A couple of people have asked me some questions in the comments of the last few postings, I’ll answer them all in tomorrows posting.
Yesterday was fairly busy, but the two remarkable jobs of the day were caused by what we in the trade call “Tricky extrication”.
The first job was to a young male collapsed in a bookmakers toilet. I’ve been to a couple of these, and for some reason bookmakers toilets are favoured places for junkies to ‘shoot up’ in. I’ve been to more junkies in bookmakers, than I have drunks in pub toilets. Do not ask me why.
The toilet itself was 3 foot by 5 foot, and in it was a heavily drunken Lithuanian, covered in vomit, urine and the drink of champions – “White Lightning”, about three litres worth. He was, for all intents, unconscious – unable to talk, stand, walk or do anything except drool. And he drooled a lot.
Because of the size of the toilet (barely enough room for one person, let alone me as well), the slippery floor (vomit, urine, cheap nasty cider) and the state of the patient (big, thickset, heavy, completely unable to help) I had to grab him by his belt buckles, and with the aid of the crew man-handle him out to the ambulance.
I followed the crew to the hospital, so that I could wash some of the ‘stuff’ I had all over my arms, and the hospital knew the patient, because he had been there yesterday, for exactly the same thing…
The last job of the day was to a 45 stone male (285 Kg) with difficulty in breathing. He was up one flight of stairs, found it very difficult to walk, and was in a flat full of cardboard boxes. It took us an hour to get him out of the house, down the stairs and into the ambulance and at the hospital it took another half an hour to get him in. Our trolley-bed (and these are the new trolley-beds, fairly strong things) was buckling under his weight, and there was a moment or two when I thought it would collapse under the weight.
It took so long to get him out of the house that I got an hours worth of overtime – which, for my mercenary nature, was rather nice.
