Dad saw Jesus…He said he could come back for lunch

Yesterday provided a little excitement for us. Lisa and I had driven up to visit my parents, who had driven from their vacation spot in Vegas to visit Lisa’s mom. So all five of us were able to spend an evening together enjoying the cool mountain air…and WE were able to escape the 98 degree temperatures in Mesa! However, the relaxing trip quickly changed into an adrenaline filled moment as the medics worked on dad who was having a heart attack…sort of. Read on for the details!

Lisa’s mom is a volunteer dispatch for the Blue Ridge Fire Department up in the mountains. As part of her position, she gets to write training scenarios for the department to use as drills. Saturday was one of those drills and they decided to do it at her house since she wrote the drill. She of course didn’t mind because it meant thousands of gallons of water on her trees for free!
The scenario was written like this: the department would be dispatched for a structure fire to a lot in Linda’s neighborhood. However, when the trucks arrived they would discover it was a lot with no house or garage on it. They would soon realize that the lot numbers had been transposed and the chief would call in that he sees faint smoke in the distance. They find the correct lot number (Linda’s house) and dispatch sends out an address correction. The trucks pull up and immediately start pumping water onto the “garage fire”, which in actuality are just the trees on her lot in desperate need of water. They block off the road, connect to the fire hydrant, and do their thing spraying thousands of gallons of water on a fake fire. At least this is how it was SUPPOSED to go…
That morning before the drill the chief stopped by Linda’s and said he wanted to throw a twist in the scenario to see what his guys would do. He wanted one of us to fake a heart attack while watching all the action. Dad, of course, quickly volunteered and began planning his extensive list of symptoms. We knew we were in for a ride.
Everything happened just as they had planned…fire trucks pulled up, road was blocked, hoses out spraying water…and then (on the chief’s cue) dad collapses complaining of chest pain. The medics from the ambulance on the scene quickly come over and start caring for him as he starts rattling off symptoms: “My chest really hurts…I think it must have been something I ate”, “I can’t feel my fingers real well”, etc. They then load him up on the stretcher and we pulled him over to the rig, lifting him over the fire hoses and getting him safely stored away. Mom and Lisa hop in to go with, but then Lisa gets out as dad begins to pretend throwing up. They call for another firefighter to get in the ambulance to help roll him on his side (as they should) and begin driving him to the fire station where the life support helicopter is theoretically waiting, only to have dad complain that he didn’t want to go to the hospital because it was “too expensive” and his “insurance doesn’t cover ambulance rides”. He was enjoying it a little TOO much!
At the end of it all, the medics were scratching their heads trying to figure out how their victim knew every single sign of a heart attack…until they found out he was a M.D.! They then proclaimed, “So THAT’S how he knew every symptom!!” It was definitely a memorable experience that none of us will soon forget. To see more pictures, click our photo album or go here.