A night on the town

Before the hit and run incident I had been working my way through a busy and fairly routine shift. It started with a call to a flat in which a young woman was fitting. She wasn't epileptic and she certainly didn't look like she was having an epileptic episode. Most of the spasm jerking her body was in her diaphragm and larynx - she was hyperventilating as a result and looked like she was having the world's worst panic attack.

I gave her Oxygen and a calm voice (I can do calm voices, really) but it didn't make much difference. I wasn't even going to consider drugs because this was an undiagnosed and still unknown problem so it was more Oxygen and more TLC until the ambulance crew arrived.

Pretty soon the woman was being bombarded with calming voices and seemed to be responding a little. She wasn't in any critical trouble but it must have been very tiring doing what she was doing on that kitchen floor. Her boyfriend was with her and told us they had been arguing earlier and that she had just fallen down like this soon after.

I checked her blood sugar and it was a little low, certainly lower than normal (I discussed low blood glucose sensitivity in an entry last year). We gave her a little ice cream, which was allowed to melt. It brought her BM up to normal but her condition barely changed so the crew carefully walked her to the ambulance where she checked more thoroughly. I had taken her temperature earlier too and it was a little high. I wondered if she had an infection, possibly a UTI, triggering a dystonic reaction. There was also the possibility of a psychiatric link.

As I sat in the car completing my paperwork, a plain clothes police officer flashed his warrant card at me and asked if everything was alright. He had heard the couple arguing earlier and now that we were on scene was concerned that it had escalated. I assured him that it hadn't and he moved along because there was nothing to see here.

FRED, our electronic despatch system, was going mad tonight. I heard at least five FRU's call in to complain about the distance they were expected to travel (up to 8 miles) for calls, knowing full well they would never make it in 8 minutes.

I drove through Parliament Square to a call and there was a big anti-war rally going on. Lots of police around. Somehow it didn't make me feel any safer.

Then a call to a DIB, which turned out to be a woman who felt she couldn't breathe, burped and then felt better. It had happened before to her. You and the rest of us, I thought. An ambulance and a car for that little emergency. Still, she pays her taxes I suppose. After that call I was asked to attend a chest pain but when I got there I went to the wrong flat (the arriving crew knew the patient and I watched them go to the other side of the building in a confident manner). Eventually I caught up and walked in to a fag-smoking frequent flyer who was explaining his predicament to the paramedic who knew him better than I did. I wasn't required so off I went.

I sat on standy-by in Leicester Square for a short while and met a newly homeless person. A young man who had just been turfed out by his landlord. He was walking the Square with a little suitcase and little else. He asked me for a blanket and I gave him one of the new BIG size foil blankets I have in the car. I give these out whenever I see someone homeless and cold. I'm sure my bosses won't complain. If they do, I'll pay for them myself.

I advised the homeless man to stick to well lit areas and try to establish a patch to sleep in where somebody else won't object. The risk of a beating is high if you encroach on someone else's sleeping territory. He thanked me and shuffled off, looking for shelter.

Some friends aren't worth having. I attended a petite young girl (I think she was a dancer), who had been abondoned unconscious in a pub toilet by her mates. She looked about 13 years old, although her ID said otherwise. She wouldn't respond at all and had clearly consumed enough alcohol to accomplish her mission, if her mission was to knock herself out. When the crew arrived we lifted her to her feet and walked/dragged her out to a place of safety - the ambulance, thence (I like that word :-)) to another place of safety - the hospital.

The MDT led me astray again tonight. I went to the location indicated only to find that it wasn't near the actual location. I called it in and was sent further up the road to be met by a waving woman (we call people who wave at us windmills, especially if they use both arms). She was very Irish and very loud. Even I couldn't work my way through the accent in front of the words she used. I asked her to repeat everything three times - nothing to do with my deafness!

Her husband had been coughing up blood and I quickly discovered why. He had been diagnosed with a chest infection two weeks earlier, had been given the appropriate antibiotics and had decided he didn't need them after all. His condition had deteriorated while the remedy stared at him from its home in its little box on the bedside table. He preferred to smoke than take tablets.

Just before my night became a nightmare, I watched as a drunken female harrassed my friend and his neighbour as they slept, or tried to sleep, in the cinema doorway. I walked up to her and she shooed herself away. Good girl. Then an old man walked past me with a bright pink bag from which a stuffed rabbit protruded, it's head mocking me and its floppy ears reminding me that I was getting tired. If I sat on stand-by long enough I think I would see too much weird stuff and would turn.

Be safe.