This is a new category where I'll stick little things that amuse me about the Ambulance Service, and the people that I treat

It amuses me that according to our dispatch system (thanks to the government) that a 18 month old child with a runny nose is of a higher priority than a 50 year old stroke.

You may remember that I've mentioned before how working day shifts are different from night shifts, in the way that I meet less drunks, and more people who may actually be ill.

Yesterday I did three jobs. "only three jobs?" I hear you ask, well it's only because of much faffing around trying to find an ambulance that not only worked, but was also stocked with some of the essential kit that we need (you know, stuff like defibulators, blood pressure machines, bandages - essential stuff like that).

So the first job of the day was a woman suffering from morning sickness, her nausea prevented her from walking or talking, in fact all she suceeded in doing was to annoy my crewmate and myself... Her 'constant vomiting' consisted of her spitting into a bowl. I don't begrudge her an ambulance, but she just couldn't get her head around the idea that lying on the floor groaning wasn't helping us get her onto the ambulance.

Then we went to a drunk, who had 'collapsed' in the street. Damn those good Samaritans who call ambulances for drunks who are having a kip after a bit of a drinking session. No problem, although she was incontinent and so smelt a bit, and piddled on the floor of the ambulance. We had to return to the ambulance station to mop out the back of the ambulance, and enjoy a cup of tea.

Our third job of the day was something that we are seeing more and more of recently - an alcoholic had been kicked out of his hostel, so he had an 'epileptic fit' on the doorstep of the hostel. Police were called to remove him, but because the hostel thought they were taking too long, they also decided to call for an ambulance. We are being called to remove more and more people being thrown out of hostels, often the reason is given as "abdominal pain", but when we turn up the 'patient' is making no such complaint.
This particular fellow was (surprise) drunk, and with my practiced eye I saw a kitchen knife sticking out of his back pocket - which using my finely tuned pickpocket skills, was soon in my possession and was handed to the police who were now on scene. There was a bit of a stand-off, but the police didn't want to arrest him because, well frankly, he smelt very bad. So we found ourselves removing the 'patient' to hospital, there was no reason for him to go to hospital, but where else could we have taken him? We aren't really allowed to take people to the homeless persons unit - but it is just a bit down the road from the hospital, so we managed to get him a bit closer to the help he needed (if only geographically).

A crew has just gone out to a job that was described on the mobile terminal in the ambulance as, "Patient confused, pulling out knives, 'going off her rocker', cannot get anymore sense from caller". What an exciting life we lead...

You voted for it...Which makes me worry a little about the type of people you are...

I think I've mentioned on more than one occasion how, when working in a hospital, the patients are often nicely 'packaged' ready for examination, this can often hide the trauma that the ambulance crew has gone through in getting the patient into hospital in such a condition.

Me and a temporary crewmate got called to a 'collapse', and we made good time getting there to be met by relatives of a 72 year old female who had vomited altered blood (probably from a stomach ulcer) and had collapsed to the ground hyperventilating. The woman was around 20 stone in weight (280 pounds to the Americans in the audience). She was in a bungalow, so we had no stairs to get in our way, and the relatives were willing to be helpful. The patient was laying on the floor and had just finished an episode of hyperventilation (a panic attack).
Should have been a nice easy removal, even with the patients weight and reduced ability to walk. We had our carry chair and after struggling a little to get the patient on it, we didn't expect any trouble.

Heh....

It turns out that the patient was an agoraphobic and hadn't left her house in 20 years...

Sweating profusely, the patient fought us the entire way out of the house, she grabbed at anything tied down, at door-frames and at the handrail she had installed in her house. Trying to get a sweaty 20st patient out of a house is tough enough without them fighting you the whole way.
We had explained that she needed to go to hospital - and she had logically agreed, but this didn't stop her panicking when we started to move her. When we finally managed to get her into the open air her panic rose to a dangerous level.

She was shaking, her eyes rolled back into her skull, sweat was pouring off of her and her thrashing about in the carry-chair got worse (if such a thing was possible). Both my crewmate and myself thought that she was going to have a heart attack, in fact she had all the classic symptoms of a massive Myocardial Infarction (posh medical term for a heart attack). Then she started a strange screaming/moaning call that sounded completely unearthly. I could just see the next days newspaper headline, "Ambulance Crew Scare Patient To Death!"

