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by jimlongley
Fri Mar 27, 2009 7:48 am
Forum: General Texas CHL Discussion
Topic: Anyone ever made an unplanned hospital trip w/ CHL?
Replies: 23
Views: 3511

Re: Anyone ever made an unplanned hospital trip w/ CHL?

As promised, I asked last night in Citizens Fire Academy, and they said they have only had a couple of times where a patient was armed. As a matter of routine even LEOs are disarmed when riding as a patient.

The process is that, if a person is conscious and reveals they are carrying, then they are asked to disarm and pass the gun off to a family member or the police. If the person is unconscious then the gun gets passed to the police.

They were not aware of any problems experienced by gun owners retrieving their property.

Of course this only applies to the City of Allen.
by jimlongley
Thu Mar 26, 2009 9:11 am
Forum: General Texas CHL Discussion
Topic: Anyone ever made an unplanned hospital trip w/ CHL?
Replies: 23
Views: 3511

Re: Anyone ever made an unplanned hospital trip w/ CHL?

ELB wrote:and your insurance paid for most of it I hope.
I wish, I even considered suing the doctor to recover the part that wasn't covered, but that seemed to be more expensive than just bearing the expense myself. In the end I just called the doctor and told her she was fired, you should have heard the bluster I got back on that.

I have been taking the Allen Fire Department's Citizens Fire Academy recently, I think maybe the next time we have a Q&A with the chief I will ask how many times they have had CHL related issues.
by jimlongley
Wed Mar 25, 2009 10:46 pm
Forum: General Texas CHL Discussion
Topic: Anyone ever made an unplanned hospital trip w/ CHL?
Replies: 23
Views: 3511

Re: Anyone ever made an unplanned hospital trip w/ CHL?

txfireguy2003 wrote:Jimlongley, always remember, as long as you are "with it" you can decline transport from EMS. If you tell them that you don't want to be transported and they take you anyway, you can legally sue the pants off of them. That said, the Paramedics around here, employed by a private EMS service which is attached to the local hospital, have a way of convincing/scaring people who don't need to go to the ER that they will die if they don't. I hear rumors that the medics get bonus pay if they convince a certain number of patients to go in with them since the hospital doesn't get paid unless the patient rides to the ER!
I objected strenuously from before the time the medics arrived, the doctor and her staff paid no attention, lecturing me about how dangerous it would be for me to let this conditon go untreated and insisting that they were seeing bad things on the EKG. When the EMTs arrived, they hooked me up and ran a strip of their own, which didn't seem to be all that bad, and kind of sloughed off my objections to being transported.

The firemen were nice, but firm, when I suggested that I would rather not be transported. They told me that although their EKG didn't show anything, it may be that conditions have improved slightly, but they may get worse and become a crisis. So off to the hospital we went.

As a former EMT myself, I had a tendency to go along with what they said, even if I disagreed with the doctor and her staff. The department here is paid and has no stake in whether you actually go to the hospital or not.

In retrospect I should have flat refused, but after a while they had me worried.
by jimlongley
Wed Mar 25, 2009 9:13 am
Forum: General Texas CHL Discussion
Topic: Anyone ever made an unplanned hospital trip w/ CHL?
Replies: 23
Views: 3511

Re: Anyone ever made an unplanned hospital trip w/ CHL?

I went to my doctor with a complaint about muscle pain in my left arm and shoulder.

The nurse practitioner that interviewed me wrote my description down as "pain in right shoulder radiating down arm and chest" which did not truly describe what I was experiencing.

The next thing I knew I was being loaded into an ambulance with nitro under my tongue and an IV in my arm, to be trasnported to the hospital so they could treat my heart attack.

While I was being prepped for transport I asked one of the EMTs to put my gun in my car for me, so that my wife could retrieve it. The looks on their faces told me that they had probably never transported a CHL who was carrying before, and one even asked "You carried a gun to the docter?" I told them I carry everywhere that is legal and I had reservations about being tansported to the hospital while carrying.

I also had reservations about being transported at all, having objected that as a former EMT myself I doubted that what I felt was muscle strain from working in the yard, and which is the way I described it, was really a heart attack and that I did not need to be transported.

One of the firemen took my gun, after I cleared it, ad locked it in my car for me, locked in the box next to the spare tire per my instructions, and all was good, at least as far as my gun was concerned.

OTOH, the hospital kept me for hours before deciding that I was not having a heart attack and scolding me about it. They even told me that I had described my pain as radiating, which I had not, and that my EKG from the doctor's office was irregular because the leads had not been applied properly, which I was suspicious of, and that everything they saw indicated that my heart was healthy even if I am overweight and have high blood pressure and cholesterol, also things I could, and had been trying to, tell them.

The nurse actually got quite snotty.

I asked the doctor's office to call my wife for me, I didn't have my cell phone with me, it was in my car in a dashboard hands free mount, so they said they would. They called my home phone number, not my wife's work number, and left a voice mail that said "We have just sent your husband to the hospital, he is having a heart attack." No mention of which hospital or anything else, on a message she wouldn't have received for hours.

Luckily the hospital let me call her office while I was being admitted, so she went and retrieved the gun on the way to see me.

We were very chagrined to hear the voice mail after we got home that night.

I fired the doctor.

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