SHORTSTORIES

HOW DID THIS PATIENT SURVIVE? PART I We responded to a scene where I initially thought the person must be dead, but was actually fine.

A person had been driving down a long highway in a fairly remote area, not wearing their seatbelt, going at least 70–75 mph, when they dozed off or otherwise lost control of their car. They went off the highway into the dirt, rolling their car a few times. We were called out when another driver came along who knows how much later and saw a car on its side.

When we pulled up to the scene over half an hour later – as I said, this was remote — I saw a car on its side and a body on its underside that appeared to be partially ejected. I thought the patient was going to be dead. As it turns out, the person was tossed around in the car during the rollover (as expected with an unrestrained driver), and ended up on the side the car landed on (because…gravity) with their head between the top of the door frame and the rocky dirt ground. Which, of course, would normally squish a person’s head and there wouldn’t be much that any human could have done for them.

But this car happened to also land up against a large rock against the top of the doorframe of the rear door, almost exactly the height of the driver’s head. So the patient’s head was saved because one rock prevented their head from the weight of a car landing on and probably rolling over it.

The patient was quite angry with us for using jaws of life to get them out and for calling in a flight medic (we were over an hour out from a hospital by ground). I assumed that this was due to head trauma because, really, who is going to complain about us trying to safely remove them from their destroyed car that sat on their head?

I found out later that the patient only had a couple fractures and no head injury and was released after a couple days. The patient of course was incredibly lucky. Most unrestrained rollovers do not end happily, and I hope the driver ultimately learned something from his experience.