We are called to an eighty year old collapse with a cut hand, and arriving find him and his wife in the kitchen.
What we originally thought was going to be a collapse followed by a cut hand turns out to be the other way around.
He cut his hand, saw the blood and fainted.
He doesn't like blood. Or needles.
His wife is diabetic, when she injects herself he has to look away.
The cut is rather small, I teach my crewmate about the thenar eminence while she dresses it.
The patient doesn't want to go to hospital, and the cut is of the type that one of our ECPs can deal with. We will do a full assessment on our patient and leave him at home to await the ECP.
Everything is going fine, we are having a chat about children.
He seems quite calm.
Then he stiffens, vomits and stares straight ahead.
He doesn't answer to my calling his name.
He starts to sweat profusely.
I scrabble to feel a pulse, can't feel one.
No pulse.
Then it's back - thudding slowly away. He looks at us quizzically.
'Did I faint again?'
I take my own pulse.
He's a nice man. His wife is nice. I had visions of CPR on the tiny kitchen floor.
My crewmate says it, 'You are coming to hospital'
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I'm sure you'd like to join me in wishing Jess Smith good luck as she heads of to Afghanistan.
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More news on the FRU that was shot at which I mentioned in a previous post....
A London ambulance worker today described the moment she was shot twice after treating a patient.
Emergency medical technician Suzanne O'Rourke, 40, pictured left, had been responding to a call. She was saved from serious injury because one shot was stopped by her stab-proof vest and the other grazed her shoulder.
Ambulance bosses voiced their anger at the attack and highlighted the dangers faced by their staff.
Mrs O'Rourke said she was attacked as she walked back to her fast-response car after treating a patient in King's Close, Leyton, at 3.30am on 23 August. “I was on my own when I heard a bang and something hit me on my back. I must have turned around to see where it was coming from when something hit me on the shoulder as well. It hurt a lot.
These shots were fired by someone who might need us one day. I'm actually speechless about this, not from fear, but from anger and disappointment.
