Creepy - Day 26 - Spasms

Episode Date: October 26, 2019

It gets worse...***Written by EmpyRealInvective***See your donation rewards podcast at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ3SrH_3fsROXFAjomKcUtw***Music by Steve Blizin***Title music by Alex Aldea***Intro/Outro Narration by Joe Stofko Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Now, this is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy presents the 31 Days of Horror. Day 26.

Spasms written by MP Real Invective. I spent weeks monitoring Joe Coort at Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. It was one of the more interesting cases. As a budding intern, I had an almost morbid fascination with macab cases. Patients with third-degree burns over most of their body, people with genetic abnormalities that turn them into ghoulish grotesqueries, like thalidomide deformities or fiel alcohol syndrome.

The most interesting case was Joseph Cowart. Joe Coort had the unfortunate fate of falling victim to the cosmic joke that we know is the Gulf War. He was on patrol when he triggered a bouncing petty, otherwise known as an S-mine. This mine, instead of exploding from the ground up, pops three or four feet out of the ground and then detonates. This inflicts massive injuries and trap and wounds to the torso and appendages. It was not created to kill. was manufactured to maim. It maimed Joe Covert,

although the true mercy would have been if the might have killed him. Before Joe Coord had been brought to the hospital, he'd suffered severe trauma to his arms and legs. As a result of the concussive blast, he lost both arms from the bicep down and his right leg up to his trunk. Perhaps the worst result of the S-mine

was a shrapnel that sliced in between two of his cervical vertebrae and rendered in paraplegic and brain dead. The comatose body of Joe Kohwer had spent his days in a hospital bed, slowly atrophying while machines kept and ventilated. Intravenous tubes supplied him with the essential nutrients to survive and the catheter assisted in removing his waist. His eyelids been taped closed to prevent them from drying out. Medicine has advanced so far that a person could be kept alive in a vegetative state for years,

maybe even decades. Joe had been in this condition for over two decades, and with medical innovations, it was quite possible that he'd live another couple of decades, if you could call it living. Every once in a while, the attending doctor would take first-year interns on a tour of the facility. He'd always stop in Covert's room. It was on my tour that I first saw Joe. As I stood in that room, trying to be as deferent as possible to the man's condition, the doctor drew a needle and asked all of us a simple question.

question. What's the difference between this man and a vegetable in the cafeteria? He didn't wait long enough for any of us to give an answer. He jabbed the needle into Joe Coward's big toe and I winced as a 16-gauge needle sink half an inch into his flesh. The comatose man didn't wince, cry out in pain, or give any indication that he felt the jab. The attendant doctor put on a wry smile and said in a mock conspiratorial tone, I won't get in trouble for eating the vegetable in the cafeteria. The sudden black humor caught me off guard and I laughed. I was one of the few who did, and I think that was what got me in the good graces of the

attending physician, Dr. Bird. He said, it is impossible for this individual to experience sensations like pain or pleasure, happiness, or sadness. He has as unfeeling and unthinking as the dead. For all intents and purposes, he's been able to be able to experience. he's been robbed with what makes a person a person. The only reason he is being sustained is that the military is determined to say,

we care for our soldiers. Whether that's true or not, it really has no impact on the care we are providing to him. Later, when I asked Dr. Byrd about Joe Colort's family, he told me that they visited for the first few years, hoping against hope that they could find some sort of acceptance in his condition. They never came to terms with it. And slowly, the visits started getting further and further apart.

The last time they visited, they signed a consent form so that their son could give one last thing and an already long list of things he already sacrificed. The waiver allowed interns to practice minor medical procedures on him. I would go in that room whenever I had free time. I used to sit by his bed with my lunch and listen to the slow cadence of the electrocardiogram, the rising and falling of the respirator, and seclude myself from the hustle and bustle of the hospital. I credit Joe Coord as the reason I made through that first hellish year of interning at Walter Reed Hospital. The hours were rough and they paid me minimum wage.

I would have fallen behind in my techniques if it weren't for Coort. I used my downtime at the hospital practicing my medical skills. I gave him sutures and stitches. I drew blood from his femoral artery and practiced inserting IVs. Practicing on Joe Coord increased my confidence and proficiency. I'd frequently take my lunch. into his room, seeking a moment of peace and quiet. It was while eating my sandwich that I first witnessed one of his seizures.

I had been halfway through my sandwich one late afternoon when Joe Coert started convulsing. To be perfectly honest, it scared the shit out of me. The only way I can describe how it felt would be this. Imagine yourself attending a funeral when suddenly the corpse sits up from the cask and starts twitching and shaking. I watched the writhing man with my mouth agape. I sat there for a few seconds, too stunned to do anything, before my training kicked in and I hit the nurse call button. I sat to performing the ABCs, airway, breathing, circulation, as I waited for assistance.

