I have a bruise.

It is on the outer edge of my left knee.

I have gotten it via work-related activities.

It is about half an inch large.

I don't think that it will heal while I am in my current role.

Put your guesses as to what it is/how I got it in the comments box, I'll let you know in my next post.

I went to a sick kid in a local school today (not particularly ill, easy job, nothing of note). When I was walking out there was a display on the wall that gave definitions of different belief systems. For example there was Nilhilism, Materialism and Animist. However I did find it worrying that they defined Fascism as "A far right wing government that is sexist or racist".

Tut-tut.

Still it doesn't surprise me, my brother is forced to teach falsehoods purely because it is in the National Curriculum.

"Male, cut to arm, threatening to slice up neighbour, known psychiatric patient, wants London Fire Brigade for fun"

That is how the job came down the computer terminal to me. Now, normally I'm not too bothered about going into potentially dangerous situations (I can run really fast if someone is chasing me), but this job rang warning bells.

1) He has a cut to his arm, did he do it himself? If he did do it himself, then he'll probably still have the knife.

2) Why does he want to 'slice up' his neighbour? Is he angry with them? Neighbour arguments tend to be rather nasty.

3) What is his psychiatric history? Does he have a history of violence? Does he have a pathological hatred of the colour green? (Our uniforms are green...)

So I decided that for this job I would wait for the police to arrive.

So I'm sitting in my car around the corner, there is an ambulance with me, and we are waiting for the police to come and protect us.

So my mind starts to wander. How bad is the cut to his arm? He could be laying on the floor bleeding to death if an artery has been cut. What about the neighbour? In the time I'm waiting, has he stabbed them? When I finally go around there, will I come across a bloodbath?

I consider having a look myself, I have a stabproof vest, but my arms, legs and head are still vulnerable to having 8 inches of sharp metal shoved into them. If I did go around and get stabbed there are two things that would happen,

(a) I wouldn't get any attention until after the police turned up.

(b) I also wouldn't get any sympathy from work as they've already told me not to go near the place.

So we sit there, members of the public stare at us, and I try to chill out by listening to the latest Coldplay album (verdict: rather good actually).

Why haven't the fire service turned up yet? He did ask for them, and I'm sure they, like us, can't refuse a call.

They never turned up though.

The police turn up, we go around to the address, and the patient is as nice as they come. He'd been (allegedly) pushed over by the neighbour, and had a graze to his arm.

So while I could have completed the job in minutes, to do so safely took a lot longer.

This is the sort of thing we have to think about as we go to each and every job. And that's just sad.


With the exception of the slashing job yesterday, all these 'Knife Time' posts took place during one day.

Today was supposed to be the last knife posting, but then I had this post to write, so the last post (that was supposed to be today) will instead be tomorrow.

Does that make any sense? It's been a long shift

I got sent to "Male, stabbed in street, police present". Luckily I was pretty close, so I got there in three minutes. Laying in the street was a young male who was bleeding from the stomach.

Why?

Well, he'd run out of a shop to stop a traffic warden from putting a ticket on his car - he'd then bumped into someone, who had then pulled a knife and slashed him.

There were loads of police on scene, they'd put a dressing on him but it was soaking through with blood. I examined the wound to be sure that it wasn't a stab, and seeing that the wound wasn't that serious I cancelled down the HEMS helicopter.

He refused to stop bleeding, so I spent most of my time on scene pressing on his belly with a dressing trying to stop the bleeding. It did stop eventually, and I had plenty of time to stay on scene and 'play' as the nearest ambulance was in Dagenham...

...It took 40 minutes for the ambulance to turn up, not their fault, and to be fair it is to be expected because we have been that busy, and we have been that undermanned.

The one good thing about the job is that as it is sunny today. While I had those 40 minutes kneeling in the street, pressing on a bleeding abdomen I was simultaneously working on my suntan.

I tend to walk the mean streets of London alone and unbothered by the thoughts of being attacked – I know that most violence is committed by people who know each other, and that truly random violence is rarer than most people think.

It was nearly three in the morning, we had all been busy that shift, so Control asked if I could attend an ‘amber’ call because there were no ambulances to send.  I’m only supposed to go to the highest priority ‘red’ calls, but to be honest it doesn’t bother me if they send me to a little old lady who has scraped her knee, and this particular job sounded fairly interesting.

It only took me a minute to find the minicab office, it is only 300 yards away from the ambulance station – and it was surrounded by police cars.  None of the police looked particularly panicked, so I realised that my patients probably weren’t seriously hurt.

The story I got was this…

At one am, patient One got a phone call to talk to his friend, the manager of the minicab office.  Patient One collected his friend, Patient Two (who has only been in the country from Pakistan for a few months) and they both went to the minicab office.  At the office, they were met by the manager and four other people.  They were then pistol whipped, and a sword was poked into them.  They were tied up and robbed of their mobile phones and £400 that one of the men was carrying.  Injuries were minor, and it took them a little time to escape and call for help.

I quickly assessed both patients, and although they had been knocked around a bit, all their injuries were fairly minor, and as they were giving their statements to the police the Sergeant turned up.

(At least I think he was a Sergeant, he had some stripes on his shoulders)

He immediately voiced the thoughts that we were all having, that there was something ‘dodgy’ going on.  Why would you go to a cab office for a chat at one in the morning?  Why would you be carrying £400 at one in the morning to a cab office?  Why were my patients being reluctant to give too many details to the police?  Why would four people who you know want to torture you?

