I don't think I will ever forget the expressions of horror on the faces of those who surrounded me and my partners as we tried to resusciate her. The patient in question was a morbidly obese woman in her forties who collapsed and by the time we got to the scene, she was not breathing.

Apparently, the woman had choked while eating. Her grown son tried his best to dislodge the food from her throat, but to no avail. She eventually turned blue and fell to the floor, unconscious. This was when his wife called for paramedics; the situation at hand had suddenly turned very dire.

We got to the scene within minutes, but it seemed like hours. We went racing to the house with our gear; we were soon at work, trying to determine the nature of the situation at hand, and tried to get readings on the woman's vitals.

It was very difficult at best because the woman in question was so very large. In fact, she was probably one of the biggest human beings I had ever seen: her body size was massive, and it was a struggle to try to get her turned over onto her back. We finally established that she did not have ANY pulse: therefore, we had to start CPR on her, to try to get her back.

We quickly attached EKG leads on her massive chest, and sadly, the tracing on the screen revealed that she was without a pulse. We immediately started doing CPR, I pushing on her chest, and my partner, George, breathing into her. Our efforts yielded no results. I quickly barked at George to crack open the api and the epi, to see if we could get her heartrate back, but even after giving it to her via an I.V. line inserted in one fleshy arm, we didn't get any results. We continued working on her, praying, hoping that she would somehow come around.

Her terrified family members stood in the doorway, pleading, crying, begging for her to come back to life; on their faces were looks of absolute terror. They were worried for her very life. Come to think of it, we were too. She was looking worse by the minute, and life was quickly ebbing away from her.

Suddenly, without warning, she started vomiting. Thick, brownish-tan sludge started bubbling out of her nostrils and her partly open mouth. We quickly grabbed the suction equipment, got the tube down her, snd turned it on; as fast as we tried to suction, the faster the stuff seemed to be coming. Soon, vile-smelling vomit covered her, and covered us, as we tried to clear her airway. We had to roll her over onto her side so she wouldn't choke; we then rolled her over onto her back, and resumed our rescue efforts. The sludge finally stopped coming, and we breathed a sigh of relief; but then it started again. She was clearly choking, and again, we tried to suction her. We quickly rolled her onto the stretcher bed (which was hard to do, as she was so big); we then quickly got her out the door and into the back of the waiting ambulance that was in the driveway.

In the ambulance, we seemed to have the situation under control, but we were covered in smelly filth, and it was all I could do to keep from losing it myself. The woman was still not breathing, nor did she have a detectable heartbeat. We continued performing CPR, but as the minutes ticked by, we knew that the woman's chances for surviving this crisis were quickly ending. If she DID survive by some miracle, she would probably have irreversible brain damage caused by a lengthy period of being without oxygen. She was probably without oxygen for over ten-twenty minutes anyway, and her outcome was quite uncertain. Only doctors would know more about the extent of her situation, but to us, it did NOT look at all good.

It ended up that the woman died just as they got her onto the table at the E.R. After some more last ditch efforts to try to revive her, the ER team concluded that the woman was just too far gone, and that she was devoid of life. They called her dead not long after they got her onto the table. 

She was only 42 years old, and her name was Jayne. According to the autopsy report on her, she died of morbid obesity and accompanying health problems, among them, a ruptured aortic artery in her stomach, congestive heart, lung, and kidney failure, diabetes, and hardening of the arteries.

I still can see the horrific images of the woman vomiting in her unconscious state and us trying to clear her airway and our efforts to reviving her. I still can see the stricken expressions on the faces of her family members, and hearing their pleading cries for us to try to help her. I still can see the massive size of her arms and legs splayed out on the floor like pale sausages, and I can see her pendulous stomach. I also can see her mammoth-sized breasts and her stringy, pale-blonde hair streaked with grey. I still can see the flat line on the monitor screen of the EKG machine, and I still can see George fumbling with the suction equipment as he tried to get it down the woman's throat (only to be sprayed with sludge as she vomited yet again). I have had reaccuring nightmares about this case, and I wonder if it was even worth trying to save this poor, unfortunate woman who was probably going to die anyway from serious health problems brought on by her weight. She had to weigh OVER five hundred pounds at the VERY least; she was probably one of the biggest people I had ever seen!