A strange thing happened tonight.

For the first time ever, I was 'recognised'.

The job itself was simple enough, genuine illness which had become worse.  I walked into the house had a quick assessment of the situation, and then said my usual bit which goes something like...

"OK, I'm the fast car, so I turn up to make sure everyone is still breathing.  There will be an ambulance along in a bit to actually take you to hospital".

I wasn't expecting one of the relatives to then say.

"You also blog about it as well - I recognise your face".

Sudden panic, followed by an admission that I was indeed that particular ambulance person.

It's strange, I suppose I've always thought that this might happen one day, although given the amount of alcoholics I see, and the way that they don't tend to read blogs, I thought that it might take longer than it has.

It's not as if I altered my treatment in any way, and if anything it made the treatment easier, as he knew that I wasn't some fly-by-night cowboy.

I hope…

The rest of the night was fairly uneventful, I had the same 'frequent flyer' in the same phone box at about the same time as I did last night and the first job of this shift was about four doors away from the first job of my previous shift.

My last job was a maternataxi, who’d been sent home from the maternity department just fifteen minutes earlier and told to wait six hours before coming again.  The patient had gotten an ambulance the first time, so this meant that she had used two ambulances in one night.  This is a failure on someones part, either the patient, or the maternity department.

One more nightshift, then three days off.  And during those days off is the glory of the Eurovision song contest.

But first…sleep.