I've just had two weeks off work, two glorious weeks where I could maintain a reasonable body clock, could sleep and could be normal for a change.

The constant nausea that has crept up on me vanished and tension drained from my shoulders.

Then on my first shift back at work I suddenly get insomnia and that familiar nausea returns. I'm making an effort to eat some decent food and to get some good rest. Perhaps I may even have an attempt at exercise.

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We were called to a ten year old who'd fallen down some stairs, nothing serious and on further discussion, the sort of thing my crewmate and I used to do for fun. Would we take the happy, healthy and fundamentally unhurt child to hospital?

Well yes, you see the mother was conviced that the child stopped breathing for three minutes.

Apparently the child was fully awake and looking at her mother during this 'respiratory arrest'.

It's one of those weird things, that parents will often state that their child stopped breathing - now, given my medical training, I find this hard to believe.

But the trick is never to mock the parent, they were there and witnessed the accident, so we take the child into hospital and let them sort it out. While I'm sure that it's the parent panicking, no-one ever lost their ambulance job by taking someone to hospital.

And besides, the family were nice, so it wasn't a hardship to keep them happy.