A two-way street

I wish the weather would make its mind up! I'm changing in and out of my jacket every ten minutes.

The tourists are flocking back and its getting busier out there. Manic even. I love the buzz of this city when its like this though. A nice atmosphere for work I think, even if working on the car means sitting on your own for long periods. I can listen to everyone around me happily clucking and chattering away as they go about their business or pleasure.

During the day I deal with all grades of call; green (non-emergency), amber and red. Obviously, as you know, these gradings don't always reflect the true nature of the call. A green2 can be a major emergency when you get there and a red1 can be a minor injury. The way the call is received, perceived and passed on is down to various factors: the caller's nationality, mental capacity, need for urgency, relative lack of common sense; the call-taker's ability to understand what is being said, their knowledge of terminology and spelling (!); the despatcher's experience and knowledge and his/her ability to communicate caution or otherwise to the crew.

Of course, I don't work in the EOC (Emergency Operations Centre) and so I may have made the whole thing sound simplistic but its how I envisage things (and I did spend a day there during my initial training - always a good idea). I have a healthy respect for them all down there and I get on very well with a few of them in particular. One or two will even bother to call me and discuss a job that is being sent. It means I don't bitch about how unfair they are being to me. If it's a distance I'll usually get a warning from them in person and a reason to go - not that I could refuse.

A number of EOC personnel read this diary and I hope they get a perspective from the other side as it were.

Explaining the EOC helps to explain my day. I got a call to a large department store for a male who could not feel his hands. That's it. No other explanation. I got there to discover that the young man had actually burned both his palms on a hot tray. He had minor contact burns and it was really nothing to worry about but the security staff had made the call and the details had been given is a very vague way. I mean, its a long way out to describe a couple of burned mittens as 'can't feel hands' over the phone when asked by the call-taker "what is the problem?"
You see what I mean? The call was given as an amber (if memory serves) and so an ambulance would normally be called as well as myself. That's a few more resources than are required for a first aid job. I cancelled the ambulance as soon as I saw the young man's poorly paws. Sometimes I feel my eyes rolling when I get to a call like this but it's part of the routine.

All morning I seemed to be the designated taxi service for the lost and the weary. I was called to a fast-food place to attend two young girls who claimed to have had their drink spiked the previous night and now 'could not move'. When I arrived they were slumped across the tables in this place as if they had become rag-dolls (remember Kevin the teenager?). The manager was not amused. One of them (the designated spokeswoman) told me that they had been with 'some bloke' and he had probably spiked their drink because they were feeling rough. I suggested two things to her:

1. Maybe they should be careful about making allegations unless they had proof.

2. Maybe the alcohol was making them feel rough.

The look of shock on this teenager's face was hilarious. I smiled and she decided I didn't know what planet I was on. After all, they had only had a few drinks each, according to the spokeswoman. I understand this as the common phrase used in such cases where either the effects of alcohol induce an inability to remember the first 5 drinks and drunks conveniently only remember the last 2 or 3, or the size of the 'few' drinks had been seriously underestimated, even though they had probably paid a tenner for each! That's a clue.

I did have a problem, however. These two weren't going to go away and leave me alone and they weren't fit to travel anywhere either. They were vulnerable, both being 17 (ish). I called control and spoke to my mate there who can authorise some of the decisions that I make. I used the 'place of safety' term, cancelled the ambulance (waste of resources) and took both of them home by request. I could have taken them to the local hospital but, again, I don't like wasting nursing staff time either and they just happened to live near the hospital so it was an easy decision. I logged my journey there, my arrival and the safe return of the two drunks girls to their block of flats. I watched them go inside and I left. Oh and I got them to sign my paperwork for good measure!

I am not paranoid about taking these little risks but I'm sure my colleagues would not approve if I didn't cover myself, which I believe I did. My safest option was to leave them where they were but that's just not nice. As a father myself, I wouldn't be happy to know that my child(ren) could have been taken home to safety but instead were left in the street because a uniformed public servant decided it wasn't worth the risk. Mind you, it did cross my mind that I would never have left my child(ren) to expose themselves to such harm overnight in the first place.

My next job was to a man who had collapsed on a park bench. It was raining hard when I arrived and the man claimed to be diabetic. He was very pale and so I carried out a BM in the rain. Tricky. His BM was normal, as were all his other obs. He then told me that he was prone to drop attacks and that this had just been another one and could I please take him home because he didn't want to go to hospital. He sounded very well rehearsed at this to me. His face was familiar too.

I called it in, cancelled the ambulance (after asking him three further times if this was his wish) and took him home. The address was a little out of my area of operation and when I got there he literally sprang out the door and took off. I asked control to flag the name and address in case he decided to use his next drop attack for a ride home again. That way, the crew can decide other courses of action for treatment, or not.

I got two jobs for the price of one at an underground station later on. The first was to an autistic man who had gone out for the night and got drunk and fell down, as you do. He was a lovely guy with a good sense of humour but he didn't have a clue where he was. Remember the guy on the bus last year? The one who was out on his own just to get away from his environment? He was doing the same. Same MO, different guy. I handed him over to the crew when they arrived - he wasn't fit to travel and needed to be safe somewhere.

The second patient was also in the vicinity and had been waiting for me to attend to her. She was being treated by other first responders who had arrived and been directed to her whilst I dealt with the autistic man. I was asked to give her pain relief because she had severe abdominal pain (gall bladder related). I went to her as soon as I could and delivered morphine as requested. This eased her pain enough so that she could be moved to the car and I took her and her husband to the hospital myself. I was down there (in the underground station) for about half an hour on those two jobs. I was hot and sweaty when I came up for air. Not pleasant.

An (?)asthmatic old lady who 'didn't like to fuss' and never went to the doctors or hospitals when she felt unwell had no choice this time. Her breathing was getting desperate and her sats were very low and falling as time went on. Her anxious family made the call because she refused to do so. I nebulised her and the crew arrived immediately and took over. She was treated with immense respect and gently taken to the ambulance. I have mentioned a few patients like this in the past but they are few and far between. Obviously its not nice to know that people will not want to cause a fuss and may suffer as a result when we could have helped but its nice to know that they exist and are genuine calls. It creates perspective and thus stability for us.

My last call of the shift was to another painful gall bladder patient. Gall bladders and buses, I wonder? I took him myself because he was stable enough and the hospital was only two minutes away.

Then the EOC left me alone to get on with my paperwork and make my way back to base and then home. A two way street, that's how I see it.

Be safe.