Well, Saturday was the last day I worked but GreenFairy mentioned something that I wanted to write about - but forgot, for some bizarre reason...
The first call of Saturday was to a "?suspended"

"?Suspended" means "Query Suspended" which means that the patient might be suspended (a.k.a "dead")- we don't know, they might just be asleep, or drunk, or have a high temperature, or a cut finger but the person calling us is a twit

So we hack along the road, knowing full well that because it is the first job of the day the patient is definitely going to be dead.

We arrive at the house and the Rapid Response Car is there before us - so I grab my kit and bound up the stairs past the daughter who called us and into the bedroom.
Where a very dead lady was laying on the bed while the Rapid Responder was completing his paperwork.

One look is all you need to tell if someone has been dead for sometime - and this lady had that look. It turned out that the daughter last saw her mother alive an hour ago, but that she was feeling a little unwell and took to bed. Then the daughter had checked on her half an hour later and found her not breathing. She then waited twenty minutes to call us as she was in such a "tizzy". A quick look told us that even if we had been there when it had happened it was unlikely we could do much - various clues led us to think that a stomach ulcer had ruptured and she had bled out into her stomach.

All around the house were flowers and cards - due to the next day being Mothering Sunday.

No sooner than we had informed the daughter that her mother had died than the doorbell went - my crewmate went down to see who it was. It was only a bleedin' flower delivery man, delivering flowers to the (now) dearly departed. My crewmate told the delivery guy that now, perhaps, wasn't the best time to bring flowers - but took them in anyway, hiding them in the kitchen.

Perfect.

Then we had to wait an hour for the police to turn up - which is normal procedure for any death in the home, and is nothing to worry about. I then helped the police turn her body (to look for anything strange) and put my hand in a puddle of urine* - something that wouldn't bother me, IF I was wearing any gloves.

Oh well.

*I lost my sense of smell ages ago - I can't smell urine, faeces or alcohol. I count myself lucky in this regard.

It's four o'clock in the morning and I can't be bothered to go to bed. Faithless - Insomnia is playing on MTV at the moment...

Does this look healthy to you?

For any weblog owners that are in the UK, there is a new forum for RL meets - at the moment it's based mainly in Manchester - I think some of the rest of us need sign up.

Find it here at www.blogmeet.co.uk.

Goodnight.

Well, the PEP is still going down, unfortunately I've developed a Palovian response to the hours of 8 o'clock. Every twelve hours I need to take the pills - I start to get nauseous just thinking about it, the familiar copper taste hits my mouth and I just want to lay down.
I also seem to have lost any control over my circadian rhythms, I'm sleeping for 14-16 hours straight and I'm drowsy for the rest, doesn't matter whether it is day or night.
At the moment the rather wonderful "Scissor Sisters" album is chilling me out nicely, particularly "Return to Oz" (which has a bit that puts me in mind of The Kinks "Lola"). You can hear some samples Here.

I am however losing the motivation for cooking food, not least because of the large amount of washing up accruing in my sink. Makes me feel like a student again.

Also my PC is screaming out for a complete overhaul - and I just can't be arsed.

As mentioned earlier - loads of friends are wondering just why I am not bothered about the chances of being found HIV+ in three months time. Well, part of it is that I know the maths. At the moment my chances of becoming HIV+ are estimated at greater than 1 in 5,000. At those odds, I'm just as likely to die by electrocution...

 Chances of dying from selected causes (USA) 








               Cause of death                                            Chances





Motor vehicle accident                                                   1 in 100


Homicide                                                                 1 in 300


Fire                                                                     1 in 800


Firearms accident                                                        1 in 2,500


Electrocution                                                            1 in 5,000


Asteroid/comet impact                                                    1 in 20,000


Passenger aircraft crash                                                 1 in 20,000


Flood                                                                    1 in 30,000


Tornado                                                                  1 in 60,000


Venomous bite or sting                                                   1 in 100,000


Fireworks accident                                                       1 in 1 million


Food poisoning by botulism                                               1 in 3 million


Drinking water with EPA limit of tricholoethylene                        1 in 10 million





(From C.R. Chapman & D. Morrison, 1994, Nature 367, 33-40.)

That and, the way my crewmate and I drive our ambulance I'm way more likely to be killed doing that...

The other thing is that there is nothing I can do now to affect the outcome of things - it's in the lap of the Gods.

Side effects are subsiding with Metoclopramide, now I just have a mild nausea and a general feeling of "mildly befuddled".

Can someone explain why this seems like a good idea? Do you wonder if this might be why they are having trouble winning the "Hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people?

Joey (Accordian Guy) found this cool looking film, and like him, I want to have it subtitled now

First off, thanks to everyone who has contacted me over my "exposure", I appreciate it all - even if I haven't personally replied to you (you'll find out why I might not have answered you a bit later in this post...)

