I walked in through the door and there she was, standing stark naked in a pool of her own blood.

Heavily pregnant, she was sobbing while blood ran down her legs. Her neighbours were making an attempt at comforting her, all the while trying to clean the blood away. Meanwhile, between great sobs of tears, the patient was trying to fit a sanitary pad to herself.

As I write this I can still smell the blood.

The ambulance was ten minutes away.

So…

Which do you prefer?

Banner number One

 

Or Banner number two?

You, the reader decide…

A couple of days off work has meant that I’ve been a bit short on things to post about recently.  It comes to something when your own mother phones you up and tells you that you are slacking because of the lack of new posts.

However this has meant that I’ve had some time to ‘fiddle around’ with various behind the scenes settings, and has allowed me some time to think about the redesign of this site.

Also I’ve been working on the Podcast.

I’d also like to take this chance to say a big ‘Thank you’ to the people at Blogware, who sorted out my spam problem incredibly quickly.  Oh and also a big congratulations to Joey and The Redhead who just got married.

I flew out to Canada to celebrate Joey’s birthday – both the craziest, and most expanding thing I have ever done.

I promise, I haven’t been playing World of Warcraft (Not since some rotten sod introduced me to EVE-Online anyway, and I can level up in that while doing other things, which is great for me).

I’m back to work tomorrow, so with a bit of luck I’ll have something interesting to write about rather than ‘Went to another abdominal pain that turned out to be constipation’.

Otherwise I may have to make something up.

I have a feeling that I’ll be busy over the weekend, as there is a huge amount of overtime shifts that aren’t being covered…

Make that two maternataxis.

So at least three people in my area have called an ambulance because of being in labour.

Something else that upsets/annoys me is that a family bought in their dead toddler by private car, and never thought to call an ambulance.

Make of that what you will.

...when you contemplate running someone over, just so you can have a 'decent' job.

So far- a maternataxi, two children with coughs, a panic attack and a belly ache. I'm not complaining, I could do with a peaceful night.

Four miles away 'Bob' was about to stop breathing.

Bob's friends had seen him come out off rehab earlier that day, they had then invited him around to their flat where they then saw him inject some heroin.

Bob's friends had then watched him pass out for half an hour, and then his breathing had slowed and he had gone a funny shade of blue.
His friends decided that now might be a good time to call for an ambulance.

I arrived at the same time as the police who were there to make sure that I was safe.

One of the residents held open the main door to the tower block.

"Another fucking junkie?", she asked, "It's a fucking crack house up there".

We got in the lift, carefully avoiding the nasty smelling puddle in the middle of it, and I hit the button with my gloved finger.

Sure enough, if you worked in film making, and were asked to create a set based on a crack house - this is what you would come up with. Actually, as crack houses go, it wasn't too bad - there were no human faeces spread around for a start. No carpets either, which is a good thing because it's easier to spot the wet patches on lino.

To give Bob's friends some credit, they had managed to put him into the recovery position in the middle of the kitchen. Bob had either vomited, or his friends had poured some water on him. Either way there was something sticky on the floor around him.

For the second time on this job I was really glad I was wearing gloves.

His friends were both clutching cans of cheap, but strong lager. One of them was so skinny he would have made Iggy Pop look like Pavarotti. I left the police talking to them.

So Bob had decided that breathing four times a minute was quite enough for him but the blue pallor of his skin, and my training would tend to disagree with him. Bob was very nearly dead, I suspect he would soon break the first habit of his life - the habit of breathing. So I put an airway down his throat, pulled out my ambu-bag and started breathing for him.

He soon pinked up and perked up and his breathing got better, so I could stop 'bagging' him. Now I could relax a bit, and watch him while I waited for the ambulance to arrive - which wasn't long.

We moved him into the carry chair, being careful not to stab ourselves with any needles that might be lying around him (or in his clothing, his pockets, or lying underneath him). It was about now that he started to wake up.

Another life saved, although no doubt his habit will kill him one day.

It strikes me as ever so annoying that for some reason I can manage to save heroin addicts, but not 12 year old girls.

The second job of my shift had me racing through the night towards a '19 month old - child not breathing'.

Now, normally, this doesn't bother me, I get there, I do what needs doing, and then everything goes back to normal.

But tonight, for some reason I was shaking like a leaf, my pulse was pounding in my ears, and there was a sick feeling in my stomach.

"The first pulse you take is your own”*, a mantra that I've often found useful should I ever find myself distressed or anxious at a job.  But for some reason it wasn't helping.

I reached the house and could hear the family crying and shouting inside.

"Fuck", I thought.  Actually I may have said it.  My hands continued to shake, and I started feeling sick and light-headed.

The door was flung open, and I found myself staring into the face of a crying woman.  Pushing past her, I could see the child laying motionless on the floor.  The child was of African descent, and this causes me a bit of a problem, in that Caucasian children when dead, look dead while it's a lot harder to tell if African children are recently dead because they just go a bit grey.

"Fuck", I thought again.

I got closer, hoping to see him breath.

The the child moved.  And more importantly he breathed.

"Thank fuck", I thought.

So all was good.  The child had suffered from a febrile fit, he'd had one previously, and would soon come round.  Even so I was still really happy to see the ambulance crew turn up seconds after I reached the patient.

Sitting in the car doing my paperwork I was still shaking and my pulse was still racing.  Why had this job shook me up so much?

Was it because it was my second job after having a week off, and so wasn't up to speed yet?

Actually, I think that it's because I've got a bit of an infection at the moment, and the changing seasons have probably depleted the happy juice from my brain.  I'll probably get worse over the course of these next four nights...  So I'll apologise in advance.

Oh and the local mosquitos have been using my face as a buffet bar.

* - It's a quote from the excellent "House of God" by Samuel Shem.  If you read this blog, you should read this book.  Sorry for the whining.

In the past 10 minutes I’ve had over 650 comment spam messages to this blog.

Comment spam that I am going to have to delete by hand tomorrow/later today.

Were I feeling on top form, I’d be wanting to kill things in a painful and noisy fashion.

So I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to turn off anonymous posting. 

But console yourself that it is really easy to get an account, and that it works on all Blogware blogs.

I think I’ll be throwing things around the room after I’ve had some sleep though…