Tiffany Yearwood

Spin Cycle

Life has taught me that sometimes things happen to you as a casualty of someone else's blessing. It was February 14, 2013, Valentine’s night. My partner Joe and I were dispatched to a possible stroke. Joe had been my EMT partner on the truck for several months at that time, and I was the Paramedic in charge. When we arrived to the house, we were met by a frantic woman who said she had just left the bedroom to toss a load of laundry into the wash, and when she came back she found her husband lying in the bed, unable to talk. We quickly made our way to the bedroom where the patient was lying in bed, trying to talk while reaching for us with his right arm. “Mmmllleeeeeeehhhh” was all that came out of his mouth when he opened it, which sounded more like a llama yelling at us. This guy had a textbook presentation of someone having a stroke. He had complete left-sided paralysis, left-sided drooping of his face, and speech that was so slurred, it was incomprehensible. Joe was right behind me with the stretcher, so we immediately lifted this 200+lb man over to it and headed out the door with him. When someone is having a stroke, time lost is brain tissue lost. The quicker we could get him to the hospital, the better his chances were for recovery.