Not that I want this site to turn into a 'veil issue' site, but this BBC news story has perfect timing. (Plus I have a day off which I have spent mostly sleeping and am too tired to write a big post).

A Muslim woman has been suspended by a school in West Yorkshire after she insisted on wearing a veil in lessons.

Bilingual support worker Aishah Azmi, 24, was asked to remove the veil after pupils found it hard to understand her during English language lessons.

I'm not the only one then. (Although it'll be interesting to see how the tribunal goes).

I think that there is something in the air, yesterday we went to two diabetics with critically low blood sugars. It's a job that we sometimes do, but isn't actually that common. The day before there were at least two others in our area, one of which was quite ill.

The first was rather simple. A woman found her husband collapsed in the living room, she called us and we quickly diagnosed and treated the low blood sugar. When we found him he was unconscious, sweating profusely and was rather ill looking. One injection and some glucose gel and an hour later the patient was playing with with his very cute doberman. We may have also been enjoying the friendly dog as well.

The second person was a young woman in the workplace. I felt sorry for her as she was surrounded by her work colleagues and it was impossible for us to move her to a more private area. She wasn't as low as our first patient although she was very sweaty and was acting as if she were drunk. Once more we managed to 'cure' her with some sugary drinks an a little time. She was mortified that she was ill in front of her colleagues. She had received some immediate help from her friends, one of whom was 'first aid at work' trained.

Neither patient wanted to go to hospital, and once their blood sugar was back to normal there wasn't much that the hospital would do. Traditionally these are the sorts of patients who refuse to attend hospital and are left behind by us ambulance crews.

Still it is nice to be able to help people in such a profound manner - it makes a nice change from people who aren't actually ill.

Click Here

I hope that it does make The Friday Project huge amounts of money, because everyone who works there is lovely* and they deserve good stuff happening to them.

Proof, perhaps, that a Creative Commons release will only sell more books?

*With the exception of Pond, who is wicked.**

**Wicked as in Evil, not in the 'street word for good' way.

I'm the new 'Health And Safety' representative for our station. I'm assuming that there is a reader out there who is knowledgeable of such things. If so, could you point me in the direction of training course that I could apply for?

I know I could Google for the info, but I'm too busy/lazy/stupid. Mainly busy. Honest.

I am currently so tired I'm not actually human at the moment - after a few litres of Coke I approach sub-human. This is not a huge disadvantage in this job.

Thankfully it was a pretty easy day today.

One call was to a teenage girl with abdominal pain, diarrhoea and vomiting. She described herself as an alcoholic. I let the nurses at the hospital know, perhaps she'll get referred to the social services, perhaps she is already known to them.

Then there was a homeless guy who was suicidal. The community mental health team wasn't interested in seeing him, so he went to A&E where the nurse in charge took good care of him.

Another call was to one of our 'regulars', a child who keeps collapsing. He's a nice enough lad, but so far investigations have shown nothing. It's believed that he collapses because of stress over bullying, various people are involved in his problem.

The final call of the day was to an ill person that we never reached. On the way to the call we came across a four year old child which had been sat on the crossbar of her father's bike. Somehow she'd got her foot caught between the wheel and the forks of the front wheel. There was some serious swelling and bruising to her foot and ankle, thankfully she wasn't otherwise hurt. It's possible, but unlikely, that she could have broken a bone in her foot.

The child was really grown-up, hardly crying at all. She did keep giving me a sullen stare though...

Darn kids can see right through me.

Everyday I meet a new kind of stupid.

A woman, thirty-five years old, mother of two children went to her GP. She had a swollen belly and pain which came and went in waves. She also hadn't had a menstrual period in over nine months. That morning, just after the pain had started, she had lost some fluid from her vagina. The pain was getting worse and the waves were getting closer together.

The GP did a (completely unnecessary) pregnancy test which - surprise, surprise, come back positive.

The GP was incredibly relieved when we arrived.

We had just managed to wheel her into the maternity department when the baby made an appearance. My crewmate helped the midwife deliver the baby while I was hiding in the ambulance. I'm quite happy for any baby (not of my own) to be born with me not watching, I suspect the woman was quite happy I wasn't there as well.

Here was a woman who was fully aware of what pregnancy is like, she wasn't even in denial - the whole thing came as a complete shock. Her husband looked completely shell-shocked as well.

The whole thing really beggars comment.

I hate mornings, there is something deeply depressing about crawling into work while it is still dark knowing that for the next twelve hours you'll be run ragged.

The current topic of conversation in the messroom at the moment is the furor over Jack Straw's suggestion that Muslim women wearing full face veils only divide communities.

My patch has a huge number of Muslims, some days I'll only attend to Muslims. This isn't a problem for me as most of them are polite and don't get horribly drunk and try to hit me.

