I've just had a week off*

I was coming off my first set of night shifts in some time, I've been burning my annual leave allowance to avoid doing them and it's been a right trauma trying to reset my body-clock back to day shifts.

Winter is approaching, and with it my Seasonal Affective Disorder. During this week off I've been unable to be motivated about anything - I've been sleeping between nine and eleven hours a day and I've been alternating between not eating and binge eating. There are other symptoms, but you don't want to read me moaning.

So I've dusted down my SAD light and checked that the bulb still works - time to start blasting myself in the face with it.

I hate this time of year.

The problem is that you have to be careful not to let it affect your work - it's incredibly easy to start snapping at people, and that way leads to written complaints and warnings from those above me in the LAS pecking order.

It's been said that over half the complaints against our service are due to 'attitude', so as the nights draw in I try and be a bit more mindful of what I say and do and of the way I present myself.

Of course it doesn't always work; take the drunk who was asleep in the street. We were getting run ragged and this was the third person of the night who'd decided that going home wasn't for him, instead he'd just kip down in the middle of the pavement.

Be aware that it's only around seven in the evening.

So we parked next to him and I deployed the 'diagnostic boot'**. Essentially it's not a good idea to kneel down next to someone who is drunk, you never know if they are going to take a swing at you. If the person doesn't wake up to me shouting at them, I gently kick the sole of their shoe with my boot, not with the purpose of hurting them, but just to shake them awake.

Sure enough he woke up and I introduced myself and asked if he was alright.

'Fuck off!'

I informed him that he couldn't sleep on the pavement, someone might trip over him.

'Fuck off!'

I let him know that if he kept sleeping here we, or our colleagues, would keep being called to him as a 'unconscious male, caller refusing to approach'.

'Fuck off!'

I asked him if he would like to go to hospital, it was less than 200 yards away.

'Fuck off!', he then spat a gobbet of drool at me.

'No', I replied through gritted teeth, 'You don't get to tell me to "fuck off" four times and then spit at me. If you don't 'fuck off' yourself I'll get the police down here to have you nicked. And they are a lot less pleasant than me - but I would guess you know that already'.

At this he got up and wandered home.

I am, after all, only human and I don't get paid to have drunks swearing and spitting at me.

The trick, is to not lose my temper when it's a cold and dark February evening and turn the 'diagnostic boot' into the 'your head is a football, you annoying twerp boot'.

Fingers crossed.

*I'm typing this while manning ORG's stall at the Green Party conference. I really like being able to write things in advance - comes in handy for the twelve hour stretches.

** Before I start getting emails of complaint, I was told to do this at our 'self defence' course. I didn't have the heart to tell the course leader that we'd all been doing this for years.

Obviously I am superb at everything that I turn my hand to. To believe otherwise would mark you out as a fool.

So when the Open Rights Group asked for volunteers to star in a promotional video it would have been dreadful not to give them the benefit of my Oscar wining acting style.

So here I am.

Who's Watching Who? from Dean Whitbread on Vimeo.

(What you should perhaps keep in mind is that I was asked to 'ham it up')

For those with lower bandwidth you can also watch this on Youtube.

And if anyone is at the Green Party Conference, I shall be manning the ORG stall there. I may also threaten some bunnies with death and cooking if they don't all join immediately.

That should work.

I look at the screen and see the words, "Patient in labour", it's 4 a.m. in the morning and I huff at the thought of going out to another 'Maternataxi'.

My crewmate groans and tells me that while the patient lives in our patch the maternity department that she is going to is way outside our area to a hospital that we don't like much.

'She doesn't speak English', says my crewmate, 'oh, and she's fifteen'.

'No wonder her maternity department is in Essex', I joke.

We get there and her parents meet us at the door, they are babbling away in their native tongue and they basically push us, and the patient, into the ambulance. Her mother comes with her - all the time shouting the only word in English that they seem to know - "Quick!"

'Quick! Quick! Quick!' they shout at us, they aren't interested in us doing anything, you know, medical, so I grit my teeth and we drive them to the hospital.

I'm fuming. I'm sure that it doesn't help that this is the last of our very busy nightshifts, that it's silly o'clock in the morning, that our professionalism is being ignored for our ability to drive a free taxi and that we are being forced to go out of our area when all we really want to do is local jobs so that we can get off shift on time.

At some point my crewmate leans through the dividing door of the ambulance and lets me know that this is the third baby our patient is having and that the father of the baby is her cousin.

Again I mutter something about Essex*

We drop her off at the hospital, I neither expect or receive a 'thank you'. The midwives at this hospital were lovely and we returned to the ambulance to try and race back to our own area.