I went to Occupational Health on Monday, basically to let them know about my exposure, and that I was on PEP. (If you want to learn more about PEP, click Here). The LAS showed how nice they are by lending me a spare ambulance to drive to my appointment - GPS navigation comes in handy when you don't know where you are going... Occupational Health is South of the river at Kings College Hospital - which is a bit of a trek. "Occy Health" took baseline blood samples, so that would know if there was any effect on my liver/kidneys/white cell count, as well as filling in a couple of forms about my exposure. Then they told me that they would get in contact with the "Donor" to see what his virus load and Hepatitis status was.
Until now I always thought of "Donor" as a "nice" word - heart donors and the like - I never really thought it would happen to include this circumstance.
During the consultation they told me that I'd need blood tests every fortnight for the next month or so, and that my first HIV/Hepatitis status check would be in three months, with an additional one in six months. Should they both be negative then I would be in the clear.
They also told me of the side effects of the retrovirals that I am taking - and seemed surprised that all I was experiencing was similar to a mild hangover...

That was yesterday - today was spent vomiting/sleeping to avoid nausea/and experiencing the joys of explosive diarrhoea.

My station officer called up and asked me how I was - when I told him, he basically told me to take it easy and go back to work when I felt better.

However there was some good news when the occupational health nurse contacted me, and told me that the donor's viral load was low, that there were no resistances to the PEP drugs I'm taking and that in 2002 he was free of Hepatitis. So that has eased my mind somewhat.

Some people have commented that I'm taking it rather well, there are a number of reasons for this - not least that the chances of me becoming HIV+ are less than 1 in 5,000. The other thing is that I can't do anything now to change those odds, apart from continue to take the PEP.

The other side effect of the meds I'm taking are that I'm having a certain "vagueness" - my mind isn't operating on all three cylinders, so if this seems disjointed, I've got an excuse...

There is a fear that every Health-care worker has. Tonight that fear jumped up and slapped me in the face.

Second job of the shift, we were called to "50 year old male - collapsed in street". Normally this is someone who is drunk - but we rushed to the scene anyway, just in case it isn't (we rush to everything it's the only way to be sure you aren't caught out). We reach the scene and see the male laying on the floor talking gibberish. He is bleeding from a cut on his face and possible from his jaw. Bystanders tell us that he "just dropped". He then starts to vomit, and because it's dark we get him on our trolley and into the back of the ambulance.
Our basic assessment finds that he has no muscular tone on his right side, although all his obs are within normal limits. Decided against hanging around - we start transport to hospital. Halfway to hospital he starts to vomit and cough - part of this vomitus/blood flies unerringly across the width of the ambulance...

...right into my open mouth.

Pretty disgusting - but what can you do? The patient then starts to come around - now able to move all limbs and to talk. This is good - it means I'm able to get some history from him. So I get his name, date of birth, address. Then I ask this 50 year old if he is normally fit and well.

"No", he says, "I have AIDS".

Bollocks.

I've never had anything from a patient in my mouth before (apart from the odd chocolate when I was a nurse) - so of course the first time is with a HIV+ patient.

My crewmate looks in the rear view mirror, and _that_ look passes between us. Ambulance people will know what I mean - it's the "Oh shit" look that you give/get when something goes horribly wrong.

We get to the hospital and the patient is looking a lot better, fully orientated, full strength and starting to feel the pain from a probably busted jaw. So I get to hand over to the nurse, which turned into a bit of a comedy moment...

Me:"Patient witnessed collapse, had right-sided hemiparesis, now resolved. Previous history includes AIDS".
Handover Nurse:"Fine"
Charge Nurse:"You can't say that"
Me:"Pardon?"
Charge Nurse:"You can't say AIDS - People will be prejudiced against him"
Me:"Well they shouldn't be, and this is medical stuff. It's a syndrome like any other"
Charge Nurse:"You have to call it something else"
Me:"I don't really care for political correctness - besides I'm a patient as well as I swallowed some of his blood"
Charge Nurse:"Oh...Well lets get you sorted out then"

I then went through the rigmarole of having blood taken, then I asked to be put on PEP, which the Charge nurse agreed I should be put on.

PEP is "Post Exposure Prophylaxis", basically a cocktail of antiretroviral drugs that taken over a four week period will hopefully reduce any live virus to non-infective amounts. Common side effects include...
Nausea, vomiting, headache, diarrhoea, cough, abdominal pain/cramps, muscle pain, tiredness, flu-like symptoms, difficulty in sleeping, rash and (I love this one) flatulence.
Other more uncommon side effects are - Pancreatitis, anaemia, neutropenia, peripheral neuropathy, and other "metabolic effects".

I'm in for a barrel of laughs for these next four weeks...

The Charge nurse looked really sympathetic when he offered me stuff to look after the side effects - He used to work in a HIV clinic so I guess he knows better than me what I'm in for...

Then we talked about rates of infection, which is why I'm feeling kinda relaxed here. HIV is a tough virus to catch (compared to Hepatitis which is the one that worries me) If I were to stab myself with a needle after drawing HIV positive blood I would have a 0.004% chance of catching the virus. Swallowing a bit of blood/vomitus is less risky than that - especially as I have no mouth/stomach ulcers. With the PEP my chances of "seroconverting" are as close to zero as you can get. I knew all this before I set foot in the hospital - which probably explained why I wasn't a quivering wreck.
So far "only" two medical workers have sero-converted after needle-stick injuries. I greatly doubt that I'll be the third.

