Today was overtime. I do it occasionally, not often but sometimes. The staff situation is becoming very bad, we are always missing at least one ambulance because of staff shortages. I know the reason why but whether anyone will do anything about it I don't know

As a service we are probably not that understaffed but the staff we have are either still in training, trainees (who need supervising), ECA's (who need supervising). So those people who are on relief are messed around so much by the resources department that when they get the (occasional) day off they dont want to work. And who can blame them. Those people who have a rota line don't want to do overtime because it aint worth it. 

Anyway I, like a fool, thought I would work. However the person I was due to work with decided that she didn't want to do any overtime. So I crewed up with the welsh bird who was on one of the responce cars.

Another busy day, which is becoming the norm. Falls etc early on. Then to a lady who had arrived from Gambia 3 days earlier.

She didn't speak English, which made life a bit complicated. But we managed to get a history out of her

We arrived to find her hyperventilating like a pro. Talking to Her through her son we got her calmed down and feeling a little bit better. Now apparently she had had a heart attack 3 months before, she also had high blood pressure and was diabetic. She had stopped taking all her medication for some reason and now didn't feel well.

Her blood pressure was through the roof as was her blood sugar. That was why she didn't feel well. On the plus side of the equation her heart was ok.

Her son's GP wouldn't take her on as a patient so she was in a foreign country for the best part of a year with no medical care at all. Hospital was the only answer really.

Then into the afternoon and a trip to the building site that used to be the second big hospital in the town. One of the workers had fallen down a hole and twisted his ankle. So there we were in the shell of Tesco's, two hundred yards from my back garden pulling a smelly sock  off a builders foot.

Glamour, interesting places. This job has it all.

That sounds a bit appocalyptic doesn't it? Oh well.

Another busy day. I don't know why but on one of our ( rather long) visits to casualty today at least 80% of the patients had collapsed for one reason or another.

A personal first for me today. A job in a crematorium. An old man had travelled down from the midlands and got lost on our roads. He was travelling down to attend the funeral of a friend. This all caused lots of stress. Add to this that he had a heart problem, breathing problems, kidney problems and liver problems. Add also that he was finding it difficult to breath in church and he was taking lots of his GTN (which lowers blood pressure) and he fainted.

We got him lieing down and his legs in the air and on oxygen and he started to feel a lot better.

Off to hospital though. Just to be on the safe side. 

Then to a nursing home to pick up an old lady who had a possible bleed on her brain. Now she was very stable although a bit sleepy. On the way out we were treated to the quite surreal sight of a group of ninety year olds boogieing down to Duran Duran and Queen. Absolutely marvellous.

About 3ish we got our first break of the day. Straight after we got sent to an 18 year old who had fallen out of the shower. She was absolutely fine although she had a fat lip. I told her that some women would pay vast amounts of money for a look like that but she wasn't impressed.

We didn't take her anywhere which, in retrospect, was a tactical error on our part. Because after clearing down control gave us another job which made us half an hour late finishing. Oh well, such is the nature of Ambulance work

I don't care because I've got TWO weeks off. Hooray   

When a person has a disagreement with a car the person is probably not going to win. The most that a person can really hope for is a draw.

Such was the case today. A young lady was crossing the road and met a car. Now whose fault it was I don't know and to be honest I don't really care. It's our job to pick up the pieces.

We were the third, actually thinking about it the fourth, vehicle on scene. Two cars and a PTS (Patient Transport) bus were there already. They were geting busy with somebody lieing in the road.

As we were the only emergency ambulance there, we would be the ones transporting to hospital. My crewmate went to see what was going on while I got our stretcher and spinal immobilising equipment out.

I followed. Much blood.

She had a good lump on her head and was complaining about pain in her pelvis and legs. We got her onto the spinal board. This was with cars whizzing past about two inchs from my feet. One of the paramedics who was also there shouted at the police to close the road. This they did.

Stretcher and ambulance. Oxygen and needle in the arm. Then the scissors come out.

The girl had been knocked out by the car but was now concious enough to complain about us hacking her clothes to bits. Unfortunately the rule is don't get in an accident in nice cloths, cos they won't survive. It's very important for us to do a proper, head to toe examination in a situation like this and that means seeing skin

Bye bye jeans and bye bye nice jacket.

There didn't seem to be a lot wrong but hospital was the place for her. A quick call to the hospital so they knew we were coming. We were very close however. Off we went.

Quite nice to push through the enormous traffic jam we had created and a strange feeling of almost pride when I saw quite how far the jam stretched.

