Matthew Franklin Sias - 18 Jan

Memoirs of a Lifesaving Mortician

Matthew Franklin Sias

Copyright Matthew Franklin Sias 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher.

This book is a work of non-fiction. All events have been reproduced as accurately as possible. At times, to protect those who could suffer embarrassment, names and/or certain details have been changed.

Originally self-published by Matthew Franklin Sias in 2012

Published by Vulpine Press in the United Kingdom in 2018

ISBN 978-1-910780-55-8

Cover by Claire Wood

Cover photo credit

www.vulpine-press.com

This book is dedicated to my late grandmother, Doris Druschel, who encouraged me to write.

A note from the author

The silent siren refers to a purple flashing light that was commonly found on the front of hearses in the 1930s and 1940s. It indicated that a funeral procession was in progress. Much as cars now pull over for ambulances, police cars, and fire engines now, they pulled over for funeral processions out of respect for the dead and their families.

I have tried to lay out chronologically some of the more interesting experiences I have had in my vocation and avocations in the public service sector, focusing mainly on my chosen career in EMS. I never took notes on calls in the last twenty years, so my recall of more recent events is more accurate. This is the reason for relatively more detail included in my Skagit County and funeral home accounts. I have, however, attempted to recreate even past events to the best of my recollection.

This book is also dedicated to the memory of Randy Oliver, Art Dick, and Terry Bowen, three comrades in EMS who left us too soon.

Matthew Sias, April 19, 2010

Contents

I. EMT

Alta

First Days

Medical Terminology

Explorer Firefighter

Trial by Fire

Ancient Mammaries

Bleach

Shocked

Daddys Sick

Station Rats

The Dukes of Bainbridge

Pieces of a Man

Coitus Interruptus

Rats!

Aircraft Down

Stinker

Sleeping Beauty

Guts in the Street

Up a Creek without a BVM

Stairway

The Blue Dog

Just a Tune-Up

Taking Granny Home

Im Worried

II. Paramedic

Paramedic Training

Cough CPR

Queens

Gear Geeks

Ethel gets an Airway

AMR Northwest

If Thy Hand Offends Thee

Skinny Dip

Adventures in Lawn Mowing

EMS Superstition and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

Back to School

History of Medic One

Training

Seniors

Shunt

Evaluations

See Me

Smock Burning

An Impossible Airway

Hot Dog

The Split

Shoreline Fire

Sick Kid

Time to Retool

III. Transitions

Re-Evaluation

The Cooler

Autopsy

Suicide

A Multitude of Maggots

Homicide

Decomp

In Shades of Ordinary

Gross

Rough Riders

Another Transition

The Removalist

Heavy Duty

The Mummy

Academy

IV. Skagit County

Skagit County

A Substantial Woman

Fly Paper

Cardiac Arrest

Mushroom

Darryl the Nearly Indestructible

One Confirmed

Two Humans

Tones

Health Care is Broken

Silent MI

Monkeys with Needles

Blocked

Problem Patients

A Car, a Dead Man, and Some Cows

Pablo

Comfortably Numb

Medics Say the Darnedest Things

Code Save

Off Duty

The End of the Road

V. The Business

Death

Different Missions

My Other Car is a Hearse

Embalming Mrs. Ramirez

Double Duty

Every Sparrows Fall

Ditched

All in the Family

VI. Reflections

One of Our Own

Grandma

Success

Looking to the Future

A Calling

I. EMT

Being a volunteer is like peeing in a dark suit. It gives you a nice warm feeling and nobody notices.

- Unknown

Alta

Alta slumps in her wheelchair, still and silent, in the middle of the nursing home hallway. Her waxen face passively regards the fluorescent ceiling lights. A toothless mouth gapes in a perfect O and her eyes remain half-open behind her ever-present tinted glasses.

At fifteen years old, I became a volunteer at a local nursing homesomething I had taken up for Lent, when I was more religious than I am now. My mother stands beside me in her purple coat, hair still blown from the late December wind. She had just walked in the door to pick me up and was trying to adjust to the tropical environment of a skilled nursing facility.

Is she dead? I ask Mom. She nods, reverently I thought. I think so.

My mouth goes dry and I cant speak for a minute. This is the first dead body I have ever seen. I have the sense that I had witnessed something I shouldnt have, that the passing of one life into the next was intensely privatesomething that should only be experienced behind closed doors.

Earlier in the day, I had seen Alta energetically maneuvering her wheelchair through the hallways. She had always seemed to be in a hurry, propelling her chair, using one leg as a motor. Yet there she sat, still and pale, her chunky orthopedic shoes perched on silver footrests, her crisp khaki skirt reaching just past her support-hose clad knees.

A nurse approaches the still body with a cup of water and a handful of pills, seemingly unaware of her demise.

Alta! Alta! She nudges her shoulder.

The nurse looks panicked and beckons to another woman at the desk, who presses two fingers to Altas neck and then, wordlessly, wheels her backwards into her room.

Altas gone, whispers a white-coated nurse.

No! says another, hand clapped to her mouth.

Though I hadnt been prepared for what I had seen when I had rounded the corner at the nurses desk, Altas passing was a gentle introduction to death, and I had no responsibility to take action. I was merely an observer.

With a sense that somehow I had been changed, I jam my slightly sweaty hands into the pockets of my jeans, and Mom and I make our way down the wide hallway towards the double doors that lead to the outside worlda world of fresh air, trees, life.

The Responder

A tepid breeze blows through the anemic air conditioning unit of our Plymouth minivan, providing little comfort against an unseasonably warm August day on Bainbridge Island. Dad sits beside me, lost in his work, scribbling notes on a wrinkled, coffee-stained piece of paper entitled First Call. I roll down the drivers side window and make the left turn down a long, steep driveway. As we descend, the salty kelp smell of the beach grows stronger. Ive always found the breezes wafting from the Puget Sound comforting and the van needs airing out anyway.

Our destination amounts to a mansion, three stories of magnificence presiding over acres of manicured lawns that lead to a glimmering shoreline. Something about the residence is vaguely familiar. Standing at the doorway is an elegantly dressed woman who watches our approach impassively. She stoops to move aside planters of brightly colored flowers as we pull our van parallel to the front door.

I glance at myself in the rearview mirror before I exit. Necktie centered and pulled tight. Hair combed and shellacked to the point of immobility. A few gray whiskers are visible in my beard. Otherwise all is good. As I step out of the van, the sun strikes my head and I notice that it seems a little more intense at the crown, where, almost imperceptibly, my hair has begun to thin.