It was only after I'd had seven hours sleep at the end of my shift that I start to wonder about this call.

I wonder about our patient getting pregnant for the first time when she is twelve. I wonder about her cousin, I wonder how old he is, and how old he was when he first started what can only be described as child abuse. I wonder about the isolation that our patient would feel in being unable to speak the native language of the country in which she lives. I wonder about why the social services allow this child to remain in a situation where she has seemingly become a baby factory.

The pregnancy is all above board, the maternity notes are genuine, the history is good and action has probably been taken. But somehow the father of the child isn't in prison, isn't on the sex offenders register. Is it because he is a child as well?

I think about the fate of our patient, this child. I've heard things about Romanian gypsy families, that they marry their child while they are still children. Some private ceremony, unsanctioned by the state or by law, yet occurs without much fuss because to do otherwise might lead to accusations of racism**.

So now I'm angry again - I'm angry that a fifteen year old girl has been raped at least three times presumably with her family's consent. I'm angry because it would seem that nothing is being done about it and I'm angry that this isn't an isolated incident.

I think that this delayed anger is the more positive sort.

*I can make these jokes, I spent my childhood growing up in Essex. The fecundity of the women of Essex is the reason why I was a virgin until I left the area.

**Yes, I know it's the Daily Hate Mail, but it seems like reasonably factual reporting.

First off, thanks to everyone who left a comment in the last post - at some point once I've had some sleep I'll be looking at al of them.

Many, many moons ago when I was a lot more enthusiastic for the job that I do I wrote a post called 'What's in your pockets' - in it I detailed the things that I carried around with me. I thought that, with four more years of experience it might be interesting to see how things have changed.

Shirt Pocket - Right - Personal phone No1, 3G USB modem, Optrex eyedrops (to keep my eyes working on nightshifts).

Shirt Pocket - Left - Pen, pair of scissors, pentorch that is bright enough to sear flesh, lighter (I don't smoke, but you never know when you need to set something on fire)

Upper Right Trouser Pocket - Car keys, door keys, Swiss army knife, Wallet.

Upper Left Trouser Pocket - iPhone, cloth for cleaning glasses.

Lower Right Trouser Pocket - Gloves, bandage dressing, torch bright enough to burn skin and to play the 'Go towards the light, all your loved ones are waiting for you...' game with sleeping drunks.

Lower Left Trouser Pocket - Normally nothing, occasionally my stethoscope.

Everywhere else - Nothing, I don't put anything in my back pockets and as I don't wear my stab vest (except when it's very cold) there is nothing there either. I no longer have anything hanging from my belt as it would only dig into my overflowing gut.

Amongst the other things that missing which I used to carry are my service provided emergency phone (I used it once, it'd would have been quicker to dial 999 on my own phone), the drug cheat sheet (I rarely need to give drugs as I rarely go to anyone who needs them, for those patients who do need drugs I've memorised the information).
I no longer have a security card for the Royal London hospital, as it was stolen along with my car and has never been replaced (despite my hassling people), I don't need a key to the oxygen cylinders because they have changed the tops of them to be openable by hand (a change for the better).
I don't need a Pocket PC as I have an iPhone and in my personal bag I have a netbook computer (which is what the 3G modem is for should I ever get the chance to use it) it is also for this reason I no longer have a paper diary. And I no longer carry mints because I rarely eat a kebab any more.
I also don't carry as many gloves because I seldom wear them, I can often get through a whole shift without needing to touch a patient any further than I need to to take a pulse.

So I've slimmed down the stuff that I carry by quite a bit, although I seem to have picked up another phone somehow...

So, your turn now - tell me what is in your pockets when you go to work.

I'm off working on nightshifts for the next few nights, and so will be spending large chunks of my time either asleep, working towards trying to be asleep, or desperately attempting to be awake while dealing with drunken teenagers.

So, for the next three days I'm opening up this blog for you dear reader. Comment authentication is off and anonymous comments are now allowed. This is the equivalent of letting down the castle gates while marauding barbarians look for decent women in medieval skirts.

Three days to entertain me and the other readers of this site.

Leave interesting stuff in the comments. Jokes, pictures, videos, short stories, links to interesting sites, links to your own sites. It's a free-for all for the next three days.

Show me amazing things, or work that you are proud of. Drop in links to whatever music you find interesting or forums that you call home.

Teach me something I don't know, or just plain show off your own particular talent. Tell me what is heading the news in your part of the word or leave me a video message.

30,000 people or so read this blog and each of you are unique in your own way - show me how much of a snowflake you are.

And a very grateful thank you to the person who sent me a gift from my Amazon Wishlist - it's very much appreciated and will see plenty of use, I'm a big fan. And this is the only way I can say thank you as you didn't give me your name.

