The Complete Blood, Sweat and Tea

We learned that day that CT (computed tomography) films make excellent sunglasses.

So, the whole department stood outside on the grass staring at the sun slowly disappearing – very spooky, and one of the few strong memories I have from that long ago. I suspect that many of the wards were empty as well: there was a procession of people wearing dressing gowns and holding tight to their drip stands wandering around the hospital grounds.

As soon as the eclipse finished we immediately had two cardiac arrests brought in by ambulance, it was as if they had waited until after the eclipse before deciding to keel over dead …

Life also tends to be a bit quiet around FA cup finals, royal marriages and important soap storylines.

Not All Bad

I often carry a camera around with me. I was talking to some kids recently – they were happy little buggers, enjoying the sunshine on a lazy Sunday.

It’s not all bad this job.

This picture still makes me smile.

Wedding Saga + Pub Fight

Some calls are a pain in the arse, not because anyone is particularly ill, but instead because you can see complaints coming in, and there being a high possibility of losing your job.

Tonight was a case in point. We got called to a wedding reception where the bride had collapsed; a quick history revealed MS (multiple sclerosis), and that it was likely that this was the cause of the collapse. Unfortunately, the patient and the patient’s new husband were adamant that she wasn’t going to go to hospital, particularly the hospital that was nearest. Things were not helped because they had called an ambulance for an aunt who had collapsed, but had cancelled it before it had arrived because it was ‘taking too long’.

While we were getting a history from the patient, the new husband was generally acting like an arse: he was questioning everything that we did, interfering with our talking to the patient and generally getting in the way. We managed to get rid of him for a short period and the rest of the family came over to us and apologised for his behaviour.

Luckily, the patient’s hotel was next door to the hospital so, after 45 minutes of persuasion, I managed to get the patient to agree for us to take her towards the hotel, and if she felt better then we could, in good conscience, leave her there. En route I called up on the radio, and arranged for the Duty Officer to meet us at the hotel. He did and the responsibility of leaving her without treatment now fell on his shoulders (thus, saving our jobs should anything go horribly wrong).

I know MS is a horrible disease. I know it isn’t fair that it would strike on your wedding day, and I can understand why you might not want to go to hospital … but if you can’t move half of your body, then please understand why the ambulance people might be a bit unhappy to leave you lying in the middle of the street.

It then all kicked off in the Hackney/Homerton area. There was a big fight in a pub, with everything in it being smashed – multiple casualties with various head and facial injuries from flying bottles and broken glass. We were first on scene, and I needed to call up to let Control know that at least another 3 ambulances were needed. At least it gave me a chance to practise my ‘5-second triage’ skills. None of the drunks there were particularly aggressive, but there was a ton of police there pulling me from one casualty to another around the pub, and even 300 yards up the street. This was just a taste of what was to come as another pub was attacked and it basically overloaded our resources. It got so busy that our Duty Officer was transporting severe asthmatic attacks in his car (and he doesn’t carry much more than a defibrillator and oxygen) and Control was holding 35 calls across the area. That is, 35 calls at 3 o’clock in the morning. That’ll teach me to wonder if it will be busy in a previous post.

Tomorrow England play their first ‘Euro 2004’ match – Alcohol + Patriotism + Recent History (we are playing the French) + Me Working = Recipe for Disaster

Watch this space …

I never got a complaint from that job, although for some time I was holding my breath about it.

Kick Off

Well it looks like I was right, the nice weather with people in the pubs from an early hour, coupled with England losing 2–1 in the football, has led to what can, in best tabloid fashion, be described as ‘an orgy of violence’.

It started out with a couple of ‘glassings’, which we have been getting over our vehicle computer screens as ‘stabbing to the head’ for some reason.

A couple more assaults, including one who was set upon by a number of drunks who were intent on stealing his car. Luckily he was not too badly injured – more shook up. Other crews were ‘blueing’ in a number of assaults, including at least one stab victim.

