Sometimes a day can just drag along. Today due to rather unusual circumstances , the day really dragged. Here is the time-line of today

10:00 Turn up for work, brew a cup of tea
10:01 First job of the day, taking someone from Newham hospital to Barts.
10:02 Cut finger on my locker door, try to stop bleeding, look for plaster.
10:23 Give up search for a plaster - there are none on the station - leave for Newham hospital.
10:26 Arrive at Newham hospital, ask for plaster, they also don't have a plaster so I now have a huge dressing on my finger.
10:28 Meet with patient, pleasant woman - meet nurse who will be accompanying patient, barely understand nurse due to her inability to speak English.
10:30 Get patient's notes and read them, they make more sense.
10:32 Ask Nurse in charge why this patient (who is having cardiac monitoring and a blood transfusion) is going to an outpatient department. Get told that the patient 'just is'.
10:54 After packaging the patient on a stretcher, loading them on the back of the ambulance, we set of for Barts hospital.
10:55 Nurse escort tells me that she gets travel sick.
10:55:20secs Give nurse a vomit bag.
11:37 Arrive at Barts hospital
11:38 Enter Outpatients department, Reception seem rather surprised to see patient on stretcher appear in front of them.
11:40 Problem is referred to the sister in charge, she also looks befuddled.
12:00 We wait while sister in charge phones around the hospital trying to work out why this patient is in her outpatient department.
12:30 Still waiting...We let Control know why we are waiting - there is no stretcher/bed to put the patient on.
13:00 Still waiting
13:30 Still waiting - we let Control know that we still have the patient on out stretcher while they work out what they are going to do with our patient.
14:00 Still waiting
14:30 Still waiting - we let Control know that we haven't gone to sleep, we are told by sister in charge that patient will be admitted soon.
14:45 We place patient on an examination bed so that we can go back to answering emergency calls, patient will hopefully be in a hospital bed soon. We leave the nurse escort with the patient.
14:48 We are finally available for another job.
14:49 We realise we have nearly no fuel, and no fuel card to pay for fuel. We decide to return to station to borrow a fuel card off an unused ambulance
15:20 We arrive back on station to look for fuel card (and have a cup of tea).
15:30 We leave to get fuel. Take infusion pump back to hospital - the ward seem surprised that the patient has been admitted to Barts.
15:48 We have fuel, we are now ready for another job.
16:00 We get a call, out of area, Maternataxi
16:09 Arrive at Maternataxi, contractions (genuinely) every two minutes, previous baby born in 3 hours, drive rather quickly toward her booked hospital
16:12 Patient's waters break - start swimming in back of ambulance.
16:20 Arrive at hospital
16:24 Throw patient at midwife, run back to ambulance.
16:30 Tell control that we need to return to station to mop out the back of the ambulance.
17:20 Get back to station, mop out.
17:45 Crew to relieve us are already on station, await ambulance to dry out
18:00 Leave for home.
18:37 Get home, collapse into sofa, start writing this post.

-Fin-

This is how you get to work an eight hour shift, yet only do two jobs...

In unrelated news, I had a rather nice time at the London Blogger Meetup, people there included 'Stroppycow', Andrew and Mark, all of which blog for different reasons. After only two pints of John Smiths, I managed to get on a train travelling in the wrong direction... The next meetup will be merged with that of the Funjunkie Christmas meetup, which I am rather looking forward to...