We’d just dropped our last patient off at the hospital, twenty seconds later we were sent another job – business as usual then.
The job was given as ‘fall, cut leg’; an ‘Amber call’, and the FRU was already outside.
As an aside, it used to be that the FRU only ran on ‘Red’ calls, now, after being told off for concentrating too much on Red calls and not enough on Ambers the FRU are now sent off to these lower priority calls in order to ‘stop the clock’. It wouldn’t do for us to have more ambulances would it…
Our patient was an eighty year old woman who’d fell over in her very small toilet, a large lady she was stuck there. She also had a foot long cut to her leg that had leaked a fair amount – probably more than half a litre.
Her family were there, and they were lovely – they didn’t moan that they had been waiting eighteen minutes for an ambulance, they didn’t moan that they had been sent a solo responder in a car, and they didn’t moan that we were going to have to take the removal of the patient a bit slowly.
If fact, the family and the patient were all lovely people. The family were happy to help us by carrying some of our kit for us and by moving furniture. Our patient was in good spirits despite a nasty cut to the leg and the FRU was happy just to see us.
Three bandages later and we’d managed to control the bleeding from the leg and we moved her out to the ambulance.
The patient told me that her blood pressure was high, and after I measured it I let her know that it was a pretty good blood pressure, as quick as you like she replied, “I suppose all that bleeding has lowered it a bit, perhaps I should cut myself more often”.
We got her to the hospital, and I explained that, “In a minute I’ll get you to cuddle me so we can slide you across onto the hospital bed”.
She nearly leapt across the bed to give me a hug.
The family collapsed with laughter, “He said in a minute!”
A really nice job – unfortunately the hospital were unable to deal with the wound, so she had to be transferred to a plastic surgery department at another hospital. It’s always a shame when bad things happen to nice people.
