The Third Time...Really a Charm?

At about 2am we respond to ground level fall. We arrive to find an extremely obese elderly male who can not get up off of the floor. His sweet wife all of about 140 pounds, who has cared for him for many years, couldn't begin to lift her 380 pound husband from the floor. His legs and feet are purple from celluliteus and he is being treated by a doctor for it. He has lost about 100 pounds since my last visit when he fell in the tub and had taken a laxative to treat his constipation. What a mess. It seems to be the case, they are in a small room, a tight spot, in an older house usually upstairs or in a basement. This gentleman has huge laps of skin left over from weight loss, you always wonder what's lurking in them but never want to find out. It just adds to the difficulty of maneuvering the dead weight. We decide to bring his wheel char close and bear hug him from the back while my partner moves his knees then his feet under him until we get him in the chair. After his denial for any other treatment and a patient assessment we call the ER Doctor and gain approval for a scene release.
We return to quarters and crawl back into bed it's now 0315 and it takes a few minutes to winde down and fall back to sleep.
The next night the call came earlier. This time about 11pm a call to the same house for the same patient. He has decided his legs hurt too bad and he wants to be taken to the emergency room for treatment. His legs are a deeper purple and his feet are almost black. His wheel chair is too wide to get through the bedroom door so we move our cot into the hallway and carefully move him from the chair to the cot. That takes about 20 minutes because he is very unsteady on his feet even with our help he wants to move slow. Now comes the fun part. The hall way is narrow with two turns before we get to the front door. We only lift the cot about half way to keep a lower center of gravity as we roll it on the carpeted floor. We sit him up as far as he can tolerate so we can make the cot shorter and still the turns are very tight. I don't want to put gouges in the walls while trying to turn the corners so we very slowly make our way through them. Now the front door and down the  seven steeps with a landing between three and four, but don't think for a minute the landing is long enough for the cot to fit on. We had an engine company respond with us this time for extra hands. We four corner the cot (one person on each corner) and slowly move down the front stairs. The patent is loaded into the ambulance and transport is initiated. On the way to the hospital a set of vitals are found to be in normal range and the patient's condition is unchanged. Now we get to move him out of the ambulance and onto a bed. Again all accomplished with multiple people and lots of 1-2-3 go! He expresses his appreciation for our work and offers to make us brownies. A nice gesture but it conjures up some not so appetizing images of my first trip to his house. We politely decline and say good-by.  
I successfully predicted the next trip for our patient that was toned out at 0130. Now we pick him up at the emergency room and transport him home. Another trip up the stairs and through the tight turns of hallway and into the back bedroom. His good wife has changed the sheets on the bed and the patient is now resting on them. It's a work out but at least the man is appreciative of our help.
Back to the station to clean up and take a nap before the next call.