I wasn't supposed to be working last night but somebody asked me to swap a night with them and as I was feeling benevolent, I did.

I wasn't working with my usual crewmate but with somebody else who I haven't worked with for quite a while.

Anyway the night started badly. Started at seven o'clock and we were straight out of the door. To a lady whose blood pressure was in her boots, for no obvious reason that we could see. Now if it was just a faint then the pressure would come up slowly by itself. But it didn't. So oxygen and lieing flat was the order of the day. She didn't want to go to hospital but we couldn't leave her as she was so off she went.

Then back to base and a stange crewroom conversation about very hot chile flavour crisps. The Johnny Cash song "Ring of Fire" featured as well, for reasons that are obvious if you think about it.

Anyway, a few jobs went by, a hyperventilating 70 year old, a small child that didn't have a lot wrong with it and an old chap that had fallen over and headbutted a glass door. He wasn't badly hurt at all. The door had come off second best. He was a bit wobly when we got him onto his feet which he put down to his arthritis. The smell coming from his glass and the three bottles of poteen in his kitchen told us that the arthritis was coming in shots.

Then to a job which usually means either it will be mega serious or entirely the opposite.
 
"Unknown"

As we got closer to the address more information reached us.

It wasn't serious. Painful? Yes. Serious? No.

He'd got an abcess on or in his bum.

For some reason Johnny Cash came to mind. The song echoing through my mind.

"Burn, burn, burn, that ring of fire"

We got the chap to hospital and when we had parked up I heard my crewmate humming it as well. We weren't looking at each other because I think we would have both lost the plot. This is not considered good patient care

Then after we had dropped him off we fell asleep in a carpark and then home 

I am a quarter of the way through 2 weeks off. Decorating and relaxing.

Very nice. Well, the relaxing bit is anyway.

So, I've just watched Casino Royale. Very good film.

This is where I show my obsessive Geek credentials.

Two things occur:

To see what I'm talking about highlight the following couple of paragraphs. If you haven't seen the film and don't want to know any of the details of the film.....don't

There is a scene where 007 is recuperating in an Italian villa after having had seven shades beaten out of him by the bad guys. I am pretty sure that Anikin Skywalker and Queen Amidala got married there a few years ago. (The Star Wars films)

There is another scene where he gets poisoned by the bad guys and the poison makes his heart speed up. Now according to the script he goes into a heart rythm called Ventricular Tachycardia. He staggers out to his car, where he happens to have a defib (do Aston Martins have these as standard?), and prepares to shock himself back into a normal rhythm. All well and good, I wouldn't want to do it (it hurts) but still. Now, he passes out and, going  by the sound the defib is making, his heart stops. His girlfriend happens by and shocks him and his heart restarts.

No, no, no, no, no.

I've said it before I know. A defib stops the heart, allowing it to restart in a normal rhythm. If the heart has stopped then a defib won't do nuffink. It certainly won't let you leap up and finish a card game.
 
Still its a minor quibble with what is a very good film. Back to the paint brush.

I was going to post yesterday but I got one of my crippiling tension headaches last night, so I had a fistfull of codeine and fell asleep.

Anyway, Gravity has been a problem again over the last few days. It seems to have been age specific as well. Yesterday it was old people today young children.

We got called to a lady who had been found collapsed at the bottom of the stairs. When we got there she was in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, completely unconsious. Looking at the area it seemed that she had fallen out of her stairlift chair which was parked halfway up the stairs. 

How? Why? I have no idea. We thought it was difficult if not impossible to fall out of these things. But she had obviously done it.

Checking her over she had a nasty bruise on her head and this seemed to be the cause of her unconsiousness. She remained that way virtually untill we got to hospital when she ripped the Oxygen mask off

Then it was off to an old chap who lived in the middle of bedsitland. All the buildings on this particular road are quite magnificent four and five story victorian and edwardian houses. Real upstairs, downstairs buildings if you know what I mean. Most of the buildings and been divided into many little flats and bedsits and now housed a motley collection of drug addicts, drunks, Poles etc.

Except this one. He owned the whole house. It must have cost a lot when he bought it but god knows what it's worth now.

Anyway, I digress, His  carer had rung his doorbell and watched through the front door as he came downstairs to open the door. Then for some reason he had fallen over/through the bannister. It turns out he wasn't badley injured at all but by the smell of it had a nasty urine infection.

