For those that are interested – I’ve recovered from about a month of near terminal email failure.  So if you have emailed me in the past month or so – don’t be surprised if you suddenly get an email in your inbox.  The problem has now been fixed.

On 22nd of April at 23:59 and 45 seconds I had my last alcoholic drink for 1 year and a day.  It’s something I occasionally do – give up alcohol.  This will be the longest ‘fast’ so far.  The reasons are many and varied, but include…

• I’m getting fat.  With a beer belly.  This is easier to do than that thing called ‘exercise’.
• I have a bad memory – if I have two pints then I may as well write off any hope of remembering the night.
• Alcohol is a depressive – I don’t need any more help in unblancing my ‘bad brain chemistry’.  I have more reasons than ever before to be happy – there is no need to wreck it now.
• I’m always moaning about drunks – time to remove that bit of hypocrisy from my life.
• I’ve found myself having a drink after each shift – this is not good.  It might be alright for others, but experience tells me that for me this is a bad idea
• Bottles of soft drink and water are cheaper than beer.
• I have a bad memory…hold on…Didn’t I just…oh…yes…
• For those in the know – I’m aiming for some inhibitory gnosis.

Tomorrow I shall hopefully be having a little day out – I’ll let you know more on Thursday if I manage to wake myself up a 7am in time for the charabanc…

Apart from tomorrow I’m working pretty much continuously for the next fortnight.  My sense of humour may fail at some point during this period of time…

Take off your shoe.

Now remove your sock/stocking.

Get a ballpoint pen (red for added authenticity)

Lightly touch the nib of the pen against the sole of your foot.

You are now looking at the same wound that I went to last night.  As a Category A call.

The patient was a 25 year old woman who had stood on a sliver of glass.  The pain was apparently so bad that not only couldn’t she walk, but the pain was travelling up her leg and into her chest.

Chest pain = Category A call.

I had to wheel her out of her expensive riverside flat apartment.

Her husband told us that he would follow behind us in his car.

 

The only sound you could hear while she was being wheeled out was Reynolds grinding his teeth.

After she was safely dropped off at hospital I indulged in a little ‘Primal scream’ therapy.

 

I’m starting to come around to the idea of charging for certain ambulance jobs…

So picture the thought processes that went into these decisions...

You have a young woman who has already broken her ankle in a suicide attempt by jumping out a 2nd floor flat window.
So the council re-house her...

...in a 5th floor flat.

When her husband attempts to protect her by installing metal grilling over the flat's balcony, the council threaten him with court action for 'defacing' the building.

We've just taken her to hospital because she was threatening suicide by jumping out a window.

Perhaps the council can rehouse her in an even taller building?

Twits.

This blogpost is a little later than planned for reasons which are about to become apparent.

If you pay UK taxes, I’d like to take a moment to thank you.  You have helped me out quite a bit.

 

We got a call as “Two people in collapsed state”, so we rattled around to the house only to find the two ‘patients’ having a nice (for them) drug trip.  They were boyfriend and girlfriend and the ambulance had been called by the boy’s mother.  She told me how they were both known to use drugs, and that her son had spent some time in a rehab unit trying to kick his drug and alcohol addiction.

We called for another ambulance as they were so far into their drugged state they were in a real danger of blocking their own airway and choking to death.  There was no way we could transport both patients.

So I stayed downstairs with a male 6’2”, built like a brick outhouse apparent weightlifter while my crewmate looked after his girlfriend in the bedroom.  Sometimes I draw the short straw…

Eventually another ambulance turned up (we were having a very busy night), and we started to move the patients into the ambulances.

Unfortunately for me, the male patient became just a bit agitated and started waving his arms about.  He managed to string together a couple of naughty swear words just for my ears.  As we got him into the ambulance he managed to punch my crewmate and kick the FRU driver who had arrived to help us out.

As I was trying to strap him down onto the bed he swung an arm at me and caught me in the face.

My glasses went flying off my head, bounced around the back of the ambulance and landed in pieces at my feet.

I’d just like to state that without my glasses I score a 9/10 on the Magoo Scale.  This is about the level where you would pick up a skunk thinking that it was a pet cat.

We took both patients into the local hospital, where the young man decided to ‘kick off’ again.  He tried biting a couple of us until the docs could dose him up with Haldol which *ahem* ‘calmed him down.

