It was one of those nights when the ambulance never stops moving.  Call after call and it was already into the wee hours of the morning.  My partner and I had barely had time to eat, shoving it into our faces on the way to yet another call.

“Medic X, Need you Code 3 to 1234 Middle-o-the-Night Dr.  Possible Respiratory Arrest.”

My partner flips on the lights and siren while I shove the remainder or my hamburger in my mouth.  The unit accelerates as I copy down the information, overhead cabin light flickering.

We pull up to the house and before I get out of the truck I hear someone screaming at the top of her lungs.  Its a loud hysterical scream that rattled windows and woke the neighborhood.  A lady ran from the house screaming that her daughter isn’t breathing and we needed to do something.  She was obviously frantic, and not comprehending the situation fully.  Her daughter was definitely breathing!

My partner unloads the stretcher while I follow the mother into the house, my 40 pound jump kit swung over my shoulder.  In the first bedroom I find a rather stout man sitting on a rather stout woman.  He is straining to hold her arms down so she can’t hurt him.  She is screaming at the top of her lungs.  She doesn’t know where she is or who these people are.

I drop the jump kit and ask what happened while trying to assess the patient between flailing arms and heads.  The mother explains that her daughter had gotten out of the shower, but soon started acting drunk and incoherent.  Then she passed out and had a seizure.  She was only five days post partum and had just returned home.

Four things passed through my head very quickly.  She was postictal, maybe she was hypoglycemic or ecclamptic, and the worst was that she could have thrown a clot and had an embolism.  About this time my partner arrives, and I quickly catch him up.  He grabs the Accucheck and get a blood sugar.  To do this simple act, he has to join the other man in restraining the patient.  She is still screaming and trying to hit, bite, and spit at everyone.  He gets the Accucheck and her blood sugar was fine.

The whole time this is going on I am trying to get an oxygen mask onto her.  I had noticed her lips were blue.  I manage to get the mask onto her by holding it in place manually.  She spit into it, but soon stopped.  My partner asked if I wanted an IV and while I took a second to consider the procedure, I noticed our patient had stopped fighting.

I looked down and she was staring wildly at all of us.  She was no longer fighting and a look of fear was slowly coming across her face.  I told my partner to hold off on the IV a moment.  She continued to relax as her lips pinked up from the oxygen.  She was no longer fighting us, but was definitely scared.

Soon she asked me what was going on.  I told her that she had had a seizure and had been fighting everyone.  She slowly started to cry and sit up.  I helped her to the edge of the bed and told her to keep breathing the oxygen deeply.  She had an almost complete amnesia of the last week from the hypoxia and seizure.  She couldn’t even remember having her baby!  She remember the man was her husband, but not his name. 

We packaged her onto the stretcher and took her to the hospital.  I kept her on full oxygen, and started the IV just in case something were to happen again. The ride was uneventful, and by the time she reached the hospital she was recovering her memory. 

A few weeks later, I forget the occasion, my wife and I went to eat at the Outback Steak House in the south end of town.  We had a pleasant dinner, paid and left the establishment. 

I got about half way across the parking lot when behind me a woman screamed, <scription by this time.