There are some people, who despite their personality, you dread working with; one of these people is Noddy (not his real name).  He is what is known in the trade as a "trauma magnet".  He's one of those people who will get the cardiac arrests, car crashes, shootings and stabbings; by contrast I am a "shit magnet", meaning I only seem to pick up people who don't need an ambulance.  Other than having to do some real work for a change I really enjoy working with him.

So I was working with him a little time ago and we got called to a suspended, basically this is someone who's heart isn't beating and they have stopped breathing.  It's one of those jobs that require us to work hard trying to save the punters life.  We got to the address and found relatives performing CPR on their gran.  You might have seen it on T.V as a "Cardiac Arrest".

(Let me correct a few ideas you might have about resuscitation.  First, it rarely works, "Casualty and E.R." have led people to believe that you often save people; I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who have survived an arrest and most of them arrested while I was watching them in hospital.  Secondly, it isn't pretty, when you arrest there is often vomit, faeces, urine and blood covering the patient and the area around them.  Finally, people never suspend where you can reach them, if there is an awkward hole, or they can find someway to collapse under a wardrobe they will do so).

This poor woman was covered in body fluids and was properly dead; there was no way we were going to save her.  One of our protocols says that we can recognise someone as beyond hope and not even commence a resuscitation attempt.  Unfortunately we couldn't do it this time as the relatives had been doing CPR (which is the right thing to do) and so we had to make an attempt.

Some crews would do a "Slow Blue" in such a case, but I'm not a big fan of such things, so Noddy and I got to work and tried to resus the patient for 30 minutes.  Our protocol goes on to say that if after attempting a resus for a specified time we can end it and recognise death; which is what we did.

However, in this time it seemed that the entire extended family had arrived and there were over 20 people in this little terrace house with much wailing and gnashing of teeth.  It's always hard to tell someone that their mother had died, but it has to be done, and if you can manage it well you can answer some of their questions and hopefully provide some healing for them.

The G.P was informed (as they get money for certifying deaths it's one of the things we can't do), as was the police (a formality in sudden deaths).  The family had called a priest and he was there before the police arrived, while the GP was going to "phone the family"; what he expected to be able to do over the phone confused me.  And we tided up and went on to another job.

Until two weeks later, when Noddy gets called to a chest pain.  He turns up and finds himself in the middle of a wake, surrounded by twenty familiar looking people.

Can you guess who the wake was for?

Funny old world.

You might have seen a number of reports on "Health Tourists" in the media recently. Some of the figures banded about are based on a flawed study from Newham. I've seen a couple of these "tourists", the most recent was a woman from India who landed in London, went to her friends in Newham and a day later was calling an ambulance (my ambulance if you haven't guessed) as she was in labour. I did tell her that she wasn't supposed to fly after the 35th week of pregnancy, but she didn't speak English.
I've also dealt with a number of "Granny came off the flight and got chest pain" cases. I remember one such case that her test results showed that she'd had her heart attack a day before flying.
My personal experience is that it isn't actually that common, and I suspect the media like this story as it is in the same league of "news" as reporting on illegal immigrants.

I was watching the news on telly tonight, mainly about the earthquake in Bam. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose my family and home...but the news camera lets me know what I'd look like. My TV screen was filled with Iranians crying and wailing, and that camera kept framing and composing "perfect" shots of a people in unimaginable grief. That camera was everywhere, invading peoples feelings, but I suppose these pictures are important to let us know that, yes, people really are upset.

Ohh...Blogware have redesigned the post entry box.  Very nice.  I'll have to have a poke around and see if they have changed anything else.

Well it's the first day of the new year and I've managed to avoid writing reviews, resolutions or "why I want this year to be better".  I think 2004 will be pretty much the same as 2003, there won't be a revolution, there won't be any big scientific breakthrough and I'll still pick up patients who don't need an ambulance.

I did however see all three "Lord of the Rings" films in a row.  Some critics will tell you the films are about Good vs. Evil, or the growth of man or even the rise of Communism.  I however think that it is about a relationship, a long and sometimes painful relationship.  The relationship between my arse and the cinema chair.  More seriously I was greatly impressed by "Return of the King", and even my mum who thinks fantasy films are "silly" thought it was a good film.

I had the pleasure of not working over New Year so I will be relaxed and happy returning to work in a few days, but I'm sure a few days working out of Poplar will soon shake me back to reality.

Sundays can be busy, very busy. I think that they can be busier than Friday nights, my theory on this is that there is nothing on telly so people get bored and start drinking/drug taking early in the day, and all those people with minor illnesses have nothing to distract them.
Even so, yesterday was a nightmare.
At one point there were 16 emergency calls waiting for an ambulance to be dispatched, but all the ambulances were busy. One of the local hospitals was so busy it had to "Divert" (which is when everything except heart attacks, major trauma and cardiac arrests are diverted to another hospital), the other two hospitals in the area were also full to bursting and we ended up having to put 96 year old patients in corridors as there just wasn't enough room anywhere else.
Busy A+E departments mean that because of the lack of beds all those elective surgeries that were planned for today will have to be cancelled and this results in waiting lists getting longer. Waiting lists getting longer means you get a lower rating from the government and so they cut the money the hospital gets as punishment, which is supposed to mean that patient care improves. (And of course every decent doctor/nurse/radiographer wants to work in a "failing" hospital which does wonders for the retention of staff).
It's a nightmare situation and I can't see it getting any better until we get more hospitals, more staff or the general public to realise that "belly-ache" for three days does not need to go to A+E because they "don't want to bother their GP" and to educate the GPs that telling the same patient to dial 999 for an ambulance because they are busy is not a good idea.