I then called Control on our radio and let them know that I was no longer able to work – I don’t have a spare pair of glasses, so there was no way I could continue.

Control sent one of our new Duty Station Officers (DSO’s) over for a chat – I’ve got to say I’m pretty impressed with him, he seems to have a pretty good idea of whats going on, and he talks a lot of sense.  He also told me that each night around 10 ambulance crews are assaulted, which is a surprisingly huge number given the shortage of ambulances on the road each night.

He also told me that when I got new glasses I should give the receipt to him so that he can do battle with the finances department and then I can claim the money back.  Asking him if the patient would be made to pay by the LAS, I was told that this wouldn’t be the case, and that the money would come out of our normal funding. 

I was told not to buy any solid gold glasses.

I find this a bit ridiculous – here is a patient who has indulged in something illegal – he has assaulted a number of ambulance and hospital staff (thankfully no-one was seriously injured), he has wasted all our time and broken and essential bit of kit for the running of an ambulance.  Because of him there was one less ambulance covering our area that night.

And he’s going to get away without losing a penny.

I can see why we don’t bother pressing criminal charges against him (I read enough police and magistrate blogs to understand a little something about the CPS), but you’d think that we could win some small civil action against him.

So – as it is, my new glasses are being provided by the tax payer.

Thanks.

I promise – no solid gold glasses.

 

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I now have two pairs of glasses on order (a 2 for 1 special on frames for all you fans of reasonable NHS budgets), I also have some ultra stylish ones that cost me £9 plus lenses.  Well…I think that they are stylish, and they were made in one hour, which is nice when you are otherwise as blind as a bat.

The Patient said that he had been kidnapped.

He hadn't.

He said that the people who had kidnapped him were Serbian.

He then said that they were Bosnians, then that they were "Pakis".

He said that the keys to his car had been stolen.

When the police searched him, they found his car keys.

He said he didn't know where the damage to the side of his car came from.

There was a matching damaged skip just down the road.

He said he had been walking home.

Other people had seen him driving, they were the ones who had called the ambulance.

He said he only had a drink or two.

He was so drunk, he could barely walk.

He said that he didn't want any trouble.

He had previous convictions from assaulting both the police and ambulance services.

He told the police that he didn't want them involved.

He got arrested for drink-driving

He told us to "fuck off".

So we did - then he spat at the police

We put one of our 'TB' masks on him to stop him spitting at anyone else.

He smashed his head against the floor in temper.

His hand was causing him pain - but the injury wouldn't cause any lasting damage.

We were quite happy to have him arrested after refusing the ambulance. The police doctor would probably arrange an x-ray and treatment of his hand.

I hate drunk drivers with a passion - I particularly hate abusive drunk drivers who could have killed someone and who have been flagged as being violent towards anyone in a uniform. When he told us to "fuck off", I was more than happy to open the door to the ambulance and have the police remove him.

For some reason I find it difficult to care about his painful hand.

Because of various reasons of confidentiality, I'm not going into deep detail for this post. Sorry

She was 31 years old and I was kneeling next to her forcing air into her lungs because she had stopped breathing.

I was sent the call as a "31 year old suspended" and to be honest I didn't think that the call was going to be as given. I was working solo on the FRU at the time, and I sped to the address, reaching the place at the same time as the ambulance. It was an ambulance with two trainees working it - while one of the trainees and myself went to the patient the other trainee and their supervisor turned the vehicle around so that they could leave the scene quickly if needed.

I rang the entry bell to the block of flats - whoever answered the entryphone seemed to be a bit disorientated, but we soon gained entry.

"Probably a psychiatric patient", I said to the trainee as we stood in the lift.

"I hope so", replied the trainee, "I've not done a suspended before".

"Don't worry about it", I said, "Just remember that you just need to try and keep calm, I'm there to run it until your supervisor gets there".

The doors to the lift opened and we made our way to the flat. I walked in through the door and all hopes of the call not being a suspended were dashed.

The patient was lying flat on the floor a deep shade of blue - over her was a man I took to be her partner, he had one ear on the phone, listening to instruction from one of our calltakers. With his free hand he was pushing on the woman's chest in an effort of CPR. He wasn't doing a bad job of it either considering that tears were running down his face.

