Well, no sooner than I post about how there is no-one who is ill, I end up 'blueing' into hospital a 44 year old with a severe asthma attack coupled with an Addisonian crisis. As an almost exact opposite to the rest of the people today, the patient is well known to the local ambulance crews as someone who won't call an ambulance until she is exceptionally ill.

We then went to a nursing home to transfer a patient with Alzheimers disease to hospital so that she could receive intravenous fluids to rehydrate her. She had been treated with antibiotics for a leg infection, and it had upset her stomach, so the patient had stopped eating and drinking. Why this job sticks in my mind is that the patient has been suffering from Alzheimers disease for the last 12 years, and that for every day that she was in the nursing home, her husband had visited her. She was very confused, and could hardly recognise her husband, she was doubly incontinent and unable to have a conversation, yet her husband doted on her. He came with us in the ambulance and spent the trip holding his wife's hand, and talking to her to keep her calm. He seemed very happy to talk to my crewmate, I doubt that the nurses in the nursing time have enough time (or perhaps the inclination) to spend some time talking to him, and it meant that he could talk to someone and have a decent conversation.

It was both touching and sad, the utterly confused state his wife was in, and yet the tenderness which he still showed towards her.

Another 12 hours tomorrow.