Then backing up a responder to a rather sad case. A 93 year old who had never had a days illness in her life. A neighbour had come round to take her to bingo and found her slumped in a chair. Her blood pressure was Sky-high and she wasn't responding at all. Her left side had lost all movement  and she was in a lot of distress. Whether that was because she knew what was going on or not was difficult to say. We needed to take her to hospital but it was almost certainly going to be a one way trip. We lifted her onto our carry chair but she refused to fold in the middle. I had to force her down gently so we could get her out. She was very "grabby" as well. We had to stop several times on the journey from her room to the ambulance to prize her fingers away from doors etc. that she had grabbed on the way past.

Then I had my headache.

Today there has been a couple of instances of gravity again. A young girl who had been hit in the stomach by a swing, she was a bit winded but was otherwise fine.

On the way to that job we went past a  junior 6 a side football tornement. I turned to my crewmate and said "We'll be back there soon"

Sure enough. Next job was a possibly broken leg. One of the players had been tackled by, it seems, everybody else. He had a lot of pain but was being very brave. He was being looked after by our station officer when we got there and she had sorted him out a treat. All we needed to do was take him to hospital for an X-ray

Oh yes. It's been raining on and off. Raining when we are getting a patient on and off the ambulance and bright sunshine when we're sat behind the windscreen.

God hates me

A nice late start today. It was light when I woke up, which was nice.

We got a different Ambulance today from the one we used yesterday. Turning the power on, it said "K-K-K caution, diesel fuel only".

Ahh. Hello again.

The morning went fairly quietly. A lady who was pooing a lot, a man who's daughter said his voice was slurry. I couldn't hear it but I'd never met him before.

Then lunch and then off to Oxford. We went to pick up the patient on the way (other wise there wasn't a lot of point going)

We got to the relevant house and very nice it was too. Down by the river it was.

In we went.

They were very posh. There was obviously a lot of money sloshing about there. After a while I started coming over all socialist. I thought about claiming the house on behalf of the workers. I didn't though, cos I think I would have been told off.
 

We met the patient and the first thing she said was "Am I going to a private hospital?"

Err, no.

She and her husband spent the next 5 or 6 minutes shouting at each other poshly. And we got her onto the Ambulance.

Now for what ever reason she was very repetetive. Asking the same questions time and time again. I was driving but it was sending my crewmate round the twist. You don't show it but I could tell what he was thinking.

Basically because he told me.

Got to the John Radcliffe hospital and they were full. No room at all so we had to wait. And wait. And wait.

And the lady kept saying, "Ask them when I can have a bed"

The nurses were all very busy and we knew that we would get a bed when there was one available . Asking them would just aggrevate them. So we didn't.

Eventually we got a bed and left her with the nurses and set off for home. The traffic was very heavy and we ended up with another late finish. Nevermind  

In the town where we work there are two shopping centres. One is upmarket with all the trendiest shops selling the latest stuff and with nice, trendy eateries. And one isn't.
 
It was the second one that we went to. To the ladies toilets where a woman had been found in a cubicle, Very very drunk. She had to go to hospital as she couldn't stand up.

Then to a private school to see an eleven year old boy. We were backing up the responder car on which was my ex-crewmate. She was on scene with this boy. His left forearm was curiously bowed and was obviously badly broken. She had given him some pain relief but it obviously was causing him pain. But he wasn't making a sound. He was coping really well. We got a vacuum splint round the arm and this supported it really well. When we got him to casualty the nurses where all over him. They get very maternal when kids are brought in.

They didn't get maternal over the next one though. A sixteen year old who was riding (someone elses) moped and hit the kerb. He was wearing a helmet, surprisingly, but he wasn't wearing any sort of protective clothing. When you are sliding across 15 feet of tarmac shorts don't really work very well at protecting anything.

As we were seeing to him groups of feral children kept gathering. I felt that I needed a firey torch to scare them off. I didn't have one so shouting had to do

It must have been very sore. There were several holes in his leg that went down to the bone, Scrapes all up his arms and cuts on both palms. We dressed them as best we could. We got him to casualty. The doctors reckon that he will need skin grafts so some painfull plastic surgery is on the cards.

Then.

"Shots fired"

Oohh!

As more information came through to us it turned out that a 16 year old had been shot in the leg with a shotgun firing pellets.

Why? I don't know. Drugs almost certainly had something to do with it.

However, having spent half an hour in his company I wanted to shoot him as he was a nasty piece of work. Yes, the wound was sore, it wasn't life threatening though. 

It was the first shooting I've done although my crewmate has done lots. Wasn't that exciting.