I don’t often warn people about my content. I figure that if you are here, you are an adult and you can take it. However, this particular post is about a subject that even a jaded adult may find too much to deal with. Look at the title of this post, make a decision, and swim at your own risk. That having been said, if you wish to continue then take my hand and I will lead you down the rabbit hole to a very, very dark place.
A few years ago a student came to me and was very upset. She asked to talk to me in private about something that had happened to her on her shift a few days ago.
“We were dispatched to pick up a patient that was well known to us. Actually everyone runs on her. She is an obese, mentally handicapped person who is often times homeless in our district. It seems like when she doesn’t have a place to sleep, she often calls 911 complaining of abdominal pain. This happens so often that there is not much fan faire about it. We simply pull up, she gets in, and after a few questions and a blood pressure we are headed down the road with her. Sometimes the hospital sees us coming and they send us straight to triage.”
“Well, this happened again the other day. She got in the back of the truck, and she looked more scared than usual. You have to remember, she’s not very high functioning and she is homeless so her behavior can be erratic at times. But it was obvious that something was bothering her. We asked her several times what was wrong, and she made it clear that she did not want to answer questions. She didn’t want to be touched, and wouldn’t even allow us to take a blood pressure. We thought someone might have threatened her or abused her in some way, so we asked questions along those lines, but she wasn’t having any of it. I remember noticing that she had this death grip on her clothing, and was constantly adjusting. I thought this was odd, but like I said, she was very low functioning. She did a lot of odd things. So we decided to just transport her and give social services a heads up about our suspicions when we got there.”
“We rolled into the ER with her and waited around for a while until we got a bed. She got off the cot and sat on the edge of the bed. She was very guarded, but she also wouldn’t let us touch her, so we just left it at that. The nurse came in. We gave report, and then we left the room and did our paperwork. A few minutes later we heard a gasp and a muffled yell come from down the hall towards that room. We went to see what was going on, and…I’m not sure how to describe it. They had tried to get her to take off her clothes and put on a gown, and when she pulled her pants down, a fetus still attached to the cord just flopped out onto the floor. There was really nothing to do. It was obvious that it had been dead for quite some time. In an odd way, it wasn’t that shocking. It was more surreal than anything else.”
“It turns out that she has been pregnant for nine months. She has been worked up for abdominal pain several times. The ER has informed her of her pregnancy several times. A social worker has tried to contact her several times. But she just shuts down when confronted about it. Apparently, she had come to term, gave birth in her pants, and freaked out. After an examination it looked as though she had smothered it by trying to keep it from coming out. The poor baby smothered between her legs. I know it is hard to imagine, but she is obese, and she is filthy. Her pants are huge, and greasy, and stained. She reeks too. It is not uncommon for her to urinate on her self and keep wearing those clothes. There was a bit of a mess made by her doing this in her pants, but she was so filthy and had so many layers of clothes on, and smelled awful anyway…”
I could tell it was hard for her to continue, so I sat down to let her know that she had my undivided attention and told her to do the same. I encouraged her to go on.
“Well, everybody started freaking out. They were mad at us for not knowing that she had a fetus in her pants. And other crews are talking and saying horrible things about us like, ‘How could you not fucking tell that someone had given birth? How do you miss a whole fetus?’ But Buck, she lives like an animal. She’s as big around as a house. It’s cold outside and she is wearing seven layers of clothing around her fat body that all smell like piss. The nurse didn’t know just by looking. She had to get the girl undressed to find it.”
I asked her, “So that’s what the problem is…for a moment I thought just the horrible nature of the call had bothered you. But you are being accused of not doing your job. And you have doubts. And maybe you feel guilty yourself.”
She looked like she was about to cry. “Yes,” she said, “Well, I mean no. I mean…I think I did my job right. It’s just hard to take all these accusations. It was a stressful situation. Everybody is Monday morning quarterbacking this thing. Our bosses haven’t officially called us in about this, but from the talk we hear, it might happen.”
“Okay,” I told her, “How many times have you run on her before?”
“Maybe a dozen,” she answered.
“And each time she complained about abdominal pain? Right?”
“More or less. Yes.”
Then I asked, “Has it ever occurred to you to perform a ‘dead fetus check’ in her pants the other twelve times you took her to the hospital?”
“No,” she said.
“Well I want you to know that I have been doing this for years, and not once have I ever asked an abdominal pain patient to let me look down her pants to see if she is hiding a baby in her pants. I have run on…I don’t know how many stinky homeless people, and I don’t often ask them to shed layers of clothing in the back of my ambulance because I don’t want to pass out from the smell. Everybody seems to want to blame someone when stuff like this happens. Everybody becomes a damned expert. Well you know what? They should blame her. She’s the sick individual who did this. And if she is mentally handicapped as you say, then they are going to have to figure out if she knew the difference between right and wrong enough to keep this from happening. If the answer is ‘no’ then there is no one to blame. Simple as that. This is ridiculous.”
