Acts of God

Four emergency calls, one green2, 2 conveyed and 3 ambulances required.

This is what fell on a young woman from about 12 feet as she went to work in Oxford Street.

It missed her head only because she put her hands up in time and stood away quickly enough to avoid serious injury. When I got there the solo motorbike paramedic was attending and she was already sitting up, talking to him. She was very shaken, as you can imagine, but nonetheless virtually unscathed. She went to hospital to be checked out. She had back pain (non-cervical) in the area where the sign had landed on her but otherwise she was ok. Lucky her.

Later I was called to a woman who had fallen down about 20 steps in an underground station. The call had come in describing 'serious bleeding' from a head injury but when I got there I could see that this wasn't the case. For a completely separate reason the London Fire Brigade (LFB) were also on scene and when I approached and saw their trucks parked outside, beacons flashing, I thought I might be entering a major incident. It just so happens that the lady slipped and fell down the stairs just as the evacuation alarm was sounding! No bombs went off and we weren't burned to death while I was there so I am assuming it was all a false alarm.

She had a cut above her eye and the eye was beginning to swell. I dressed the wound, did all my usual ABCD checks and waited for an ambulance. Communications this far down are non-existent for me, nothing has been done since 7/7 about our ability to send for help from underground (and in some places, overground). I had to rely on the underground staff and the attending Police Community Support Officer (CPSO) using radios to get a message to my Control. When I got a reply I was told that there were no ambulances available and no ETA given to expect one.

Initiative time. I had fully assessed her and had spent 20 minutes getting to know her life story. She had heard most of my worst jokes and now it was time to move. She was happy to get up, with support, and walk up to street level and I was happy to get her out of there. I asked the CPSO to call my Control and tell them to cancel any ambulance they might be sending now and that I was taking her myself.

We walked her all the way up to street level without incident and as we reached the top, we heard an ambulance siren. Control had sent one anyway. Communications gone awry. It turns out the crew were told to get a move on because it was a dire emergency. Not really. She had a dressing on her head and was smiling and joking with us all the way up the stairs. My jokes were the only dire things of note. That crew could and should have been sent to something more worth their while, never mind the risk they may have taken on blue lights through heavy traffic to get there. Still, I'm not here to moan - just making a point.

Then it was the turn of the mad, foreign and drunk people of London. I arrived on scene expecting an unconscious man who had been hit by a car; that was the call description anyway. My motorcyle colleague was there ahead of me and I assisted where I could. Truth is the patient was out of his head on something - alcohol and possibly something else. He had strolled across the road while traffic was moving, not being hit on his first crossing by sheer luck, only to walk head-first into a van that was travelling along the road when he crossed onto the next section. What an idiot. The van driver was really concerned about him. He felt guilty. Meanwhile, the drunk and barely injured Polish man jibbered about the mark on his face left by the van. He stopped making sense when the police arrived but was happy to talk a little about his experience when anyone in green was with him.

He went to hospital for a check-up but I think they probably found him disagreeable and chucked him out for being disorderly at some point.

Oh, as an aside, I am placing little polls on the blog every now and then. I would like you to participate in the one I have here now because it will give me an idea of the reader number. You can only vote once and, although the map shows where the votes come from, it doesn't actually identify your house - so don't worry!

My last notable call of the day was for a middle-aged lady who had slipped on cobbles, fallen and broken her wrist, probably in more than one place from what I saw. It was very badly out of line and I think both the radius and ulna were affected. She was in a LOT of pain. She got entonox and then morphine and plenty of TLC and some of my best crap jokes. She must have liked all that because she still had a sense of humour by the time I got her to hospital, where she tried to faint, thus ruining the whole plan.

Be safe.