/rant mode off

Seeing as the last post was perhaps a shade negative (and having promised the judge that I would continue taking the medication) I thought you might like to know about some of the good things about my job.
My crewmate and I went to a man having a fit on Christmas day, he is a security guard and built like a brick out-house. This fit wasn't your "normal" epileptic fit, but instead the man was more "punchy" and aggressive. To say it was a struggle to get him on the back of the ambulance is to say that Paris Hilton has appeared on the Internet. Cutting a long story short, the patient is diabetic and his blood sugar had dropped to a dangerously low level. Luckily we carry an injection to reverse this and after wrestling with him in order to give him this drug he made a full recovery before we even reached the hospital. This is a nice job because we actually helped someone rather than just drive them to hospital.
Other benefits of the job include (but are not limited to...)

Working outside in the fresh air, I don't know how office workers put up with air conditioning.

I also like being my own boss. Maybe this is why I don't find "The Office" that funny.

Driving on the wrong side of the road with blue lights and sirens going, it's not the speed its the power

Being able to poke around people houses and feel superior even though you haven't done the washing up for two days.

No matter how annoying the patient is, knowing that within twenty minutes it'll be the hospitals problem.

Meeting lots of lovely nurses, and knowing that I get paid more than them.

And on the rare occasion being able to help people who are scared or in pain.

After yesterdays surprising number of genuine jobs it appears that reality has returned. So I find myself dealing with the usual rubbish. What is worse is that despite living in an "ethnically rich" borough (where the official figures are 53% ethnic minority) all the food shops are closed for Christmas and I'm starving to death. With all the Muslims around you'd think some would ignore Christmas and stick around to keep McDonalds open...
My normal foul mood has returned and so I offer the following words of advice, Don't call an ambulance if...

...You have haemarroids and after having a "poo" there is a streak of blood on the toilet paper.

...You are pregnant, have contractions every 30 minutes and your husband will "follow the ambulance in his car".

...That you are worried that your bellyache for the last three weeks hasn't gone away.

...You had some drinks last night and now have a headache.

...And finally, if your urine infection hasn't vanished after taking one of the 28 antibiotics you were prescribed.

I'm off now to find a kebab shop that is open, or die trying...

Sorry I had to interrupt that last post but the call which rudely disrupted my post was an old boy who'd fell over and broke his hip. It was one of those jobs where you really feel for the patient and try everything you can to make them more comfortable. The family helped us out and in the end thanked us, so I guess we did a good job. We also had a security guard who was slipping into a diabetic coma, unfortunately for us he wasn't going quietly, instead he was fighting and thrashing and spitting all over the place. Once we'd worked out what was wrong with him from the limited information his workmates could give us it was just a simple job of an injection to effectively "cure" him and bring him back to normality.
There were another couple of jobs just like that and it was this that made it a really strange day...everyone we went to actually needed an ambulance. And it wasn't just me, other crews reported exactly the same thing. All we need to do is keep that up for the rest of the year and I will be a very happy bunny indeed.

Merry Christmas, I'm at work at the moment and have had to deal with a woman who doesn't understand that antibiotics might upset your stomach and a bloke who has had a fit after taking some ecstacy at 9:30 in the morning. Oops, got a call...better go.

I can't stand Christmas, thankfully none of my (very small) family can stand it either. For me it's an excuse to visit my mum and eat her food.
Which is lovely.
Anyway for the eighth year running I'm working over Christmas, which isn't a problem as it means I get paid more (Of course I'm only working it so that one of my "married with children" colleagues can celebrate Christmas at home...*cough*). This act of kindness means that our "Christmas dinner/exchange presents/get pissed" will be happening on Christmas eve.

Better buy mum some presents today

I'm sitting here single on station (you need two people to man an ambulance, and if you haven't got anyone to work with you are "single" and therefore unable to work, but you need to stay on station in case they find someone else in London who is single. In that case you find yourself trekking across London to work in a place you've only seen on telly). I'm hungry and bored, partly because its nighttime, and partly because there is no-one else on station.
However I have a plan...
To counter the boredom I have a DVD I can watch on the stations new DVD player (bought out of staff funds, so no we haven't been defrauding the NHS) while the hunger will soon be solved by the microwave curry I have sitting in my car.
Let us now introduce a new member into the cast, when I said I was alone that was a bit of a lie, there is the station cat. Well at least I think its a cat as it is so threadbare it could be anything. This cat is so stupid it lies in front of your amublance just when you need it the most, and refuses to move until you physically have to kick lift if gently out of the way. However it is intelligent enough to realise that when someone is using the microwave there will be an opportunity for begging five minutes later (thirteen minutes if the food is frozen).
So I nearly fell over the damn thing stepping away from the microwave, only to spend the next ten minutes discussing with a mouth full of Korma why it wouldn't like to jump up on my lap and make off with my dinner. It went a little something like this...

Miaow.
"No you can't have any".
Miaow.
"You wouldn't like it".
Miaow.
"Go eat your own dinner".
Miaow.
Gets up, plate in hand to check that the cat does indeed have food/water/toy mouse.
Miaow.
"Will you bugger off!"
Miaow.
At this point I put the plate (still with some of my food on it) on the floor, which the mangy beast sniffs and turns his nose up at. Said "cat" then goes and hides under a table.

Horrible bloody creature.