In my experience there are three types of suicide calls that we go to.

By far the largest group are those that don't really intend to die. They normally present as having had an argument with either a family member or their boy/girl/transgender-friend. They then either take a handful of tablets or make some minor cuts to their wrist. I don't believe that they wish to die for, as soon as they perform this act of self harm, they call for an ambulance. More often than not they don't call for an ambulance themselves but instead phone round their family and friends and let them know what they have done. These friends then call us and rush around to the patient's house in order to give their support

When we arrive they sometimes put up a pretence of not wanting to go to hospital, but will come without a fight as it were. Surrounded by the people who care for them they sit chatting in the back of the ambulance.

Often paracetamol (acetaminophen) is the drug of choice and occasionally someone will take too much of it thinking that it is a 'safe' drug to overdose on - a mistaken belief that has killed more than one person, especially when mixed with alcohol.

A much rarer suicide call is the person who has succeeded in killing themselves, seldom this is due to a drug overdose. We will get sent to someone who has hung themselves, or someone who lives alone and has taken a mixture of every drug that they can find. Often these people will have a collection of anti-depressents that they take all at once.

These patients will normally have a long history of mental illness and they go somewhere private and kill themselves - it is only when someone hasn't seen them for a few days that we are called.

While I've never been to one myself, there are people who kill themselves in public places, often fathers who kill themselves to be found by their children - something that I've never understood.

Then there is the final group, those who truly wish to kill themselves but have been 'unlucky' enough to be discovered. These are the tough cases as they don't want to be saved. We find ourselves trying to get them to go to hospital, but they refuse and, as the law stands, I can't frogmarch them into my ambulance. So the police are often involved in persuading them, and on more than one occasion I've had to rely on the Mental Health Act in order to have them removed to hospital against their will.

Sometimes they do come quietly, and this can be heartbreaking to see - one memorable job of this type was a teenager with a long history of mental health problems. They were taking a whole bunch of tranquillisers and anti-depressants, their arms were just a mass of scar tissue from repeated self harm and they were incredibly unkempt. But the worst thing about this call was the utter hopelessness that radiated from them, they spoke with no emotion and answered any question put to them curtly. In my opinion it was unlikely that this teenager was ever going to become 'normal', or be able to live any life without constant supervision. They were accompanied by their adolescent mental health worker and she was very caring, which is sadly a rarity.

Which is a long way around of wondering which of these three camps this particular gentleman came from?

I love my crewmate.

Not romantically mind you, that would be very wrong, but in a brotherly way.

You see, she's had a few days off work and I've had to work with other people. Now, these other people are fine people to be working with, but as I've never worked with them before we don't have the 'telepathy' that my regular crewmate and I share.

Let's imagine that we have a patient who is actually sick (I know, I know it hardly ever happens, but please bear with me) a simple glance from either one of us can let the other know what we are thinking with the patient being none the wiser.

It's nice not to notice that the nice ambulance people who are trying to treat you also think that you might end up shuffling off the mortal coil somewhat sooner than later.

The back of an ambulance is fairly cramped and so you work out fairly quickly how to work with the other person without bumping into them while still sharing out the jobs that need to be done. With a strange crewmate you find yourselves doing awkward shuffling dances in the back of the ambulance as one of you goes to put away the carry chair while the other tries to check a blood pressure.

With mixed sex crews there is also the potential of sexual harassment, thankfully my crewmate has managed to keep her womanly desires under control and away from groping my bum.

The current joke is that I'm looking for a divorce - like a married couple we finish each other's sentences, we whistle at the same tunes on the radio, we think alike and, like a married couple, I've stopped flirting with her.

Why, it's only a matter of time before I feel comfortable farting in the cab.

And of course, when we can, on nightshifts* we get to sleep together - me farting and drooling on one sofa while she snores and scratches herself on the other, slightly smaller, sofa.

Of course she does try to get me in trouble, like the time we were going to a little girl who'd apparently swallowed a magnet.

"You get bonus points if you can work a pun in there while you are talking to the mother", she suggested.

"Like what?", I asked.

"I don't know, something like 'I'm really attracted to your daughter'"

"Oh, so 'pun' is a new word meaning 'paedophile' and you want me getting arrested for telling a mother that I'm attracted to her three year old?"

She did manage to stop laughing by the time we reached the job.

So there you have it, part of the reason why I don't change ambulance station or go for my Paramedic qualification is that I just like working with her too much. A good crewmate makes all the difference to this job, and I'm glad I get to work with her.

*And by 'nightshift' I really mean any shift where we are left alone for longer than ten minutes - gotta grab those naps when you can.