Ambien

"Ambien is a hell of a drug, Peter."

I had two calls in a short period of time involving the sleeping aid Ambien. Neither involved the often reported sleep walking or sleep driving or other strange behavior, but both had powerful effects.

The first call came in as an elderly female who was breathing but unconscious. When we arrived we found a slight old lady laying face down in her very narrow hallway. She was actually conscious enough to mumble at us in response to my questions. It was very difficult to understand her answers, though. I was able to find out that she had indeed taken Ambien. After stepping over her and checking her for injuries (the hallway was very narrow, she pretty much took up the whole space), my firefighter and I started to roll her over. She mumbled again and this is what we heard, "Tell them.....tell them...I have...AIDS". Both of our heads snapped up and we stared at each other, both thinking, "No. She didn't really say that did she?". I asked her to repeat what she had said. She mumbled her reply again, "On the stove....tell them...I have...eggs". Ohhhhhhh eggs, no problem, we'll take care of that. We loaded the patient on to the gurney and I went to check the stove. There were no eggs in sight but there was a pot of water sitting on an unlit burner. I guess she only got that far before the Ambien kicked in and she wound up on the floor. It reminded me of a comedian I'd heard riffing on Nyquil, "the nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, wake up shivering on your kitchen floor medicine".


With the next patient it wasn't quite so obvious. This time we found a large woman in her thirties to forties in bed totally unresponsive. The odd part of it was she wasn't lying in bed. She was sitting on her bed cross legged (indian style) and leaning forward over her lap. I tried to wake her up to no avail and proceeded to try out some other tests to rule out the cause of her stupor. I checked her blood sugar and her pupils, all while she was sitting there not responding. I was getting ready to administer Narcan (to counteract the effects of narcotics) when her 7 year old daughter informed us that she sometimes "takes too much medicine". We began a search for medications and found Ambien in the nightstand drawer. Another mystery solved.

So, if you want to sleep through the night try valerian root, if you want to sleep for a couple of days, try Ambien.