All I could think about was to try and calm her down, so I tried using some hypnosis techniques that I (just happen) to know, which helped a little - but by then she was in such an agitated state that horse tranquillisers probably wouldn't have touched her.

We managed to get her into the ambulance, where we shut the doors very quickly and made as smooth a transport to hospital as possible. During the transport my crewmate and the patients family worked constantly to calm the patient down, but they were only having a fairly limited success; every so often I would hear her moan in that alien fashion, and my crewmate start babbling at her to calm down.

When we got to the hospital, we nearly threw her off the ambulance into the A&E department; actually she was so slicked with sweat we could have slid her off the trolley. She calmed down a bit once she was in hospital, which only made our exhausted faces seem over-dramatic to the nursing staff.

You never know what you are going to get in this job, but nine times out of ten it isn't the illness that surprises you, but the circumstances around the job.

Other blogs do it, and because I have so many stories (hopefully good stories) saved up from last week, I'm going to have a little 'vote in'.
From the (cryptic?) article descriptions below, choose your favourite and leave a comment as to which one you would like to hear about first - I'll count up any/all votes to decide which entry to write next.

a) Bruised genitals in a 20 month child? More forms are needed.
b) How to nearly kill someone getting them out of their house.
c) Good press in the local paper (crew who are soft as soap).
d) Bored with the death of babies.
e) Bus on Bus action & Camouflage RTA.
f) Police check before hospital? & Baby in a bottle.
g) Please come to hospital.

I've just noticed...none of these are particularly life-affirming. Oh well, maybe I'll come across something nice tonight...

Imagine I'm working Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights - I'll then have Friday, Saturday and Sunday off until I start day shifts on the following Monday. Excellent you may think, three days off. But, dear reader, this is not the case - for a start my Thursday night shift finishes on Friday morning, and moreover I need to shift my body-clock back over to 'daylight time' ready for my next run of shifts.
There are a couple of ways to do this, one way is to use chemical assistance, either stimulants to remain awake all Friday then sleep normally Friday night, or sedatives to sleep on Friday afternoon all the way through to Saturday morning. I've tried it, and chemicals are not good for me - Stimulant drinks drive me psychotic, and sedatives just don't work for some reason.
So the other option is to go 'natural'. I stay awake on Friday, with the exception of a one hours nap during the afternoon, then sleep normally on Friday night, waking up (hopefully) refreshed on a Saturday morning. Problem? Well it makes you feel as sick as a dog throughout the day. I also find myself rather 'emotional' during that time, I'll find myself crying over crap TV movies, pieces of music or even the odd book, earlier this week I told you about me crying over an RSPCA ad, that is exactly what I mean. I'm not normally fragile - but a lack of sleep does unhinge me a bit.
I try and do things during the day, sure I could sit on the computer killing evil aliens, or chasing villains online, but I'll try to do something more constructive. Normally I'll find myself paying credit card bills, standing in the queue for a cashier, having mild hallucinations, feeling sick and wondering who exactly drained the colour and joy from the world.

Then in a week or two, I get to do it all over again.

(I finish my lates on Sunday night/Monday morning, and from Wednesday I'm on seven day shifts, so further posts will be on more 'normal' subjects).

Sleep becomes very important to you, actually it becomes the most important thing in your life for a while. You become obsessed about getting enough sleep, about getting the right quality of sleep, and about your neighbours deciding that today is the day they are going to drill 1000 holes in the wall separating their home from your bedroom.
You need thick curtains, especially when it is summer - you need to keep light out. Trying to sleep when it is light, or even worse, during a heatwave is incredibly difficult. Luckily for me we tend not to have heatwaves in London, actually we don't have much light either.
Good sleep is essential - and interrupted sleep can turn you into a homicidal maniac. The times my telephone has woken me up only to be met with a recorded telesales message is beyond a joke. One day I will hunt them all down and stab them in the eyes with a sharpened pencil - I think my defence of justifiable homicide would work so long as the jurors are fellow
shift workers. If some tinker wants to ring my doorbell to try and sell me a carpet and gives me a dirty look when, bleary-eyed, I open the door at 1pm in pyjamas - then I think my ever-so-slightly sharp tone might be excused.