The Sergeant was polite, but firm with the men, even when they were being evasive with their answers.  I was particularly impressed when he told both the men to stop talking to each other in their native language every time he asked them a question.  It’s a brave man who does that today, and doesn’t worry about being called racist.

I left the patients with the police – their injuries were such that the police doctor (FME) could deal with them, and I suspect that the police would be happy to have the patients in their presence for a while.

While these people were ‘victims’, it’s likely that the attack wasn’t random in the truest sense of the word, although the use of a pistol and a sword is unfortunately getting more and more common.

This is the knife that was used to threaten the day shift on the Fast Car.

The 'patient' was drunk, and decided to pull it on my friend.

My friend took it off him.

This is why they give us stab vests.

Tonight, a couple of jobs, only one of which was even vaguely ill. There now follows what the job was sent to me as, and what it actually was...

80 year old female, trapped behind locked doors = 80 year old female, not at home.

Severe distress in breathing = Toenail has dropped off, and is painful.

Birth is imminent = General ache, waters broke 10 minutes ago.

Birth is imminent (II) = No it's not! (And while I went to this call - someone was stabbed in the neck a couple of minutes away).

16 year old collapsed = Exams, heavy menstruation, and a lack of food has led to a faint.

Chest pain = 46 year old with flu-like symptoms, treated by GP with anti-depressants.

Chest pain (II) = 30 year old male with a chest infection.

Chest pain (III) = Supra-ventricular tachycardia - A genuine job!

All go on the mean streets of Newham...

However, while this is good for me, a quiet night when in the middle of preparing a flat for habitation (I now have electricity - huzzah!), it doesn't exactly make for exciting reading. Strange to be looking forward to work because it gives me a chance to rest.

I now have 20 minutes to go, and so am holding my breath hoping that I don't get a late job.

When I take note on my computer I use windows Notepad.  It’s simple, it’s easy to organise, quick to load up and easy to search.  During Reboot 7, I tok some notes, these now follow in the format I typed them in. 

Lots of very clever people - yet _I_ can understand what people are talking about.

Doc Searls, very clever, very good talker.

The idea that by choosing the metaphor, we can influence how things and the laws that govern them are implementated.

IRC backchat is superiorly sarcastic and informative.

There was some amusement that the speakers all seemed to say "fuck" at some point. So much so that it turned into a form of competition.

Some hard decisions in deciding which of the three rooms to see.

Towels only work for so long in stopping your laptop from burning your lap.

Is my laptop wallpaper "Cool"?

For foreigners - a sandwich is 'lunch'.

Some people say lie about what they are going to talk about.

If you don't prepare your talk, then I'm afraid that you are dead in the water.

Powerpoint _can_ be used to make presentations interesting.

Ben Hammersley is _excellent_

Lots of people are quite evangelical about Skype.

IRCing with people sitting 3 seats away.

There are some A-listers who _really_ do have a huge ego.

Humour in your talks makes them an order of magnitude better.

FUCK! MORNING!

Trains are brilliant, lack of litter, people speak English, and are POLITE.

Bloody Swedes, at 2 bloody o'bloody clock in the bloody morning *shouting* outside my door.

Continental breakfast is no such bloody thing whatsoever – it’s bread and honey.

The whole ‘moving into a new flat’ thing is turning into one huge pain in the rear.  My electricity and gas are buggered up, I may be getting gas sometime next week, no ida whn my electricity will be fixed.  There is dust everywhere, and no matter how much we sweep/brush/vacuum, there just seems to be more of it than ever.

Still, stripping wallpaper is very cathartic.

Two nightshifts now (Wednesday and Thursday), so with a bit of luck I’ll have something interesting to write about soon.

It’s funny to think “Oh good, work, a chance to relax”.

Reboot 7 was fun, quite a lot of fun actually, and I’ll post up some of my notes later as a replacement for a proper post while I spend my free time stripping wallpaper.  I’m finally having a chance to think about the weekend (and will probably do a lot more thinking while stripping my new place of its old wallpaper).

‘A-Listers’ are A-listers for a reason.

Determination, focus, and the ability to prioritise people into those of value, and those not of value.

At first I thought people were being rude to me.  Nothing explicit, just that while I was talking to them they seemed to be ‘elsewhere’, always casting their eyes around looking for other people to talk to.

But they aren’t being rude – they are being direct to the point of being abrupt.  While I might happily chat away about random subjects with someone I’ve just met, for however long the conversation lasts – ‘A-Listers’ seem to evaluate whether you have anything important to say, anything that they can use to advance their own career or if you are a potential ‘customer’. 

If not, then they consider the conversation of little value, and look for something of more value.

It’s not that they are wrong, just as there are Type-A and Type-B personalities, there are people who have different reasons for wanting to talk to others.

I like chatting to people because I’m interested in them, who they are and what they do – it’s a sort of diffuse curiosity.  Others, seemingly mainly A-Listers, seem a lot less interested in making friends, but more interested in finding contacts, and resources.

This is why I’ll never be an A-Lister.  Not only do I not have some shining goal to aim towards, because I am a dilettante, and I don’t want to devote my existence towards the singular goal of being respected in my field.

Others do, and I think I’ll leave them to it.

All this is my impression, no offence is intended, I am not a social scientist, these thoughts are not a value judgement.