On the sofa was the daughter of the patient - she was around five or six years old. She was also crying. I realised that it was this little child who had opened the flat door for us.

The trainee and myself fell into our roles - I managed the patient's airway and breathing while the trainee connected the defibrilator. The patient had a pulse, but had suddenly stopped breathing. There was nothing in the patient's history to suggest what had caused this sudden stopping of breathing. The mother had overcome a serious illness a few years earlier - but that illness wouldn't account for what was happening today.

The job itself went pretty well - while the patient didn't start breathing again on her own, we did manage to 'pink her up' a lot. The transport to hospital went well and we handed the patient over to the hospital staff with a real hope that she would make a recovery.

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I went back to the hospital a while later.

The patient had suffered a sudden huge and unrecoverable bleed into the brain. She would never wake up.

For some reason this really upset me. I don't normally get upset at people dying, but for some reason this one really upset me.

I don't know if it is because she has left a small child behind - a small child who saw her mother die in front of her. I don't know if it was because the mother overcame a serious illness six years ago for the sake of her child. I don't know what will happen to the child, as the mother's current partner isn't the biological father.

I don't know if it was because the mother had overcome serious adversity and yet she was dead at such a young age.

I suspect that it was because, for once, we thought that in giving the patient the best chance possible, she may have survived. I'm guessing that we were all disappointed that the patient was going to die despite doing our best work.

Whatever the reason, I was at my most upset over a dead patient since the dead thirteen year old I attended.

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If there is a slight upside to the story - it's that because we kept her organs protected by breathing for her, those same organs were used to give a new lease of life for a number of other very sick patients. I only hope that this fact will gve some comfort to here family.

Yes - I'm a registered organ donor.

Just a random post (just ever so slightly into my last one)

Maternataxi!

10 minute contractions!

Treated as a large yellow taxi by the whole family!

Never said "Thank you", to their highly skilled medical crew!

Treated to a free pram, carry cot and carseat by my taxes!

(If they have a carseat then they must have a car).

Total distance travelled - 0.8 miles!

Unhappiness of this particular crew member for being used as a taxi driver - 7/10!

Six hours to the end of my shift and we have not had a single job that required an ambulance...

NHS funds well spent.

Nurse who killed two patients and put many more at serious risk.

For the short version of my thoughts (because I’m about to head out to work) – For a trainee nurse who took people to the brink of death…well…  Couldn’t we use him as a resuscitation training aid?  Cause a respiratory arrest in him and use it to teach resus skills to people.

For every day of his sentence.

He has betrayed the trust that nurses enjoy, and I hope that he rots in prison.

I’m working nights this week, so my writing time is limited by the routine of ‘Sleep – Eat – Work – Repeat’.  Couple that with a very difficult upcoming post to write and I would beg your short indulgence in the madness that strikes me when I’m constantly jetlagged.

I have two ideas.  One is more serious than the other.

I’ll leave you to decide which is the serious one.

 

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Idea One

The LAS should have business cards printed up which state something along the lines of “Due to your inability to control your drinking of alcohol you have wasted the time and resources of - an emergency ambulance and staff (including dispatchers and call takers), an A&E department along with nurses, doctors, radiographers and other NHS staff.  Please think on this”.  We could then leave these in the pockets of the drunk patients we pick up, so that they could reflect on their behaviour when sober.

We might have to get it printed up in a few languages though…

 

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Idea Two

Concerning maternataxis at 5:30am.  Can I beat one of them to death please?  Just as a warning to the others.

 

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Finally, before I go to bed, a quick “Hello” to Emma who I passed in a hospital ambulance bay last night.  Sorry I ran off but the nurse had something important to tell me.

Nighty-night all.

ZZZZzzzz….

We were called by the police to a child of a few months old. The father of the child had allegedly gotten into an argument with the child's mother. He had then shaken the baby in an attempt to silence its crying.

The police had already arrested the father and taken him away. The child seemed unhurt by the assault, however we took the child to the hospital for a check-up.

What strikes me (besides the obvious bastardness of shaking a baby) is that even if he becomes the best father in the world - should his child look at their medical notes the words that will leap out at them will be, 'Patient violently shaken by father'.

Imagine if you were to find something like that in your medical notes. How do you think that would make you feel?