I'm having an unscheduled break from work today, basically I've had to phone in sick. Those pumpkin seeds I ate really disagreed with me, and I spent the whole night, and most of today, running from bed to toilet and back again.

But I've already bored you with my whineyness, so I'll spare you further details except to tell you that it reminds me of being on P.E.P.

So, if you find yourself offered some pumpkin seeds...I'd refuse.

Lets say you go into your normal day shift work on Wednesday, when you enter the office it's Wednesday, when you leave the office it's Wednesday. Not so with us, when we work a nightshift, after five hours of writing Wednesday the 5th of September, you have to change the date on your paperwork to Thursday the 6th. When you talk to patients at 3am, and they tell you that they have been ill since yesterday you have to work out whether they mean four hours ago, or 28 hours ago.
Then, when you get home, your clock is saying 9am, but your body-clock is screaming 11pm, time to go to bed. Friends wonder why you are half falling asleep at midday, and wide awake at 4am. Time-zones start to blur as you talk to people across the globe, you and your friend in American might both be having dinner, but only they are eating it in daylight. Cory Doctorow's "Eastern Standard Tribe" understands this.
You become confused about what day/time it is, days and weekends come and go, hours spin past and you have no idea when you are. If you are sleeping during the day, then you aren't watching television, so news stories that shake the world can pass you by, or you can be the first to learn the latest news if it occurs during the night (or during the day in America). BBC 24 is an absolute godsend to night workers, it can keep you orientated during the night, if you have time to watch the TV.
This explains the slightly dazed look and mild disassociation that night workers tend to have, and also explains why, for us, it is perfectly acceptable to have a 'night-time' can of beer before going to bed at 9am. (A lot of postmen delivering parcels have given me a dirty look because of that on more than one occasion).

Thanks for all the hugs (((()))) I really appreciate them, I just hope I didn't come across as whiny.... My pleasures have increased multi-fold as the pumpkin seeds that I ate in an attempt to keep fit have resulted in, what can only politely described as, 'gastrointestinal'. I have little hope of getting some good sleep now... I'm also saving up some nice, and some not so nice stories, for after this little themed section.

Due to my increased need for sleep, I have less time to do social 'things', so email/blog reading/blog posting/telephoning friends/IRC/meeting mates tend to go completely out the window. I'm either too busy feeding/washing myself, or I just can't work up the enthusiasm to reply to 20+ emails. Yes...this is an excuse for my sometimes tardy replies to people
The only people you find yourself meeting are drunks (early in the night), wimps (a little bit later) and pregnant women (in the morning). You also have twelve hours to talk to your crewmate, imagine being around one person for that length of time...you get to know everything about them, and heaven help you if you don't get on with them...
The other people you meet during your nightshifts are the police and the nurses working in the A&E department. If you walk around London, you will often see ambulance and police crews waving to each other - this is because we often get called to the same assault/suicide attempts, and we soon get chatting about how crap our respective jobs are. The nurses in the A&E departments are all married, very busy, and hate ambulance crews because they bring in work. Sometimes, if there is a quiet night you can have a chat with them, and to be honest we are friendly to each other, but it's the same faces night after night - and they tend to be more stressed than us.
After working a set of four twelve hour shifts, the last thing you are thinking about is dating/sex/relationships, and this is why single ambulance staff often have trouble forming relationships. 'Normal people' tend not to understand just how tired you are after working all night, nor that when you get home, all you are thinking about is getting into bed and sleeping the day away.

Tonight I feel particularly aggravated - I've had 2 hours sleep in the past 24, I dealt with whiners all night, I got off late because a child with eczema was 'scratching', and then I cycle three quarters of the way home (3 miles) at a sprint only to realise that I haven't got my door key - thinking they have fell out of my pocket I sprint back 3 miles to the alley I think they must have fell out in, only to find them sitting on a hook at work. One cup of tea later and a very slow ride back home to realise that I'm not going to sleep anytime soon, and my computer's mouse isn't working. Also at work there was some bad news (which I will talk about later, but doesn't involve me directly) and earlier today I was watching an RSPCA advert and found myself crying at it...(something I do when I get tired). I think these 14 nights/lates are gonna kill me, I need a hug and there is no-one to hug me)

Blimey I sound like a teenager!