Blueberry Man

The dispatch tones woke me from my five minute sleep at one a.m., it had not even been one hour since my last call, and I was weary, to say the least. I strained to hear the dispatchers voice as they announced the call. It was for a man with "diarrhea." Great, I thought sarcastically as I got dressed for the second time that night. It seems that the world is turning as ignorant as possible, and everyone feels that their minor medical needs are emergent enough to call 911. "OMG, I have diarrhea, and it apparently stopped my brain from working, I don't know what to do, wait, I know, I'll call 911 and use up expensive and valuable resources having people deal with my problem". This is the sort of crap that frustrates paramedics and emt's.

Enroute to the call, there was utter silence from my partner and I, having both suffered another horrible shift full of ignorant people. We were both stewing at the thought of enduring yet one more soul whose only concern was that of their benign illness.

Our arrival was greeted with literally a hundred lights turning on from the elderly highrise we were at, faces peering out into the dark, wondering if it was Mrs. Smith with the diabetes, or Mr. Jones with his irritable bowels. A ride up the elevator, and a knock on the door gave no anwser. Another knock, still no answer. Maybe he's dead, I thought pervertedly. Suddenly, the door whips open, and there standing before us is an elderly man, hunched over not unlike Igor, wearing a blue bathrobe, sans underwear. He just stared at us. "Hi, we're the paramedics from the ambulance", I said to him. Still silent, the man motioned us inside his cluttered apartment. Trying our best to avoid the cat feces that was littering the carpeted floor, we followed him into the bathroom. "there", he motioned with his hand towards the toilet. As we gazed into the bowl, and saw nothing but water, our eyes met. "Sir, what seems to be the problem tonight'? "I'm crapping blueberries"! he screamed, as he pointed frantically at the empty toilet bowl. "Sir, there is no need to yell, why don't you tell us how long this has been going on for, and have you been eating blueberries"? He began to tell a winding story that just reiterated the fact that he had not eaten any blueberries, but was in fact "pooping them out", one by one, and needed to go to the emergency room right away so they could cure his life threatening illness.

By this time, my partner K, in her ever most compassion like state, had soothed the elderly beast into a submissive state, and was helping him get his underwear on, then his pants, then his shoes. As I stood watching, I caught myself wondering again, how does this man dress himself? One look back at the two revealed my answer. With K at his feet and him standing with nothing more than a pair of socks on, I saw a large grin creep across his face. Disgusted, we loaded him into the ambulance, and started on our way, sirens blaring so that everyone could be aware of the blueberry mans emergency.

A few hours later, and another non life threatening abuse of the hospital type call, and we were making up our stretcher. I had to use the restroom, and knocked a few times. No response. I opened the door, and saw the blueberry man, bent over trying to wipe himself. He looked up at me, and screamed, "I told you it was blueberries!"