The Complete Blood, Sweat and Tea

Driving back from the last job we saw four workmen chasing another man who ducked into the local mosque. We ignored this until we got a call to the area the men had run from – apparently a man had been assaulted with a ‘Car-lock’. HEMS (our emergency helicopter service) had been activated and were going to make their way to the scene. When we did a quick U-turn and rolled up to the scene it soon became obvious that HEMS was not needed so we cancelled them. The man had been clamping an illegally parked car when the owner and his wife returned. The car owner then pulled a large aerosol can from his boot and hit our patient around the back of the neck, causing a short period of unconsciousness. His wife had also put up a fight, but the owner of the car had run (into the aforementioned mosque) leaving his wife behind. (What a gent!) At one point we thought it was going to turn into a riot as 30 youths from the mosque were adamant that the four workmen doing the chasing weren’t going to set foot in the mosque.

Again, we had to collar and board him, and lift him onto our stretcher, which wasn’t much fun as the man weighed at least 20 stone. Subsequent treatment at hospital showed no serious injuries.

Final job (after having to get our nice, new, shiny ambulance fixed – a problem with the side-door) was a 60-year-old female collapsed at a bus station with slurred speech and ‘not drunk’. Remember that, ‘not drunk’, it’s important.

What could it be? Could it be a stroke? Could it be hypoglycaemia? Could it be cardiac related? So we turned up to find ‘Mary’ having fallen over, smelling strongly of alcohol and with a 5/6ths empty bottle of whisky in her purse. (My crewmate had to tell me about the smell of alcohol, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m pretty much unable to smell it myself.)

‘Not drunk’ – why did the callmaker say that? It’s bloody obvious she was pissed as a fart. I’d guess it was the bus station staff who wanted her gone and were afraid we wouldn’t turn up if we knew she was drunk. Still, it was an easy last job of the shift, even if she did keep grabbing at my balls and kissing my (thankfully) gloved hand.

This counts as a good day.

Now I’m off for some endorphin-releasing Bailey’s ice-cream.

Can you tell I was deliriously happy to be back at work?

These Boots …

These Boots …

Have walked along train tracks

Have been washed in the blood of murder victims

Have kicked in doors to get to unconscious women

Have stepped in more urine, in more tower blocks, than I’d care to think about

Have kept my feet warm and comfortable on long nights

Have been allowed into a mosque

Have climbed fences to reach dead bodies

Have run across football fields to try to save a life, and failed

Have been spat on, vomited on and shat on

Have stood in ‘remains’

Have tried to find purchase while walking backward down narrow stairs

Have defended me from drunks and druggies

Have been run over by a 22-stone trolley

Have been stared at by a daughter when I was telling her her mother had died

For Pixeldiva who denies she has a shoe fetish.

Gamma GT

I went to Occupational Health today – it seems that the last time they checked my blood (because of being on PEP) my liver enzymes were a bit elevated. Most significantly my gamma-GT (gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase) was at 164 (it should be between 0 and 55). PEP is well known as having effects on the liver, so this isn’t completely unexpected.

More blood was taken today to check that the enzymes have returned to normal. The nurse was very concerned that I was alright in having my blood drawn, and that I wouldn’t faint. She was asking me this while I’m sitting opposite her in full uniform …

The nurse was also a bit surprised that I’d had aural hallucinations and looked at me as if she thought I was turning schizophrenic – I assured her that the ‘voices’ were now leaving me alone and that it wasn’t a problem. She’d never heard of this symptom before, so at least I entertained someone today.

Deaf Old Women

Nobby is working tonight from our main station. He is always a good laugh and always seems to have a joke whenever he works. Tonight I met him outside the hospital and he told me about a deaf old woman he had just brought in.

It was raining as he started to wheel her out her house so he made the comment ‘It’s raining, you picked a fine time to be ill’.

‘Eh?’ was the reply.

‘The rain … it mucks up my hair’.

‘Eh?’

‘MY HAIR!’

With this she took a long hard look at Nobby’s very short, and very receding hair and asked him, ‘Is it because of cancer?’

It is now 3 a.m. and already every other patient we have picked up has been drinking – from the 38-year-old male having a panic attack, who didn’t want to talk to us, to the 50-year-old female who slipped on some steps coming out from the pub and cut her head. This has so far ended with our last call being one of our smelly ‘frequent flyers’, who thankfully decided not to hang around and wait for us to turn up.

Then there was the police car that managed to accidentally force another car into someone’s garden – one of those jobs where every passing car slows down to stare. Thankfully, there were no injuries, apart from the house-owner’s disturbed sleep. (At least I assume it was the owner – he was dressed in no shoes and a dressing gown.)

With a bit of luck people are now wrapped up nice and snug in bed – away from the rain – and the only calls we will get will be the 5 a.m. ‘I’m in labour’ call that will result in a baby around 11 a.m. (long after I’m in bed).

Hand Over Mouth

No sooner do I hope for a quiet hour or two than the activation phone goes; it’s sending us 200 yards up the road to a ‘Collapsed Male’. We are met by two police officers who tell us that the patient was walking along the street, saw the policemen and then collapsed.

We get to the patient and my crewmate can’t smell any alcohol on him, but he is coughing and spluttering like an Oscar winner. He complains of a headache, coughing, leg pain, back pain and an inability to walk. Other than that he is refusing to talk to us. Examination is normal and the patient is obviously play-acting.

He then does one of the things that I really hate (given the prevalence of tuberculosis in Newham); he coughs all over us and the vehicle without putting his hand over his mouth. Then he starts to spit on the floor of the ambulance, again something I take a dim view of – but I’m driving so I leave it to my crewmate to sort out.

Forty seconds later and we pull up outside the hospital, and our patient decides to roll around the floor. By now our patience is wearing thin, so we haul him up and throw him in a wheelchair.

In the hospital he refuses to speak to the nurses, says he cannot stand and doesn’t acknowledge any requests. We leave him there and within 30 seconds are back on station.

While at the hospital I indulged in a little bit of teaching. The nurse who was assessing our patient was trying to check his pupil response (by shining a light in each eye and making sure that it reacts to light) but the eyes don’t appear to be reacting. I then suggest turning off the ceiling light that the patient is lying on his back staring at.

I still have patients who insist on coughing without putting their hand over their mouth. I’ve given up asking them to stop – instead I just give them oxygen, via a nice tightly fitting oxygen mask. I got a lot of people coming to this post searching for ‘Hand over mouth’. I swear I don’t know why.

Essential, Not Emergency

One of the bizarre things about the Ambulance Service is that, in the eyes of the government, we are an ‘essential’ service but not an ‘emergency’ service. We are ‘essential’ because the emergency services (Police, Fire Brigade and Coastguard) are run by the Home Office but Ambulance Services across the country are run by NHS Trusts, and as such do not have access to the same resources as the true ‘emergency’ services. The distinction is often slight, but can sometimes have quite important considerations for our safety.