His airway was unobstructed, the respirator seemed properly attached and there were no kinks in the line, and while his skin was pallid, I managed to find a pulse using his femal artery. The ECG also confirmed that there is no arrhythmia. Some more senior doctors arrived when we managed to do that. to get him stabilized. We spent the next couple of days trying to figure out what it caused the seizures. Apparently, it wasn't the first time

he'd gone into convulsions. A few years before I began my internship at Walter Reed, he began seizing up on a nurse who was doing a blood panel on him. Test proved inconclusive, and as the episodes hadn't happened again, until now,

was chocked up as a freak occurrence. We scoured our brains trying to find out what was causing the seizures. We thought it was nutritional issues at first. Blood glucose test showed that he was within normal ranges. Next, we ran a CAT scan to see if maybe the concussive blast inflicted so long ago may have had any extremely late-stage effects. The scan showed no bleeds or any type of infection that might cause seizures.

We checked for deep vein thrombosis. Could he have formed a clot that had shifted loose when I practiced of blood drawn to sperm artery? an embolism could have triggered the seizures. Had I caused it? The test indicated there was no thrombosis or embolisms. At a glance, besides being a paraplegic brain dead multiple amputee, Joe Coeur didn't have any condition that could have resulted in a seizure. Why was he still convulsing?

The seizures by now had increased in frequency. Every few days he'd go into convulsions that lasted a few minutes before stopping. During these episodes, he would writhe on the bed as if being electrocuted. His one remaining limb would rash about as if it were a marionette with tangled strings that were being jiggled up and down. His foot would lash out and bang against the bedstand. We were afraid to restrain him as he could break his leg in one of his spasms, and the hospital regulations prevented a restraint being left on for more than 24 hours. The convulsion soon started occurring every day.

It got so frequent. that we even had a code on our system. Code cohort. Interns had started going at first out of curiosity. It became a bit of a competition amongst this. Whoever could solve the medical mystery behind cohort's convulsions would be the best of the group. We'd all sprint towards Joe's room with every code,

but eventually interest flagged and most interns moved on to more interesting cases. Until eventually it was only me. I was consumed. I stayed awake at night, looking up possible, extremely rare genetic causes for seizures, I poured over medical tests looking for rare conditions. I found nothing.

It took a week of sleepless nights before one last possibility finally dawned on me. I spent the rest of the night reading up on Dr. Edward Tobb's neuroplasticity theory. I had to make sure. I went into work the next day and spent the majority of the day waiting in Joe Coler's room. I didn't want to be right. I'd managed to pull night shift, and it was a quiet night, which afforded me plenty of time to monitor Joe Colwood's condition. At around 2.30 that night, he started to spasm.

I quickly shut the curtain and disconnected the ECG. I couldn't let anyone interrupt us. I was going to let him convulse. He writhed and shook on the bed like he was being electrocuted. I watched him carefully for any individual. vacationer sign. His one remaining foot lashed out and banged against the metal bedstand. His teeth were gritted and a small dribble of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. I was too busy writing down my observations to treat him.

I finally knew what was wrong and what the seizures were. They found me writing in my notes. Joe Coord had bitten off a portion of his tongue and blood was burbling from his mouth. They managed to elevate him and compress the wound before. he could drown in his own blood. They claimed sleep deprivation had impacted my judgment. That did nothing to lessen the sentence. I was barred from the hospital

and my medical license was revoked under claims of malpractice and negligence. None of that matters, though. What matters now is getting the word out. They need to euthanize Joe Covert. Those weren't seizures or spasms. They were completely voluntary. I know you don't believe me.

His family didn't believe me either. They had a restraining order taken out against me. They didn't want to accept the horrible truth. He is alive and cognizant. How long has he been in that state? I can't know for sure. With neuroplastity, he'd regained a bit of control on his leg. but the rest of his body is paralyzed.

Apparently the small regeneration was not enough for fine motor skills but was sufficient for him to try and send out a message. Joe Coeur wasn't having seizures. They were his message. He banged his leg against a table in a certain pattern repeating over and over again. This was the pattern. The periods are indicative of quick taps

while dashes signify a harder strike. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot dash, dot, dot. Don't you get it? She's been like that for months trapped in his own body, barely able to exert enough control to convey a message in Morris code spelling out the word help. Oh, God. Endlessly tapping out that same message, trying to get someone, anyone's attention. He is trapped inside the shell of his body begging someone to kill him,

but no one will listen. They won't allow me back on hospital grounds. They say that have cracked under their pressure, but that isn't true. They say the head scans show no indication of higher brain function. It's inhumane what they're doing. He can only just lie there, kept alive by tubes and respirators, no one to communicate with except himself, screaming silently for death. but no one can hear him or has their eyes open enough to see his torment. The doctors think they understand his condition, but they're completely misguided. The Army thinks they're taking care of one of their own by paying his medical bills, but they're only perpetuating his hell.

He needs to be put out of his suffering. I was the worst offender, poking, prodding, piercing him with needle drivers, all in an attempt to better myself. Oh, God. the agony he must have felt under my administrations. A blurb of lyrics from a song has been caught in my head for the last few days. As I write all this down, it repeats over and over. It's maddening.

Like autumn leaves, his senses fell from him. An empty glass of himself shattered somewhere within. His thoughts like a hundred mods trapped in a lampshade somewhere within. Their wings banging and burning. On through endless nights, forever awake he lies shaking and starving, praying for someone to turn off the light. I'm sorry, Joe. I'm so sorry.

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