For those of you who don't read the comments that people leave, Emchi found this story which shows that unlike my previous post, some people do make an effort to turn their lives around.

Came across this story about a 480 pound (34st) woman who died after the "patient extrication from Hell". To think I moan about having to carry a 17 stone patient down a couple of flights of stairs...

It's one of those jobs where you would turn up, take a look at the situation, get back in the vehicle and radio Control with your resignation letter.

Who is too blame? Well, my opinion is that the patient committed suicide by overeating. Where were the social services? Where were the psychiatric services? Where was the GP? More importantly, where were the relatives?

from the ever excellent Boing Boing

My first day back after my holiday, and the Resource Centre thought that I was still on leave - Oh well...never mind. I decided to stay on and work though, partly because the manning at the moment is awful. We are missing three ambulances today, and about five tomorrow - I dread to think what it will be like on Sunday. This time it is due to an actual lack of staff rather than the lack of vehicles as recently reported.

I checked my mail slot to find out that the coroner is investigating the death of the young diabetic that I attended to some time ago (and wrote about here). Essentailly I have to write a statement about what happened, including the traffic situation and access to the house (both of which influenced the job to a major degree). Rather thankfully at the bottom of the request letter is the note "No complaint has been made". I might end up having to give my statement in Coroners Court, and given the problems we had with this job, I may well end up being asked questions by the coroner themselves. I'm not too worried as I can justify everything I did on that job.

On a lighter not, the first job of the day was one of our regular drunks, who was discovered laying in the street by two police officers. As they can't take people who are 'properly' drunk into custody anymore, we end up getting called to them. It was so lovely to return to work and have this smelly, incontinent drunk welcome me back.

(Sarcasm? Moi?)

Currently I'm sitting on station awaitng yet another chance to save a life...