She started to look a little better. “Really? Do you really think so?”
“Of course I do. I’ll give you one better. You say everyone runs on this chick, right?”
“Yeah, I think everyone has had to take her at some time or another.”
“Well, if any of them try and give you crap about this, you go ahead and ask them if they have ever looked in her pants for a dead fetus. After they say ‘no’ then ask them if they have palpated her belly every time they transported her. And you know what? They should, and so should you, but poking all four quads on a patient you know just wants to get in from the cold is not going to tell you what is being squashed between her legs. ESPECIALLY if she gets in the back of your truck refusing an exam. I’m getting angry just thinking about this. She did something wrong. Not you. You’re fine. A bunch of people who don’t know a damn thing about what they are talking about are shooting their mouths off when they shouldn’t, and you just need to ignore it.”
She walked away feeling better, and I left feeling worse I think. I hate rumors and second guessing. These kinds of things have driven me from a lot of websites and message boards over the years. Everyone wants to think they are an expert.
Fast forward to today. I am not sure this has made the national news, but here are a couple of links to a horrible episode in humanity that happened just down the road.
http://www.wlky.com/news/22774817/detail.html
I did not make this run, although two people who are very well known to me did. Since I did no make the run, and I am reporting only what I have seen in the media, there is no HIPAA violation in discussing this case on this blog. The particulars are that a 20 year old woman went to go visit an inmate at a prison just down the road. She has a two-year-old daughter. She has a husband. She is visiting one of her boyfriends in prison. At the time of this visit, she was pregnant by a third man who has no relation to her current husband or the boyfriend she is visiting. (Getting pretty ridiculous isn’t it? My question is, ‘why even mess with the guy who is locked up?’ I mean, what does she need him for? Does she want to keep a relationship going with this inmate just in case the other husband and boyfriend don’t work out? But I digress…) During this visit she goes into the bathroom. This is where the crime is committed.
She was only in there for about 11 minutes. However, she somehow found time to deliver a baby, find something semi-sharp to cut the cord, stuff the babies mouth with toilet paper until it suffocated, hide the baby in a trash receptacle, and attempt to clean up a little bit before people start knocking on the door trying to find out why she had been in there so long. She claimed to have had a miscarriage and an ambulance took her to the hospital. Five hours later, the hospital figured out that she was lying and called the prison. The hunt for the missing baby began and the poor thing was found in the trash.
There are few facts to keep in mind about this case. She has stated that she did not know she was pregnant. Her trashy family has gotten on TV and reiterated this like it is some sort of defense. People seem to be latching on to this, so I will waste a few moments exploring it. Either she’s lying, or she is the single dumbest human on this planet. It should be noted that she has had another kid already, so she is probably aware of how a pregnancy feels. People keep bringing up this show on TV all about woman who are unaware they are pregnant until they actually go into labor. I would imagine at some point in the history of the human race that there have been a couple of women that this has truly happened to. The rest of them are simply in a state of denial which I have written about extensively. Denial plus a large dose of stupidity will allow a woman who hasn’t had a period in nine months, has gained 40 pounds, barfs in the morning, and feels kicking in her stomach to not be able to put two and two together. But don’t discount the power of denial. It is amazing how people are able to fool themselves.
But any discussion about this is a complete waste of time. Even if this was a total surprise, there is no reason to jam toilet paper in its mouth until it suffocates. The shocking thing is that if she had just relaxed a minute she could have surrendered the baby without cost or penalty under Kentucky’s safe surrender law.
However, the kind of people who get in this kind of trouble are often not the sort of folks who are well versed in their local laws. To say the least…
But the reason why I have brought up this tragic and horrible episode is the same reason that I was so angry on behave of my student. A few days have passed since this took place. And I have heard a few people playing Monday morning quarterback again. I have seen a few people strutting around claiming, “How could you not know that someone has delivered a baby?” And again, I am here to tell you that in all my years of EMS, not once have I arrived on scene at a miscarriage and thought to check all the trash receptacles for dead fetuses.
To all the know-it-alls and Monday morning quarterbacks of the world out there, I ask you, “Do you check the pants of homeless chicks and trashcans for dead fetuses every time you get an abdominal pain or a miscarriage? No? You don’t? Then shut up.” I think everyone who had to deal with this tragedy feels horrible enough without you shooting off your mouth and making it worse. The 20 year old useless piece of trash that killed her baby is to blame for this and no one else. Not the crew. Not the hospital. Not the prison. Ashley Cox is to blame, and no one else. Let’s keep it this way and try to support our coworkers rather than add to their misery.
Unfortunately our job puts us in contact with the kind of people who are capable of things like this. In an earlier post I stated that if there is one thing that is going to drive me from this business, it would be denial. But I would like to amend that. Denial, evil ignorant baby killers, unsupportive coworkers, Monday morning quarterbacks, trashy families, drunken verbally abusive patients…there is a big list of things that will eventually drive me from this industry. But not soon enough I think.
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