So "The Plan" is that I go to see occupational health on Monday, and they will advise me on what happens next. I've been told already that I'll have to avoid sexual contact for the next three months (not a hardship - I've managed "no sexual contact" for two years before now), and that I'll probably need to take four weeks off work due to me feeling too ill from the side effects of the anti-retrovirals.

We'll see about that... I don't "do" ill.

Anyway if I do need to take time off it'll give me a chance to read some books I've got sitting on my shelf - and complete "Zelda - Windwaker".

Gotta go now, I feel flatulent already...

"Yankee Blog" posted about Fast Film on this Channel 4 Webpage. It really is something bizarre, and yet entertaining to watch. I can't imagine the amount of work that must have gone into it.

To get in with everyone else on the Blog "scene" I must point out This which is basically a sweary version of the Channel 4 station promotions which was apparently made for cinema, but couldn't get a certificate. Warning - lots of TV/Film people swearing

And finally this article from Paramagic, who I suspect is colour-blind from his blogs colour scheme. But the article does ring surprisingly true.

I found this on "Un-reconstructed Medic", I'm not sure I agree with a lot of what he posts, but this made me giggle.

I was happy. My girlfriend and I had been dating for over a year, and so we decided to get married.

My parents helped us in every way, my friends encouraged me, and my girlfriend? She was a dream! There was only one thing bothering me, very much indeed, and that one thing was her younger sister.

My prospective sister-in-law was twenty years of age, wore tight mini skirts and low cut blouses. She would regularly bend down when near me and I got many a pleasant view of her underwear.

It had to be deliberate. She never did it when she was near anyone else.
One day little sister called and asked me to come over to check the wedding invitations. She was alone when I arrived. She whispered to me that soon I was to be married, and she had feelings and desires for me that she couldn't overcome and didn't really want to overcome.

She told me that she wanted to make love to me just once before I got married and committed my life to her sister. I was in total shock and couldn't say a word.

She said, "I'm going upstairs to my bedroom, and if you want to go ahead with it just come up and get me." I was stunned. I was frozen in shock as I watched her go up the stairs. When she reached the top she pulled down her panties and threw them down the stairs at me.

I stood there for a moment, then turned and went straight to the front door. I opened the door and stepped out of the house. I walked straight towards my car. My future father-in-law was standing outside.

With tears in his eyes he hugged me and said, "We are very happy that you have passed our little test. We couldn't ask for a better man for our daughter. Welcome to the family.


"The moral of this story is:"
"Always keep your condoms in your car."

Normal moaning will be resumed shortly...

For anyone (in the UK) who saw "Nip/Tuck" last night.

I cried - and I'm not ashamed to say it.

I also laughed at the heads...

For those who don't have Sky or Cable, I'd recommend catching it on TV (should it show up on terrestrial) or to buy the first series on DVD assuming they release it over here in the UK.

I can tell what people have searched for on Google in order to reach my site. Some of the stuff is strange, some is interesting and at least one is disturbing. I'm not trying to insult anyone here (except perhaps the last entry) it's just a bit of light-hearted fun.

"conciousness random -ring -music -krishna" - Don't ask me. I want to know why they excluded "ring" and "music".
"1 in 5 men have women's brains" - I'd say one in five men have brains, and leave it at that.
"belle de jour boots" - Given current speculation "Belle" may well wear the same size twelves as I do.
"dangers of prostitution" - Really popular for some reason... some people search for "prostitutes in Newham". Prostitution is in my top five search terms for this page.
"SMELLING WOMENS ARMPITS" - Eh? What? I don't get it...
"haemarroids" - Because I'm one of only 3 Google pages that uses that particular misspelling of hemmaroid, er I mean hemorrhoid (That should get me a few more...)
"Pictures of dead people in random accidents" - Use Rotten.com for that, not me (especially after a Paramedic got the sack for taking "disturbing" photos).
"Medical" - Only three people have come here after searching for "medical" which I think kinda misses the point.
"Paris Hilton and toilet paper" - You make one passing remark about Paris Hilton (who I thought was the hotel, and all sorts of people wander along). And why "toilet paper"?
"psychiatric depression blog" - I know it might not seem it, but I'm normally very happy.
"reality secret" - There is no secret. I can promise you that - and you wouldn't find it here either.
"cingulate gyrus photos" - You want photos of a part of the brain? Why? Still as long as you aren't going out and getting those photos off your next-door neighbour who you buried in the garden.


And rather worryingly...

"9 year old daughter f**k daddy" - More than slightly disturbing...(and those "*"'s were my inclusion)

I've been told that "Womble Porn" should get a few people to this page as well, maybe if I also talk about "Britney Spears" and "fetish" I'll get even more...