Том Рейнолдс – The Complete Blood, Sweat and Tea (страница 17)
I think it’s incredibly rude to think that your journey is more important than that of an emergency ambulance.
Don’t you?
I’m off to work now to drive around those selfsame streets … wish me luck, and if you see me in your rear view mirror, please get out of the way by pulling over and stopping on the left of the road.
Some unusual jobs today, the first call was to a concrete company (which will remain nameless – no doubt they have better lawyers than I). We were told to meet with the Police and Fire Service at an RVP (meeting point). It turns out that some animal liberation types have taken offence to this company (rumour being they are supplying concrete to a new animal testing laboratory) and have sent some deactivated incendiary devices to various branches in order to scare them. Today, in three of the offices across London, some ‘suspicious packages’ had turned up and we were being sent to cover the defusing of one of these devices. Two ambulances, one Duty Officer, three fire engines and countless police were there, standing around the now evacuated offices.
Our Duty Officer started allocating ‘Major Incident’ roles to everyone. I don’t think he was best pleased when I asked him why, when major incidents are designed to deal with multiple casualties, we needed to play that game when the only person in any danger in the now deserted office was the bomb disposal officer.
He sent me to arrange the parking of the emergency vehicles. We were soon stood down, however, when it was discovered that the ‘device’ was actually a packet of envelopes.
The next call was to two brothers who had fought over possession of a bong, with one brother trying to sell it to a third brother. Both we and the police were sent; when we got there both brothers had calmed down and there were no serious injuries. One policeman was confused about what a bong was used for, until I explained that it was ‘drug paraphernalia’. One of the brothers told the policeman that he was selling it because he didn’t use it – he much preferred smoking his cannabis in a spliff.
Luckily for him the policeman ignored this massive blunder (and me collapsing in tears of laughter at this idiot essentially confessing his drug habits).
Our next interesting job was to a man in Docklands who had a head injury caused by trying to avoid an attacking seagull. It turns out that there is a seagull living there who likes to dive-bomb people passing by. This man had ducked the avian attack, then tripped and fell flat on his face, knocking himself out. He had only minor facial injuries, but the loss of consciousness will mean a short stay in hospital being watched. My old crewmate suggested that he sell his story to the newspapers.
The rest of our jobs were rather boring after this early excitement.
One of the things that will constantly amaze me is that some people will drop dead at the drop of a hat (so to speak), while others will survive injuries that would kill us mere mortals.
Today was a case in point: we got called to a 39-year-old female who’d been hit on the head by a brick that had fallen seven floors. We turned up at the location fully expecting to see someone with less of their brains inside their head than would be considered healthy. Instead, the woman was sitting in a chair (having had a C-spine collar applied) with her head supported by a BASICS doctor (a doctor who volunteers to respond to calls in the community).
This woman, who should have been dead, had a 1-inch cut on the top of her head.
… And that was it.
The brick had hit her on the head, then had hit the floor with such force that it had shattered. Yet, here she was with no injury other than complaining of the cut being painful. There was no loss of consciousness, but we treated her as if she had a neck injury, purely because of the ‘mechanism of injury’. It’s been a while since I’ve had to do a ‘standing take-down’ (where you get a standing patient onto a spinal board by placing it against their back and laying it flat with them on it) but it all went smoothly, the doctor travelled with us and was a pleasure to work with.
Although she was 39 the woman actually looked like she was in her early twenties – perhaps she has some witchy super powers? Either way she was discharged later in the day.
She was exceptionally lucky – if you can call getting beaned by a brick ‘lucky’.
I discovered yet another reason to avoid alcohol, namely that it can mask the symptoms of otherwise obvious illnesses and injuries.
We got called to a 60-year-old man who had fallen in the street: as it was 2 a.m. we could guess that alcohol was involved. When we arrived on scene the patient was standing against a wall very much the worse for drink. Admitting he was an alcoholic he told us that he had tripped over and now his right leg hurt. While he was standing there I gave him a quick examination, he had no bony tenderness and was able to bear his weight on his leg. He could feel his toes wriggling in his shoe and there was no obvious deformity to the leg. We helped him walk the few steps to the ambulance, but he was unable to manage the stairs at the back of the ambulance so we put him in our carry-chair and lifted him into the ambulance. Further examination showed little else of note; his pulse was a tad on the high side but otherwise his blood pressure and other observations were well within normal limits.
We transported him to hospital, where the nurse gave him a quick examination, essentially repeating the examination I’d given him in the field, and she sent him out to the waiting room.
When we returned to the hospital a little later we were told that he had a fractured neck of femur – essentially he’d broken his hip.
He was so drunk that he felt little pain, and for various reasons none of the normal signs of a broken hip were present. Luckily, I’d documented that I’d examined for the possibility of this type of fracture and found negative signs all the way along, so should he complain (which I doubt he would do) both I and the admitting nurse would be covered.
So … don’t drink, or you may find yourself walking around on a broken leg.
Now I’m off to sleep. Two very long night shifts and I’m ready to collapse.
It’s one of the main differences between A&E nursing and ambulance work – in an A&E department you have good lights, can undress the patient and can put them on an examination table. In ambulance work you can find yourself down dark, unlit streets, in the rain and with the patient lodged under a car. I did feel a little bad about this patient, mind you …
Have you noticed how much I talk about being tired or needing sleep? The benefits of shift work …
First off, I’m bloody knackered, frazzled, chin-strapped, and generally tired. If I ramble just poke me in the ribs with a stick.
Today was both bloody awful and rather good fun, which despite sounding like the ramblings of a madman is a perfectly sane way to describe today, although I’ll be glad for it to be over.
The day started badly: I woke 3 minutes before my alarm was due to go off so I turned it off and woke for the second time 10 minutes before my shift was about to begin. I didn’t get much sleep last night so I suspect my body overruled my brain to give me an extra 50 minutes of sleep.
Luckily, when I wake up with an adrenaline jolt like that I can get washed, dressed and speed through the streets of Newham like an Olympic sprinter on methamphetamine.
Turning up at the station I found out that my regular crewmate was ill, and instead a ‘Team Leader’ was being sent to work with me. Team Leaders are on the lowest rung of management: they are the people who are supposed to keep the troops in trim, and so spend considerable time moaning about the speed at which we get to jobs, and the poor quality of our paperwork. I’m of the belief that if management don’t know about me, I can’t get in any trouble, so working with a new Team Leader was something I was less than happy with.
I had barely gotten to say hello to ‘Team Leader’ than we got our first call of the day, a ‘Suspended’ (cardiac arrest) a couple of miles from station. Manoeuvring a big yellow taxi through rush-hour traffic is no fun at the best of times, but as I was driving I gave it my best shot – we got to the scene shortly after our First Responder who was already bagging and giving CPR to an obese woman in her eighties. As we were in one of the new yellow ambulances I lowered the tail lift, got the trolley out and nearly ruptured myself lifting the patient onto the trolley bed. Rolling her out to the street, we got her on the tail lift and raising it, rolled her into the back of the ambulance. All that was left was for me to raise the tail lift the rest of the way and rush to hospital.