. Why did he leave? I've got a choir show. So it turns out this entire time while I'm calling him, he's on the phone with the police. My boyfriend is now trying to have him stay in one place. He keeps running because he, in his state of mind, is saying, I just need to get to the hospital, not realizing we brought the hospital to you.

14:28The paramedics are now talking to me, getting my statement, getting the neighbor's statements. They've put out the fire and are now picking up pieces of clothing and phones and things from the side of the road. They get the three stooges, my boyfriend, the other man, and the man on fire, back. and are now interviewing my boyfriend, getting the man who's on fire into the ambulance and into wound treatment and trying to pull his boyfriend off to the side. Oh, no. Okay. So I think it was a lover's tiff, to say the least, where person on fire smashed in the car as like a fuck you, lit it on fire and then was like, you made me do this because the boyfriend kept yelling over him, Baby, why did you do this?

15:15I told you not to do this. What have you done? Did they live right there? No. The neighbors were like, we have no idea who these people are. I think they just pulled up. Then we got back in the car, cried a lot, gathered ourselves and went to the concert. A lot of adrenaline. And did the power of choir heal all wounds? It was very healing. You have to laugh at the absurdity of here's a guy with his dick out on my Saturday night. Okay, I got a one second story for you. It's about my brother. He was out of town on business. He's eating at a Taco Bell. He's by himself. He hears a collision. He looks out the window at Taco Bell and there's a man that somehow has crashed his motorcycle but is on top of it as it slides, slides into the lawn of the Taco Bell and the motorcycle caught on fire and gas was getting everywhere and the guy was on fire.

16:06and my brother ran out of Taco Bell. He took his shirt off to pat the guy down. But my favorite part of the story is my brother said, I'm like batting this guy out and all I can think is I got to get my shirt back on. Even while he was actively rescuing someone, he was like really insecure. He would not have taken his shirt off otherwise in front of Taco Bell. Oh, that was nice of him. Yeah, a little bit of personal sacrifice. Yeah, I just think it's so human to be saving someone's life and thinking, fuck, I gotta get this shirt back on before anyone looks at my belly. The thing that kept coming to my mind was like, we've got to cover him.

16:43Like the decency of it. But meanwhile, he's got third degree burns. That is not his priority. Right. I wonder if his penis got burnt in that. I did put it in the submission because I thought you might be curious. He had legitimately the largest dick I've ever seen. No. Comparable to the microphone. I'm glad you had the presence of mind to just check. Or maybe it couldn't be avoided. You couldn't miss it. It was front and center. And that's flaccid because he definitely wasn't hard while he was on fire. Who knows? Oh, it could have been erotic. Except it seems like the one on fire is actually the one that was mad.

17:17Because his boyfriend found someone with an even bigger penis. That feels unlikely to give him a size. It is low probability. Wow. Thank you for telling me that detail. Of course. I feel so grateful to be able to talk to you guys right now. I have three quick little shout outs. Is that okay? Yes, of course. Jess and Alexa are two of my good friends who are also huge arm cherries. And every week talking about what the episode was, what our takeaways are. So shout out Jess and Alexa. I love you guys. The other one, Dax, specifically for you, I just wanted to say thank you because my family has been touched by addiction a lot.

17:57And it's not always in the media as much or in people's forefront of their minds about recovery and the life after. I think it's really important to show how much after recovery, you still have to keep working at it. And it's a lifelong battle. It's not just you recover and then you're good. It's a bummer. It's like the gym that way. You got to keep going. Can't get the perfect abs and then quit. Yeah, exactly. My cousin is fully recovered and now runs a recovery clinic. So it's been really amazing to see his journey and see yours as well. And then for me personally, I actually went through an eating disorder recovery a couple of years ago.

18:32And during mealtime, every time is obviously a struggle. So I would put you guys on and have a moment to laugh or cry or learn something. And I got through it bite by bite with you. So thank you so much for that. Awesome. Did you like the Nikki episode, Nikki Glaser? Oh, yes, yes, yes. I love how open she is about all that. I think it's so important because I think everyone has some type of warped relationship with food. And it's not something that I am embarrassed about at all. I think it's so important to talk about. So, again, I just really feel grateful to you guys for helping me on that journey.

19:06Well, thanks, Eliza. This was a delight. Nice meeting you. Have a great day. Thank you guys so much. Bye. Hello, is this Daphne? Hi, it is. You're in your closet. I tried to follow the rules. Are you allowed to tell us what state you're in? I'm in Wisconsin. Oh, okay, great. Okay, so you have a first responder story. I do. So this was when I first started. It was within my first couple of weeks working as an EMT. So I was pretty green. Also, for a little bit of context, when you first start, at least at the company I worked at, there's such a hierarchy. When you're new, you're doing all the work nobody wants to do.

19:41So all like cleaning up the GI bleed, picking up the heavy parts of the patient, changing diapers, like all the crazy stuff that people who've been there longer don't want to do. That's entirely on you. Can I ask what led you to the job in the first place? I'm a little bit curious. Mine was a little bit untraditional. I actually majored in philosophy, but my college job, I was an outdoor trip leader. So I had to get a wilderness first responder certification and just really fell in love with it. Oh, amazing. So after college, I tried a couple of jobs and nothing really stuck. And I ended up going back to get my EMT because I just loved my first shirt so much.

