11.
“Rural paramedic here. Several years ago had a woman call with feelings of impending doom. No pain, no symptoms, just ‘I feel like I’m about to die.’ Vital signs were all normal, on scene exams all normal. But she wanted to go get checked out, so into the ambulance and away we go.”
“We went to the hospital, and she started getting really sweaty, but there were no other symptoms/exam changes/vital sign changes. We dropped her off, gave our report, and went back into service…
A couple hours later, we went back to the same hospital. I asked if they ever found anything with the previous patient, and I found out she passed away.
CT showed a ruptured aortic aneurysm, and they didn’t have enough time to transfer her or the resources to operate at that facility. The bizarre thing is, ruptured aortas usually (as in, every other case I’ve seen/heard about/read about) have other symptoms such as high heart rate, low blood pressure (or both), dizziness/lightheadedness, pain…this woman had none of those.”