It’s normally pretty easy to get a patient out of a house.  They either walk, or we put them on our collapsible carrying chair and carry/wheel them out.  Occasionally you come across a job where that simple approach isn’t going to work.  This is often a ‘satisfying’ job as you have to problem solve for a change.

We were sent to a teenager that had hurt her leg playing football in the garden.  We arrived to find the girl laying on the living room floor.  Also present was her mother, older brother and baby sister.  The girl had indeed been playing football and, due to circumstances that I shall obscure for reasons of privacy, had broken her leg right up where it joins with the hip.

This is often an injury related to age, old people fall over and ‘break their hip’, and this was the exact same injury.  The problem with this is that we can’t really carry them out on our chair because of the pain and further injury that can be caused by the two ends of the bone grinding together chewing up muscle, nerves and potentially damaging the main artery that supplies blood to your leg.  If you damage that it’s very easy to bleed to death.

“No problem”, we thought.  The girl herself is light and the mother and older brother are sensible people.  So we warned everyone involved that it would take a bit of time to remove the patient from the house in a safe and as pain-free as possible manner.

Now, with a patient like this we would normally put our scoop underneath, strap them in a bit and then lift them onto our proper trolley-bed.  Unfortunately, in this case, the angle to the front door was such that we wouldn’t be able to get our large trolley-bed into the house, and giving the scoop a dry run, we wouldn’t be able to fit that out the front door either.

Didn’t those people who designed houses eighty years ago consider modern ambulance stretchers?  Typical really.

So we sat an thought for a moment, the patient was calm (and by now the pain relief we had given her was working), the mother was calm, the older brother was calm, baby sister filled her nappy (that or my crewmate farted but managed to keep a straight face).  Could we go out through the garden?  Nope, no access to the street through that route.  Could we open the living room window and pass her out that way?  Nope, the design of the window precluded us doing that.

Brain-wave!

If we strapped the patient to the scoop really well then we could tilt the scoop up by 50 degrees and fit the scoop (and patient) through the door.

However this involves a lot more strapping in a way that we don’t really get much practice in.  Then you follow it up by a bit of faith that when you lift the scoop up the patient isn’t just going to slip out the end of the scoop and end up in a painful heap on the floor.

So we explained what we were going to do (Rule#1 in keeping patients calm, explain what you are going to do) and spent the next ten minutes tying her to the scoop, hoping that we were doing it right…

Then came the moment of truth – we lifted her up, carried her towards the door and tilting her up held our breath.

It worked perfectly, she didn’t move an inch, she didn’t cry out in pain and most importantly – we didn’t drop her.

From there it was a simple job to carry her to the ambulance where we travelled as carefully to hospital as possible in speed-hump infested East London. 

She was seen pretty much immediately by an A&E consultant.

 

Job’s a good’un

So, the BBC news website has published an article about a piece of research that the public trust big media much more than blogs.

Scroll down to the bottom of the article and they mention that 'The Girl With A One Track Mind' was recently outed as Zoe Williams.

Erm...no, wrong person.

Unfortunately there is no comment box for us poor, untrustworthy bloggers to correct them.

(In another story they refer to a common bacteria as 'rabbit flu', which is wrong on *so* many levels).

I’ve mentioned it before, but I think that writing about it again would be worthwhile.

Blood, Sweat and Tea is (probably) the first book by a major European publisher to release a book under a Creative Commons license.  It has been released under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. which means that you can…

…use copyright material in specific ways without affecting the author's overall copyright in the work.

Under the terms of this book's licence, you are free to make copies of all or part of this work for your own personal use and for other non-commercial use. You may annotate or edit the work in any way, and republish it online in any format, providing any annotated and edited version includes a link back to the source material at http://www.fridaybooks.co.uk/bst

You may also make derivative works (Flash animations, videos, images etc, etc) based on this text for online, non-commercial use only.

Any annotated, edited or derivative version must be made available under the same Creative Commons licence as the original material.

As a wiser man than I has said, “My problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity”.  It is also because this website is licensed under the same scheme and to change it now that a large amount of it is in a physical book seems like an unethical thing to do.  I love Creative Commons, it’s a great way of finding new music, writing and other art.  Sure – it’s a bit of a gamble, but I honestly believe that this brave step by my publishers is the best thing for this book.

I’ve got to admit that it was nerve-wracking in asking my publishers about this and I cannot commend them enough for listening to, and understanding, the thoughts behind Creative Commons.

So you can go to The Friday Project page and download the *whole* book in a variety of formats.  You can then fiddle around with it and do whatever you like to it then upload it back to The Friday Project just so long as you don’t try to sell it. 

Fun, yes?

I’m hoping, and it’s a bit of an ego thing here to be honest, that it might shake up publishing a bit in this country and provide a blast across the bows of those who would restrict what you can do with media that you ‘own’.

(You do realise that in the UK it is illegal to rip a CD to your iPod, even if it is for personal use?).

Lets see how things go…

Lets see…

Monday

08:05 Picked up by cab from my house (probably in a state of unconsciousness).

10:00 Live interview with BBC Radio Derbyshire.

10:30 Live interview with BBC Radio Jersey.