The police were running from call to call, and once more there are not enough ambulances to deal with the large number of calls we have been receiving. Our Duty Officer has been telling crews that we should be wearing our stab-vests constantly – but he isn’t the one who has to lug a 20-stone unconscious patient down 4 flights of stairs in this heat …

Good job I’m not searching for a quiet life.

I am, however, off to bed now.

Only One Stabbing

For the first night in ages it has been reasonably quiet on the streets of East London – only one stabbing and that was to the patient’s arse …

However, while adults are no doubt nursing hangovers the children are out causing mischief. The first two calls we got yesterday were to kids (8 and 10 years old) who had been hit by cars. The first was a ‘classic’: child running out towards an ice-cream van. He was alright apart from a broken right ankle. No sooner than he was safely ensconced in hospital than we find ourselves dealing with a child who has run out in front of a car (in the absence of an ice-cream van) and has broken his left ankle.

Tie in a hyperventilating adult, a 14-year-old with hay-fever and a drunken Colles’ fracture and you have a pretty good night.

We had one serious job, someone who had a CVA (a CVA is a ‘stroke’) on a train. The CVA wasn’t so much the problem as the extrication of the patient, who couldn’t move, and yet was combative with his unaffected side. To start off, the space between the seats on the train was not large enough to allow our carry-chair to pass. The man was large and heavy so we basically had to manhandle him (in a very undignified manner) through some connecting doors and out onto the platform. The train station has a big flight of stairs towards street-level and only one lift, and the lift was not on the platform we were on. It would have been unsafe to carry this man up the stairs because of his weight and combativeness. In a rare spark of genius I realised that if we waited for a district line train we could carry him through the train onto the other platform. We ‘blued’ him into hospital as his pulse-rate was 40 (should be 60–100).

When I went to see the patient later in hospital he had started to regain his speech and wasn’t confused. He was about to go for a CT scan so, with a bit of luck, he might make a good recovery …

This is just another part of the job that I like – that sometimes I have to out-think problems. I can’t see me doing this in an office job.

Good Shots

There is something that I’ve learned over many years of health-care work. When you are lifting little old ladies with senile dementia, they will sometimes grab you by the testicles.

And squeeze …

This hurts.

I swear, the greater the degree of dementia, the greater the accuracy and the stronger the grip.

And for the love of all that is holy …

Don’t drop them.

That hurts even more …

Ethnic Dress

When I went to the Clap Clinic for my HIV test, I was referred to a ‘Health Adviser’, which is a new name for Counsellor. I am, as regular readers may appreciate, a fairly simple, pragmatic person: within hours of my HIV exposure I was aware of transmission rates, odds of infection and the rates of death caused by electrocution (1 in 5 000) and shooting in America (1 in 2 500). So, to be honest, counselling was the last thing I needed.

I did a counselling course when I was a nurse, and it did nothing to disabuse me of the notion that all counsellors are hippies who consider themselves ‘worthy’.

She asked me a load of questions about how I would cope if I were to be found HIV positive (answer: get over it), and cautioned me not to tell anyone I was testing, unless I was happy for them to know the result (answer: the whole world could know – if they read this site). There was some other stuff that is just too dull for words, and definitely too dull to read.

The thing that amused me the most, however, was not that the ‘Advice Room’ had the only comfy chairs in the place but that the counsellor was wearing a sari (the Indian dress). In and of itself not unusual, except that the woman wearing it was ‘whiter’ than me.

I’m well used to ‘white’ women wearing various Muslim dresses – it’s a religion after all – but as far as I’m aware a sari is a cultural thing. I’m guessing that in her ‘equal-opportunities, worthy, multicultural’ world that she is proving how non-racist she is. This is handy because to be honest out of the 20 or more people at the clinic I was in a race/culture minority of one. Not a problem, I know Newham well … it’s very diverse, but I wonder if Asian people would be impressed or nonplussed by her wearing a traditional Indian dress?

Maybe I should start wearing nothing but a Papuan penis sheath?

The HIV test result should be received by the 28th …

I’ve tried as hard as possible to make this sound as non-racist as possible – at no point have I meant to cause offence. I hate no ‘race’ more than another – I hate them all.

‘I hate them all’ – a philosophy to live by.