20:18Are you a bit of an adrenaline junkie? I would say so. Working in emergency, you kind of have to be. But at the same time, it also tames it a little bit because you see all the crazy shit that can happen. Yeah. I'm like a moderate adrenaline junkie, I'd say. Are you watching The Pit? No, but I've heard it's good. You're going to love it. And pretty accurate. But that's like asking us if we watched a show about podcasting. Yeah, like Only Murders in the Building. Yes, I have. Good point. Yeah, I mean, it's a great show. So the partner who I was paired up with, you could tell that he had one foot out of the door, was ready to retire and go to Boca and spend all his money gambling years ago.

20:56What is the average career expectancy? I don't feel like I see a lot of older EMTs. I was told that their turnaround rate is like six months. oh so it's pretty quick also the place where i worked it was a lot of people who they were starting as an emt but they wanted to go to med school or pa school or nursing school this was kind of like the first step to get some experience gotcha so we get a call and the call is super vague it was just for a sick person and that was also a red flag because usually the more vague the chief complaint is the more unhinged it is when you actually get there oh interesting we go to the apartment the elevator going up is teeny tiny like it barely fits my partner and i and the stretcher in there we get all the way up knock on the door introduce ourselves walk in and immediately when i open the door i'm hit with this wave of just a blinding smell oh and a smell that i had never smelled before up until this point never smelled it my god and it smelled like a mix of hay like from a horse poop sulfur oh and burnt anything okay interesting oh hey a horse trots out of the bedroom i would have taken that over what happened oh no so all of a sudden we see the patient he stands up he has a walker he's walking over i could tell he's walking a little funny like his gait is a little off but nothing too crazy and he's wearing what i thought were black compression socks.

22:31And the lower part of his legs looked a little different from the rest of his body. But who am I to judge? Right. Is he wearing shorts? Yeah, he's wearing like basketball shorts. And also as he's walking over, the smell is getting stronger. And I hear this kind of squishing sound with each footstep. No, no, no. This is bringing me back to that bar in Canada. I know. Oh, wow. Okay. Do you guys remember that one? Oh my God, no one can listen to this. Okay. Okay. Squish, squish, squish. Different colored legs. He's squishing his way over. And then I go over to help him. I want to give him a hand.

23:11When I get over, I look down and I realize, oh, those aren't compression socks. That's completely necrotic tissue from the knee down. His legs are dead. Oh my. They're gone. Oh. And that squishing sound was them sloughing off with each step, like tissue coming off. No! No! Stop! Oh my fucking... This is like as close as you can get to discovering a zombie. The top 75 % of his body was a normal average Joe. The bottom half was some shit out of The Walking Dead. Okay, I have to be honest. I thought it was going to be that he cut off his legs and he put horse legs on. Oh, Monica. to go that's a very because the hay and then there's a horse in his bedroom with human legs like you just swap them it was a transplant he wanted to become a centaur he was a little mentally ill his fucking foot is falling apart as he walks yes it looked like a mudslide every shade of yellow red brown that you can imagine how old were you at this point 21 no you're too young to have seen something like that.

24:24I keep my cool. I'm not here to judge anybody. I'm just here to get you to the hospital safely. So I take him to the stretcher and my partner looks at me and he's like, I'm not touching that. And I was like, okay, I'm not surprised. So I help him into the stretcher and he obviously needs help getting his lower half up. I'm trying to think of the most gentle way to go about this. You know, I don't want to cause any more damage. So I go down by his ankles and lift his legs up and as i do i feel my fingers squish into him it felt like jam jam of course preserves is there bone the bone's not out yet but it doesn't look like it's that far away so we get back to the elevator my partner doesn't get into the elevator he's like i'm taking in the next one.

25:12You got this, champ. This guy sucks. This guy's a real piece of shit. A fucking 21-year-old girl. I know. He was like, deal with it. I'm in Boca. I'm already in Boca. Yeah, so I'm squished between him and the elevator wall. Can I ask what his demeanor is? Because I have a story very similar to this from an ER doctor I know who had someone get brought in that was a shut-in. They had a lot of necrotic flesh. I don't think they knew. They were kind of just embarrassed. What was his vibe? He was in a great mood. He was chatting it up with me. I'm trying to banter with him a little bit, but it's so thick and literally blinding.

25:49Like I was having a hard time opening my eyes. Oh my God. Did he acknowledge that his legs were dead? Verbatim. He said, oh, it's just a little leg pain. No big deal. Wow.

26:15We get into the ambulance. It's a hot summer day. And also this ambulance has no air conditioning, no ventilation, nothing. And my partner, of course, has me sit in the back with him and closes the only window between the front and the back. Oh, boy. I'm trying to bandage this up, trying to do anything to make him more comfortable. But it's just soaking through. Nothing's working. He needs extensive wound care. We just need to get on the road and get him to a hospital. And of course, he wants the one that's the farthest away from where we are. And in the ambulance ride over, ambulances have no suspension at all.

26:51And we're going on the highway. And this is oozing. The amount of liquid that's coming out was insane. So I'm just being jostled around. It's splashing everywhere. Like, it felt like being at a water park. Stop! That I did not sign up for. Oh my god. Oh my god. And can you wear a hazmat suit? Looking back, I probably should have. But at that point, I don't think I even knew where those were in the ambulance. He might have been a little disassociated. Like, let's just get through this. Yeah, it's just every body fluid you can imagine, plus chunks of tissue. Don't say chunks! I'm trying all the tricks for the smell, too.