11:00 Interview with The Weekly News.

12:00 Interview with Ambulance Today.

13:30 Interview with BBC Radio Wiltshire.

14:20 Interview with Simon Mayo on Radio 5 Live.

15:20 Visit Apple store in Regent Street for new goodies for my Macbook

 

Tuesday

10:00 Pickup for Interview with The Guardian.

18:30 Phone interview with REM FM Spanish Radio.

 

Wednesday

18:00 Back to serving the people of East London.

 

The Devil makes work for idle hands…

I should be doing an interview on Talksport radio later this evening.  Then tomorrow I start at around 8am do a load of regional radio programmes from a studio in London, then get interviewed by the Guardian and The Weekly News and finally have a drink and give some quotes to an Ambulance magazine.  Then on Tuesday I do a phone in with a Spanish radio station ad something else that I can’t remember but is written down on my Mac – which is in my bedroom and I’m quite comfortable sitting here.

All a bit busy, all a bit fun and I’m glad that Rachael from the PR firm has it all organised for me.

I mention this in one big burst because of something I’ve been thinking about from before my holiday – that this ‘ambulance blog’ has been a bit short on ambulance posts for quite a while.  I feel the need to get back to basics as it were.  The problem that I have is that if I’m not working (for example taking two weeks leave for a holiday in the sun and a book launch) then I’m not getting much material and the reserves of material that I’ve built up are close to running dry.

Luckily I’m back to work on Wednesday or Thursday (Mac in other room again) so there should be plenty of material.  If people discover this blog from the book/radio/TV they’d be a bit disappointed at the moment.  So I’m going to make an effort to post every day, I feel that, for someone who is supposedly a writer, I haven’t actually been *writing* enough.

Time for that to change.

UPDATE: I've just come from the Talksport studio having recorded my bit for between 02:00 and 06:00 tonight/tomorrow morning. It was good fun, the host was a superb interviewer and I think it's my best interview yet. If you are in the UK this wiki page tells you how to listen to it.

Apparently there is a new book out today - you may have heard of it.

I hope you enjoy it.

(And if you ordered it from an internet shop, you may have received it already).

I think I've mentioned it before that the Helicopter Emergency Medical is a charity, it receives no funding from the health service or the government. That big whirly thing in the sky that swoops down on Londoners who have been mashed up by large chunks of machinery? Charity all the way.

A stupid way to fund a service that, when it is needed, provides some serious assistance to some of our trickiest jobs.

There are two men who are undertaking a painful operation in order to raise money to continue providing this service... Well, I'll let them tell you.

After a night out on the town and a few beers, myself and a colleague from White Star Medical Ltd have agreed to have our chest, belly and legs waxed in aid of London Air Ambulance (White Star Medical's charity of the year).

This event is planned for Monday 2nd October at The Blind Beggar public house in Whitechapel by The Royal London Hospital where the London Air Ambulance is based.

It costs £1,000 just for the London Air Ambulance to take off and save lives! They take off 3 - 4 times a day and this financial year will need £750,000 to cover rising costs of fuel, insurance and so on.

It's going to hurt, so help the pain with a donation!

*** If I make the target of £2,000 I will put a movie of the event on the Internet for everyone to see ***

So go here to sponsor them.

Brave souls, I'd have to raise more than £2,000 to wave goodbye to my manly chest hair (and back hair/belly hair/leg hair/foot hair/nasal hair/shoulder hair...)

(Don't worry about the charge the site makes - it works out cheaper than processing cheques and the like).

I'm back from holiday and have sent off all the emails that I answered while away but didn't have the connection to send, so if you've sent me an email and don't get a reply later today I've probably lost it and you need to send it again.

1) I really don't like flying, especially in 'cattle class' surrounded by people wearing burberry caps and toddlers running up and down the aisle.

2) Even though she knows that I'm remaining tea-total for a year, my mother will still try to get me to have a Pina Colada as, 'just one won't hurt'.

3) The Dominican Republic has some 'interesting' ideas on road safety. There are no seatbelts, coach windscreens are held in by masking tape and people routinely ride four to a bike without crash helmets. I'm guessing that if you want some experience in dealing with motorcycle trauma, this would be the place to come.

4) I will eat pretty much anything. But I'm not a big fan of raw potato.

5) A holiday where I sit on my arse on the beach is superb and I don't miss the scuba diving, jeep driving, rock climbing, walking and catamaran rides that I normally end up doing.

5a) ...That's a lie, sitting around doing nothing drives me bonkers.

6) Having your room overlooking the beach is nice, having it overlook the (very loud) nightclub is less nice.

7) I bless my ability to sleep even though short men are shouting Spanish into microphones while playing bad Euro-rave.

8) Apparently this hotel has a grand total of seven records, three Spanish language, 'The Birdie Song', 'Agadoo' 'I am the music man' and 'Macarena'

9) With an inclusive bar and little to do I am very grateful to be tea-total. A holiday of hangovers wouldn't be much fun.

10) Actually, with those seven songs playing twice *every* night, getting drunk would be an improvement.

11) There is a reason that Tropical *rain*forests are called such. Alternately being threatened with flooding, then being baked alive makes for an interesting life.