Job done. One more to go and then two weeks off     

P.S. A pateint escort on the PTS bus turned out to be a nurse from the local hospital where we had done a cardiac arrest a few weeks ago. I got greeted with, "Not you again". 

Nice!!  

Very very very busy. We started at at 6.30 am and walking into the crewroom we were met by the slightly shellshocked expressions of people who had been awake and working all night and now were barely keeping their eyes open.
 
Twenty eight minutes to seven and we were out of the door and off to our first job

Seven hours later and we were back for a break (lunch break). 

There followed two jobs that I suppose are the two ends, the two extremes of what we do.

Straight after lunch we were off to a cardiac arrest at the local sports centre. A man, with a quite extensive cardiac history, was working out at the gym.

To put it bluntly, it killed him.

We were second on scene, the boss was there already and the staff were performing (really quite good) CPR.

It's quite strange walking into this sort of situation. Some people were still excersing but an awful lot of people were just standing around watching, but trying not to. It was all very quiet.

Anyway, we got busy. A tube was put down his throat, the defib was connected and a needle was put into his arm so we could give him drugs. All while trying to avoid his vomit on the floor

He was a fighter, his heart was in a rythmn called Ventricular Fibrillation. This meant that it was beating so fast that no blood was being pumped round his body. More of a twitch than a beat.

This also meant that we could shock him, to try and get him into a normal rhythmn. It wasn't happening. We shocked him and filled him with drugs.

Then what we all knew was going to happen, happened. His heart stopped completely.

By this time we were on the ambulance so we ran him to hospital. The hospital stopped working on him very quickly afterward and pronounced him dead.

All that was left for us afterwards was to clear up. All that was left for him was for his family to try and come to grips with what had happened.

We cleared up, ran the boss back to her car and told The Sesame Street Gang that we were ready for another job.

Off to a little village outside town for a woman that wasn't able to pee. We bimbled off, it was a doctors urgent admission so we weren't required to have blue lights and sirens.

We arrived and were met by the ladies son. She was upstairs. The doctor had put a catheter in her to try and help her pee. She was in a lot of discomfort as you can imagine. Unfortunately all that came out was blood. So it was a bit more complicated than just retention of urine. Her blood pressure was fine so I wasn't concerned that she was going to do anything silly like die.

She tried to walk down stairs but couldn't mannage it. We got our carry chair and got her onto it to take her downstairs.

She told us she weighed less than 12 stone.

Nahh!!

Incident free we got her to hospital and handed her over to the staff.

Two different jobs, two different people. Their only link is us.     

First job this morning was to a collapse in the street. Now these are something or nothing. Going by the area where it had happened we were betting on the latter.

More information began to filter through. "Chest pains", so this made it an "A" category call. We hotfooted it to the scene. One of our supervisors was also going from base, in a car.

He got there first. We arrived to find him kneeling by the patient, or rather squatting, as his knees aren't too good. There was the usual cadre of bystanders watching from  a distance.

He  came over to us and explained what he had found so far (he hadn't been there long). 

"He says he's been beaten up and now his heart has exploded", he said

Raised eyebrows all round.

Ok, we got him on the ambulance, away from the bystanders. He started talking and told us a tale which we were starting to find a bit familier.

A colleague had picked him up yesterday, with the same problem.

The smell of alchohol was begining to make our eyes water so we decided to take him to hospital. As is so often the case not because he was physically unwell but because he wasn't safe to leave on the street. And on a purely selfish level we'd only get called again.

No poles today

Quite busy today. Again nothing to really write about.

To finish the day off, as is becoming commonplace these days:

"Male collapsed in street. Very large and bald. Caller too scared to approach"

Deep sigh from both of us. We knew exactly what this was going to be.

We found the (actually quite small) man. He was lieing in the long grass by the side of a main road. He had made himself a little nest and actually looked quite comfortable.  Bottles and cans of  White Lightning surrounded his bed.

Meanwhile back at the ambulance, I had forgotten to put the handbrake on. We were on a bit of an incline. Oops!

Out of the corner of my eye I saw it  start to move off down the road.

I moved quite quick.

Ever jumped into a moving ambulance? I have. Its not easy. Handbrake on and disaster avoided. Funny looks from bystanders.

Back to our collapsed person.

We shook him awake and tried to explain that he couldn't sleep there. He was quite keen on staying there. We said we'd get the police and he said no

We said yes and then he said he would go home.

We did the same