On more than one occasion I've turned around to discover that the patient I've been talking to has 'robed up', the woman has turned from a person into a black 'blob', it's always surprising to see such a total change.

I'm a big believer in freedom of expression, and I have no problem with people wearing whatever they want, but the burka and it's relatives can make my life difficult.

You see, I'm a bit hard of hearing, and if the person I'm talking to has a strong accent I tend to get more meaning from lip-reading rather than just listening to them. If the person has a full face covering then it's often tricky for me to hear what they are saying. Add in the fact that the back of an ambulance isn't the quietest place on earth and the problem becomes a lot worse.

I don't want to offend people, but it does annoy me to keep saying 'pardon?' because I can't understand what the person is saying. I'm trying to be as nice as possible here (considering I believe *all* religion to be foolish), but what is more important, the wearing of a veil or the ability for the ambulance man to understand you and your illness?

It's Ramadan at the moment, so loads of people are fasting and again this can lead to offense...

I went to a gentleman who had fainted, as he was South-East Asian I asked him if he had been fasting (as this is a common cause of collapsing at this time of year). He told me that he was a Hindu rather than a Muslim, and that he hated all Muslims due to the fighting that had occurred between the two faiths in the past.

I apologised, and the patient wasn't bothered by my assumption - but another person may have taken offense and complained. It can be a minefield out there, especially given some religious adherents near constant level of being offended.

Still it could be worse, we could be killing each other over which sect of a religion we belong to...

...again.
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Sent from a mobile phone, probably from the cab of an ambulance.
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Us healthcare people can be nasty cycnical minded swines sometimes.

Sent to an eleven year old child suffering from an asthma attack, I arrived to find the child breathing normally. His oxygen levels are better than mine, his breathing is nice and relaxed, and on listening to his chest I can detect no wheeze or chest infection.

The child tells me that his chest is still feeling 'tight' even though he has no other symptoms of any difficulty in his breathing.

Why is it that myself, my crewmate and the nurses at the hospital all have the thought that today is Monday and therefore a school day uppermost in our minds? Could the child be faking his illness just to get out of school?

As I say, we have nasty cynical minds.

Still, it meant a nice early trip to the hospital where I could score something to eat...


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Sent from a mobile phone, probably from the cab of an ambulance.
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I was at the preview screening of Hallam Foe last week, invited by the lovely Gia. (I'm not going to review the film as it was still a rough cut, but while I normally like my films to have spaceships and explosions I was enthralled by this film. I would recommend it. I also loved the soundtrack.)

There were 33 of us, bloggers in the main with a lot of familiar faces. Someone remarked that it was the 'A List' of British blogging - something that troubled me a little.

You see, the thing that I love about blogging is that it is something that evolved without hierarchies (apart from my now horribly dated joke). It came about, in part, as a way to build communities without leaders. Every voice is equally valued, everyone has the same chance. It just makes me a bit itchy to think about how some people have been elevated to the 'A List'.

The thing that does give me hope though is this - All the people who I personally know via blogging are all lovely people, something that I was talking with Euan about this very thing. I believe that blogging self selects nice people. If the definition of 'nice people' includes willing to listen to other people, to consider their viewpoints and to examine and challenge your own thoughts then, if not predisposed towards this before starting blogging then the process of blogging will teach you how to do this.

Maybe I think too much, maybe my blood sugar is too low - but I get vaguely embarrassed at there being an 'A List', and even more embarrassed that I might be considered part of it.

This job followed on directly from the previous posting. We were sent to 'Female, head injury, police on scene'.

The patient ticked both the 'crack user' and 'prostitute' boxes on the "Is your patient a crack whore?" form.

She was in the garden of the house shouting and swearing at the lone police officer and the ambulance duty station officer who had been sent out as a first responder. Between near incoherent offensive language we discovered that the woman had a bit of a bruise to her head.

The mother had got into an argument with her fourteen year old daughter, after years of this behaviour the daughter had finally snapped and hit her mother around the head.

I spoke with the police officer, he told me that the child had only recently been returned to the mothers custody. The social workers involved in the case had said that, "The mother needs to take some responsibility for caring for her daughter". The police officer was the same one who had driven the daughter home from the foster home.

The mother was well known to the police for the reasons given above.

He was feeling guilty as apparently the child was a 'good kid'.

Our patient was complaining of all over body pain, my crewmate took her into the back of the ambulance and did a sterling job of calming her down. The drive to hospital was uneventful.

The daughter had to be arrested, we are all crossing our fingers that the mother won't press charges.

We meet such lovely people in our line of work.

Only a short post as I need to get up in five hours for a long drive to... well... I'll tell you in a bit. That and Hallam Foe, why getting a 'job' when I'm not wearing my uniform is a pain in the bum and a general post about why it is nice to be a blogger, but also a bit worrying.

I am *such* a tease.