Movies, bomb scares and gumballs

Sunday.

Busier but still not as busy as usual. There were lots of things going on today. If you walked in a straight line from the Strand to Pall Mall, you would have had plenty to see. They were filming a movie, set in the 1930's I believe, on The Strand. There were actors and actresses dressed in dapper costumes, there were old buses and cars on the street and the famous Savoy Hotel was part of the scenery. In fact, the scenes were being shot in there. I bet they put the room prices up for this occasion.

Traffic was still flowing up and down the road but, every now and then, the police would stop it and 'action' would begin for a few minutes. Then the road would open again. Nobody seemed to mind the inconvenience and there were dozens of tourists out to watch the spectacle.

Meanwhile police started to arrive at the Waterloo Bridge end of the Strand. They sealed off the road and a cordon was put up. I got a call from Control informing me that there was a suspect vehicle on the bridge and that it was shut for the time being. Since I was only a few metres away, I found myself in the middle of the operation. Soon there were other vehicles arriving, including our own HART team.

After twenty minutes of probing and investigating from a safe distance, the white van on the bridge was deemed safe and everyone was stood down. The area cleared as quickly as it had clogged.Filming carried on as this little drama unfolded and a member of the support crew came over to me and asked if a set of ladders, which were standing in a bus lane, belonged to me. At first I didn't answer because I felt sure she would come to her senses but eventually I had to capitulate and give her the bad news about new ambulance equipment, a tall ladder and a short car.

On Trafalgar Square, the Sikh festival of Vaisakhi was being celebrated. Thousands of people were expected to turn up to take part or to watch the proceedings, which included music, speeches and free food all day! The food queue went on for about half a mile at one point I think.

I sat on stand-by in between calls and watched this colourful gathering of different people progress through the day - many were Indian Sikhs, many were not. Nobody cared. The atmosphere was upbeat and only marred when a small contingent of the Darfur demonstration march cut through the Square, chanting and banner-waving through the music, on their way to Whitehall. We had been briefed about this demonstration and were expecting hundreds of protestors to descend at some point in the morning. I only saw this small group of about a dozen until later on, when they were already opposite Downing Street en masse.

Then there was the famous Gumball Rally which was being held on Pall Mall, a few minutes’ walk from Trafalgar Square. I went over in the afternoon to check it out but was sent away by LAS officers who were there officially. I hadn't been told it was covered and I was curious to see it but I didn't see much and I had a flea to remove from my ear!

My first call of the day was to a male with chest pain. He had a previous history of three heart attacks and a triple bypass. He didn't look well when I arrived and his pulse was thready and irregular, so he was taken to hospital without delay.

An emergency call for a 'male, cannot walk, foot locked up' sent me to a block of flats but as I pulled up, the ambulance arrived. The only reason this was a ‘Category A’ call was the addition of a vital but probably nonsensical piece of information - 'difficulty in breathing'. Once again, the great deeds of the call takers are undone by the impurity of open questioning.

"What seems to be the problem?"

"My foot has seized up. I can't walk"

"Do you have any breathing problems?"

"Erm. Yes"

"Has your leg got gangrene and is it about to fall off?"

"Erm. Yes""Would you like a million pounds?"

Well, you know what I mean. It’s frustrating for all of us. The ambulance crew went inside to deal with that call, I was surplus to requirements.

Soon after, I was sent to the West End for a male who was coughing up blood and passing black stools - in the street apparently. This call also had me thinking about how fast the turnaround would be. On my way to this (it was a Red3 because it had included chest pain - obviously) I found my way blocked by a large 4x4, driven by a large man who could neither see or hear me - we simply must get the siren volume increased on all our vehicles. After a 20 - 30 second delay in which I sat directly behind him, in line of sight of his wing mirror, he noticed and moved to the left for me. As I rolled past I looked at him and he looked back at me. Then he dropped his mobile 'phone from his ear. Some people just don't get it and never will.

When I got on scene, I had to search, along with the ambulance crew who had arrived behind me, for this bleeding man. He wandered up to me after ten minutes and began to talk to me whilst standing in the middle of the road. Traffic was meandering around him until I persuaded him to move to a safer spot. The man was a known alcoholic and a regular caller. No sign of coughing or blood or tarry stools. I left him to the crew.

An emergency call to a male with acute epigastric pain led me out of area for a nice old gentleman who came out to meet me at the lift, even though he shouldn't have been on his feet. He was very unwell, pale, diaphoretic and had a very low BP when I checked. He was constantly trying to vomit but producing nothing. He needed to go to hospital as soon as possible and, as he retched over his toilet bowl in his tidy little flat, I began to plan my options for his collapse at any moment. Then the crew arrived and I had back-up. Luckily, he remained fairly stable (if that could be a fair description) when they moved him to the ambulance. Some jobs put you on alert automatically.

On the way back from this call, I was verbally accosted by an irate taxi driver who wanted me to push through a red light and into the busy traffic at a junction because he had been waiting too long to move. I told him I wasn't about to go through a red light for him or anyone else and he stormed off to his cab. When we did get through the junction, he drove through another red light at a busy pedestrian crossing. Nice.

An alcoholic who had been fitting sent me to Victoria where I found the man waiting for me. He was a little confused and a LOT drunk. The crew arrived soon after me and, with wry grins, took him to hospital to 'recover'. Incidentally, alcoholics do suffer seizures and they can be serious, so forgive me if I seem a little flippant about it today. I still look at it seriously when I know it is. This wasn't.

I stayed in that part of London to deal with a young man who was hyperventilating but thought he was having a heart attack - thus a Red3 for chest pain. He was concerned about a Uni assignment he had to hand in the next day. He hadn't yet started on it, so he was fretting about where he was going to come up with a thousand words. The word preparation sprang to my mind. He wanted me to call his mother. I wondered if she was the panicking type too. If she was, then I could imagine the conversation if I called her.

"Hello, Mrs X. I'm a paramedic with the London Ambulance Service. Don't be worried, I have your son with me and he is alright. He has just had a panic attack and wants to go to hospital".

THUD!

"Hello, Mrs X. Are you there?"

Ahh, bless. He continued to worry all the way to hospital and I kept an eye on him in case he tried to jump out of the car or something. He'll be fine until the next crisis looms in his life.When I booked him in I found that the hospital software had been updated to include a whole new raft of questions for us, including 'wheel stop time'. Eh? They want to know exactly what time my wheels stopped when I arrived at the hospital. Crazy.

I got back to base and was dragged away from my hopes of getting home on time by a last minute call - back to Victoria. This was for an ill child. I didn't get to see this patient, although I had been to the address before and suspected it would be the same problem; unwell child, nothing more. A crew was already on scene, so I turned around and headed back to base, late.

Nice to have had a trip out though.

Be safe.