Sometimes I poop.

When natures calls, all else is secondary.

EMS is by nature unpredictable so you don’t really get to plan your day out. My father, he’ll get up in the morning, drink a coffee, hit the toilet with a fury and then get on with the rest of his day, but working shift work at a busy squad doesn’t afford you the luxury of planning the next time you take the Browns to the Super bowl.

Consequently, if you have to shit, go shit then. If you feel a twinge in your pants that says you’re at Def Con 1, go fire off that nuke. If you fail to heed this warning hilarity won’t ensue.

About six months ago, I was working a 24 hour shift, from 6 pm until the following 6 pm. I’ve always been better at working nights; I just don’t like the sun much. So, I had been up most of the night on this shift, and when 4 am rolled around I started to get really hungry, but I didn’t really feel like waking up my partner. I looked around the station and there really wasn’t much to eat: a few boxes of shitty cereal and no milk, some crackers etc, but the one thing I had plenty of was prunes.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t go around buying prunes on a regular basis, but that previous night we hit a convenience store and I hit the jackpot: De-hydrated plums. Knowing how much I really liked hydrated plums, I figured that the de-hydrated ones ought to be great as well, so I bought the pack.

When we got back to the station I opened the sucker up only to find that my de-hydrated plums smelled a lot like prunes. I’m an idiot. What I also was, was really hungry, so I guess I did what any dyed in the wool retard would do- I ate the whole bag.

Hilarity did not ensue.

I was stuck on the toilet all night long. Thank god we didn’t have any calls after midnight.

7 am rolls around and we got a call. After spending the past 6 hours on the toilet, I did feel pretty safe knowing that I would get a few hours of reprieve so I took the call, and thankfully it went fine. Every now and then I felt a twinge in my bowels, but more often than not I could concentrate on the job at hand. Unfortunately, when we were returning to the station after the call, I got to Def Con 1 again. We were close to home, the shift had been slow up until that point, and it was just the right thing to do, so we called our dispatch center over the radio to tell them we were available.

Let me tell you, this was a serious mistake. I did have the sense to turn to my partner and tell him we had to head straight for the station, but it didn’t help. Fully armed and ready, at Def Con 1 we got another call.

On any other day, a good trauma call gets most paramedics springing wood, but ready to bust out my o-ring, I wasn’t really prepared to handle the construction worker that fell two stories and knocked himself out. The only thing was, when we went available and were dispatched, we then had to respond to the call- it sounded like a pretty serious one too, so passing it off to another crew could have cost me my job.

We responded to the call, lights and sirens blazing. As time went by, I started to realize the gravity of my situation and what a huge amount of trouble I was in. You ever get pains in your guts from trying to hold in a deuce? Well, I did the whole ride there. I should never have taken the call, because I felt the imminent need to shit and it might have been an hour until I was able to see the inside of a stall again.

When we got to the scene and I stood up out of the rig, I looked over to my partner and said, “I’m in serious trouble here.”

He knew what I was talking about; he thought it was hilarious, but there really wasn’t much we could do about the whole situation. We had a construction worker who fell like twenty feet and landed on concrete, so I had to suck it up and keep moving.

In serious pain, wincing with each step, I helped my partner move the litter through the construction site to where our patient was. Lo-and-behold, about half way there the pains went away! Thank God, I thought. I must have even smiled, relieved at the idea that sometimes mind over matter really does work.

The only problem was, without even realizing it, I started to sweat profusely.

We got to the patient, rolled him over and started stabilizing his neck. I asked a few questions of his co-workers when it hit me like a ton of bricks: the shit returned with a fury I have never experienced again in my life. I had to shit right then or I was going to drop one right in my pants, right in front of everyone. I stood up, not knowing what to do. There wasn’t a bathroom in sight, and I had a very seriously hurt patient to care for, but nature was calling with anger.

I did what any red blooded, god fearing American would do. I ran for the hills.

I hated the idea of ever having to leave a patient, but I knew my partner was capable of getting a lot of the skills done that needed doing. We were in luck, too. One of the cops who responded to help us was also a par-time EMT, so the two of them could reasonably handle the things that needed to get done in the short term.

My problem was a little more pressing. I looked around. I couldn’t see any place to pop a squat, and was getting a little despondent when suddenly I saw my saving grace: A construction trailer up against a small hill. I ran like a bull was chasing me, ramming its horn up my ass. It pretty much felt like that either way. I ran behind the trailer, took one last look around and not seeing anyone, pulled my pants down and pushed. I left one of the messiest shits I ever saw. I pushed so hard and so fast, it actually made that really nasty shitting sound that people only joke about. One quick push and all of the chocolate mess was out.

I had another problem though, because in my travels as a paramedic I don’t make it a habit of carrying toilet paper with me everywhere I go. What I did have was plenty of green foliage. I picked a bunch of soft-looking weeds, bundled them up in my hands and got the job done. I even managed to avoid getting poo on myself.

The Shit Gods were really looking out for me this time.

After I pulled up my pants and returned to the patient, the rest of the call went smooth. The cop managed to cover for me amazingly, saying I needed to call our Medical Director to get orders to fly the patient by helicopter, and the constructions workers seemed to buy it. I didn’t stink like shit, and we had a little hand cleaner in the rig, so I cleaned my hands and put on a fresh pair of gloves.

As it turned out in the end, the guy was very lucky and had no permanent injuries. I wasn’t so lucky though, I never hear the end of that story.