I was working out of the old Castle Hill station, with my boss Norm, late one afternoon, when the phone rang, and Norm picked it up. After a bit of a chat on the line to the coordination staff, he said we had a job over at Round Corner, for a concern for welfare. Now Norm was an Intensive Care paramedic, so for us to get a job like this which is a non-emergency response, meant there was nobody else available to do the job.

Well, we piled into the ambulance, and made our way at normal speed to the location given.

As we pulled up out the front of the address, there were a couple of people standing near the driveway. I got out of the passenger side of the ambulance, said hello to the bystanders, introduced Norm and I, asked what we were here for.

One of the ladies gave us a run down on the concerns, and it went like this.

The gentleman of concern kept pretty much to himself.

His wife had died about 5 years earlier, and for the next 2 years, he became isolated and hermit like, living on his own, not venturing outside the house, even to get rid of garbage, which he stored in bags inside of the house. They would each take it in turn make some meals each day, and leave them by the front door, and so this went on for some time. They thought it part of their Christian responsibilities towards him and the community alike.

Well, a friend of the gentleman, whose wife had also passed away, moved in to live with him, and help him with looking after the place. They ended up getting the council involved in the clean-up, as a bit of a community effort, and he filled a complete garbage truck with rubbish and debris from outside and within the house.

They called in a cleaning company to clean the house once it was emptied, and the other guy then moved in with him.

Now that isn’t where it ended.

Around 5 months after that, the gent who moved in, died. Now when he passed away, the gent who lived there, went back to his hoarding, hermit ways as before, and hadn’t taken any rubbish out of the house in the past 3 years.

We prepared ourselves for the worst when we went in, or so we thought.

The stench of urine and faeces was overwhelming to say the least, and we soon found out why.

The house was a typical fibro, three bedroom, housing commission house that had been bought by the occupant years before.

As we entered through the front door, that would only open about half way, the first thing that got our attention was that the floor was soggy, as we walked along the corridor. Off to the right of us, about halfway along the hallway, was the toilet and bathroom. The entire toilet bowl was clogged up with and full of faeces and there were handprints on the surrounding walls indicating that he was wiping himself with bare hands, and then wiping the walls to get the bulk of it off his hands.

It was at that time that I started to learn that you can suppress vomit with a bit of control.

Just opposite the bathroom was the doorway to the lounge area, where we could hear the television going. Looking into this room, the first thing to get our attention was the garbage. Less than a metre into the room, the pile of stinking, rotting garbage was so high that we were unable to enter far enough to get near the guy, sitting in the recliner. I called out multiple times, but got no response. There was no history of hearing impairment that we were aware of, but we had to make physical contact to confirm our suspicions that he was dead. The smell of faeces was even stronger, as we got further into the house.

Norm and I walked around to the kitchen are, and that was when we discovered some more little surprises.

There were rat droppings on every horizontal surface. In some areas, it was that deep that the rats must have been walking on stilts.

In the sink, amongst the dishes and cups, were plastic bags filled with stuff that only the imagination can guess at. In one in particular, there were maggots crawling out of the bag, with large blowflies sitting around on the filthy surfaces. In the doorway to the lounge area from the kitchen was the same with the garbage as at the other doorway. I still couldn’t get close enough for physical contact. The patient was sitting in what looked like a recliner rocker, with a clear line of sight through the piled garbage to the TV. The neighbours had told us that the TV was on twenty four hours a day, never off.

Immediately to the right of the patient, sitting on the floor next to his recliner, was a ten litre bucket full of what we could only guess was urine. Floating in the bucket were some Ventolin puffers and other debris that I wasn’t going to try to work out what it was.

Well we came up with the idea to take the small kitchen table, and try to bridge the gap by pushing the table into the rubbish. We turned the table onto its’ side to let all of the rubbish on it slide to the floor, then wiped it with a bit of rag that I think used to be a tea towel. We put the table onto the rubbish, and I carefully climbed onto the top. I felt like I was a cat walking on ice. Four paws slipping on the grime on the table. Well, I got close enough to gently push him with my gloved hand, and he was rigid, with no response to the physical stimulus.

Norm pulled me back off the table, into the kitchen, where I promptly removed my gloves, as they were coated in grime of some sort. Last thing I wanted was to get that stuff on my clothing. Having confirmed our suspicions that he had passed away, we promptly walked out of the house, making soggy squelching sounds with every step.

As we emerged outside into the fresh air, it was a huge relief. It would be appropriate at this time to describe our uniform, as it has some bearing on the next part of this story. Our trousers were dark blue slacks, black work boots, and a white collared, button up work shirt.

Now as we were walking out, up the driveway, I looked down as I was trying to clean stuff off my boots on the grass. A small dark object on my trousers caught my attention. I gave it a flick, thinking it was just a small insect, and that is when I saw more of the same on my trousers. They were rat fleas, and my trousers were covered in them. Just the dark trousers, not my white shirt. I immediately told Norm, who started to laugh at me, that is until he realised he was covered in them as well. Well did I laugh!

We realised that we were unable to get back into the ambulance while we were covered in the fleas, so I walked across the road to one of the neighbours that we had spoken to earlier, and asked them if they had a can of insect spray that we could borrow for a few minutes.

Norm and I stood in the middle of the road, and took turns at covering our mouth and eyes, while the other person sprayed us from head to toes to kill all of the fleas on our clothes and boots.

As we were doing this, the neighbours came out again, to talk to us, and find out what we had found inside.

We notified them that he had passed away, and we were not sure how long ago. They told us that the meals hadn’t been eaten for the last two days. We also enquired if they knew what the problem with the floor was, as it was quite soggy.

That was when they told us that he had a history of bowel cancer, he didn’t wear pants around the house, and when his bowels opened, wherever he was at the time, he used to put newspaper over it, and rarely cleaned it up. It looks like we had been walking around on newspaper covered shit. Great, there goes a good pair of boots.