12) There are scarier places than East London. Likewise there are worse roads, worse drivers and more stray dogs. Although the weather isn't as nice.

13) A week without an internet connection is both liberating and leaves me thinking that I'm missing an arm. It's tough to not have the wisdom of mankind at my fingertips.

14) 'Par!, par!, par! par!' when shouted at 11pm apparently means 'clap!' in Spanish. (Or is that 'plauso'? In which case why does the DJ keep shouting it?).

15) There is no way in Hell I'll ever be able to stop my mum from feeding stray animals.

16) I'm glad I'm not a child anymore, although I wish I had their energy for running around in heat and humidity.

17) BBC World News is pretty good for finding out about the terrorist arrests the day we flew out, although it's not too detailed. At least we now know about the hand luggage restrictions and can plan for it.

18) Having my Macbook in packed luggage is a nerve-wracking experience. As is the fact that it is sharing my (easy to lose) suitcase with my phone/PDA/Gameboy/Ipod/MP3 player/Assorted chargers.

19) Being a Eurovision song contest fan is great preparation for listening to Spanish speaking torch singers at midnight, although this is not through my choice.

20) You can't watch movies on your Mac when the music outside is being played at a stupid volume.

21) There is very little to do in the Dominican Republic. There is very little to see.

22) Typing on the beach is terribly decadent...

23) While I was happy to have a week away, I'm *really* glad to be back and I really need to reconnect with people, read a weeks-load of RSS feeds and get ready for a media blitz on the book. That and, you know, fool around in Second Life and World of Warcraft...

Yesterday was great fun, picked up by cab from home, driven through my patch to the ITN studios in Holborn (hardly sweating at all). I met Rachael from the publisher's PR company as I tried to bypass the security checkpoint.
We were led through to the huge newsroom, TV's and computer screens everywhere. Everyone was bounding around the place in some form of organised chaos.
One cup of coffee later (some of which ended up going down my jeans, the reason why I wear black jeans a lot) and I felt a lot calmer. Never underestimate feeding your caffeine receptors.
I was introduced to Chris, the presenter who would be interviewing me and both he and the producer put me at my ease. I was told that the piece would be 3 minutes long and I was given a bit of warning of the questions I would be asked.
Of course, all that would change as the schedule changed for some important news.
I snuck a look at their computer scheduling software. They plan the programme to the second. It's all immensely impressive.
I was taught about the microphone and what I should do immediately before and after the interview.
Then I was led into the studio. I was expecting a big studio full of people, but was surprised to find the presenter as the only person there. The cameras and prompters were all robots and the presenter had a foot control that did some arcane trickery.
I can't remember the interview. But I did note that he really plugged the book well.
Then it was back in the car to go home in order to watch myself make a fool of myself on telly.

Not *too* bad, but the important thing (after chatting with the LAS' press office) is that I still have a job.

Now I'm just waiting to fly out - this has been posted not only from my mobile, but also on an empty stomach so please ignore the 'Janet and John' approach.

Feel free to chat among yourself, I have no idea what the internet is like in the resort, so I may, or may not be able to post from there. If I can't, then I'll be back next week.

Keep safe.


(Flight MYT0037, so if it crashes, you'll know why I won't be updating this blog any more).

-=-=-=-=-
Sent from a mobile phone, in the middle of Gatwick airport.
-=-=-=-=-

I'm sitting in the car being driven to the studio, jus passing my work 'patch'. It's a live programme and I'm not nervous...

Not nervous at all.

Honest.

Which is why this sick feeling in my stomach is so unusual.

Nothing to do with every interview having the danger of saying the wrong thing and losing my job.

Nope - not nervous...

...much.

Lets see - time for a general catch up.

I feel like someone has punched me in the face. I'm actually waiting for the anaesthetic to wear off from having a filling done. I have a lovely dentist who doesn't hurt me at all.

So long as I pay promptly.

Yesterday on Amazon 'Da Book' peaked at #66 overall ranking and at #2 on the pre-release chart. My ego is coming along nicely.

Tomorrow I'm being picked up by a car from ITN News in order to do a TV interview. Yes - I am joyful. I just need to find something suitable to wear. If some bright spark could digitise it for me I would be eternally grateful. (Unless I make a prat of myself, in which case I'll find a cave to hide in).

I'm on annual leave for the next two weeks and a week of that will be spent sunning myself by the pool in the Dominican Republic. Therefore blogging may be a bit few and far between depending on any access I have out there. I think I'll need the holiday so I can deal with the book launch the day after I come back.

I'm also doing an email interview with Time Out, and various radio and print bits are planned for after I come back. I am _loving_ whoring myself for publicity and I'm extremely glad that I chose the Friday Project as my publishers. I chose them for exactly this reason, that it would be *fun*.

The Mac is coming along lovely, especially now it has a battery that works (and no, it's not a 'Pro').

Now I just need to run around like a loon getting everything sorted before I fly off for my anticipated relaxing week.

UPDATE: The interview will take place between 12.45 and 1.30pm on 'London Today', ITV1. It will be live. I will be nervous. I won't see it unless someone tapes it for me. This may be for the best.