What happened today - the full story...
I got a call to a house on an estate in Bow to a 60 year old female diabetic with 'low blood sugar'. No problem I thought, I got there quickly and was happy to see that the flat was on the ground floor. I thought that I won't need my cardiac monitor/defibrillator so I went to leave it in the car, but that was when I heard someone wail. I've written about this wail before, it's the sort of thing you hear when someone is dead...
I grabbed the defibrillator and ran into the house. I was led to a bedroom where I found a very unwell looking Bangladeshi woman, the first thing I did was to check her pulse, as on first impressions, she looked dead. She had a pulse, which pleased me a lot...
Oxygen was given and I checked her blood sugar level, and it was 2.2, which is dangerously low. We have an injection that will raise a patients blood sugar. So I gave that, and within ten minutes she was coming around, the ambulance crew then gave her some sugar and the last I saw of her was her walking out to the ambulance.
What a bunch of heroes...
So, I then wanted to turn the car around to leave the estate, so I drove into a parking space that is guarded by a pole that is folded up when the space is empty. As I went to reverse out of the space I heard a horrible grinding noise and the engine cut out. There was then a strong smell of petrol - So I thought something may have gone wrong with the car.
This pole had lept up catching against the underside of the car, and I later found out that it had torn the fuel line. I think it has some valve in the fuel tank that stops it emptying the whole tank, which is rather handy, or I'd have been swimming my way out.
I was then low-loaded away to Waterloo, because the car is originally one of theirs, when I filled out a ream of paperwork, and stroked the station cat. I then had a Station officer from Newham pick me up to take me back to my station (I caught him singing "Life in a Northern Town" by the Dream Academy, and the "Just One Cornetto" songs on the way back)
When I got back to West Ham the fitters had a spare car, but they wanted to make sure it was safe to drive (they had just gotten it back from a service or something). But then a couple of ambulances turned up which were broken, and they didn't have a chance to check it out - so I sat on station, had a cup of tea and finished reading my book (and very good it is too).
