Ten emergency calls. Three assisted at scene, one gone before arrival, one treated at scene, one false alarm and four ambulances required.
A frantic night. We were short of vehicles. Not crews, vehicles. There were five crews at station when I arrived and only one ambulance between them. Too many are off the road for repairs or are short of equipment, or something else is wrong with them. I was one of only two FRU's running so there was going to be a lot of slack to pick up before my colleagues were able to assist.
My first call came in before I had drawn breath for my VDI. I was running to a pregnant female who had fainted in the street, at least that's what the call description read. When I turned up (along with the only ambulance available), the 'pregnant' female turned out to be a fat drunken woman from Scotland. Nothing warms my heart more than a fellow Scot proudly showing the colours on English turf.
She needed nothing more than a prod in the right direction - that's the opposite direction to us - and off she stumbled, groaning all the way. I think she liked me; she gave me a gummy grin before she left.
So, a waste of all the resources available for a so-obviously not pregnant (or sober) woman. Some of these calls are generated by the public just so that they can have an eyesore removed from their doorsteps. There was a pub across the road and the locals probably didn't want her spoiling their evening drink, so a call for an ambulance is very convenient. I remember going to a call for a 'dead man in the street' just to remove a sleeping drug addict from the sight of the snooty lady who had called us out. She didn't like the fact that he chose to slump across from her window. She didn't like to have her view spoiled by another, less well-orf, less informed and less clean human being.
My next call was for a diabetic, possibly hypo, in a shop in NW1. I found him alert and fully recovered. He had eaten something to sort himself out and the call had been made by panicking shop staff who thought he was going to die on the floor. Again that would be terribly inconvenient, so reach for the phone and dial 999. The guy's blood glucose had dropped a little and he had become confused, that's all. He hadn't demonstrated any desire to keel over and snuff it but I guess the judgement of the panick-stricken few is somewhat skewed.
As soon as I completed my paperwork I was off to Islington for a 35 year-old male who was fitting in a pub. When I got on scene, he was recovering on the floor. He is a known epileptic and normally his condition is quite well controlled but he had been drinking and not eaten very much, thus asking for trouble. He was still post ictal when the crew arrived to assist but he was able to stand up and walk for us. On the way out, he decided to finish his pint, so we stood at the door with our mouths open in disbelief. He wasn't willing to give up the alcohol he had paid for just because of a little seizure. We could wait.
One of the pub staff came out to walk her dog while I was preparing to do my paperwork for the epileptic pint-finisher. He was a lovely little Jack Russell puppy and he sank his excited teeth into my gloves as he bounced and rolled his way back and forth on the pavement. I thought he might wet himself if he doesn't calm down, so I let him be and got on with my job.
I was half way back to my own area when I got dragged back up to Islington for a call to a 4 year-old boy with a head injury on a bus. This one sounded serious, so I did a quick 360 and headed back up the road.
The child was unhurt. He had no head injury and had simply been bumped into by a man who was getting off the bus when the driver hit the brakes a little too hard. The adult lost his balance and collided with the little boy as his mother stood him up to leave. He was sitting in his buggy and I spoke to his mother about the incident. I remarked that he didn't have any injuries and that taking him to hospital would be pointless. The boy's little head nodded sagely as I spoke. His mother told me that he was two years old in fact and I was shocked to notice how in tune he was with what I was saying, so I directed my conversation at him.
He was an incredibly clever young man for his age and he described, in some detail, the reasons why he might want to see his doctor whilst acknowledging my sensible explanation about a trip to hospital being a waste of time and likely to upset him more, let alone the unnecessary use of precious resources. I was so taken with him (as were the two police officers who showed up) that I stuck around for a while just to chat to him. He was very entertaining.
After completing my forms for the mother I said my goodbyes and left the bus. I did have one last thing to advise before I went though. I suggested he might want to use the buggy less and his legs more if he didn't want to end up overweight and unfit. He seemed to understand. I noticed his mother walked him off the bus after that.
I found myself in a grotty estate after my pleasant encounter with the boy. I was looking up at a block of flats that may, or may not have been the one I was looking for. There was no name plate and it was covered in scaffolding and nets. I asked a teenage girl who was walking through the vestibule area if I had the right place and she blanked me completely. It was a simple, courteous question but I got nothing from this rude moron. She did turn around when I shouted "thank you for that" sarcastically. She noted my annoyance and said "Yeah, it is" to answer my original question. Life would be so much easier if we all went back to real parenting.
Anyway, I got into the lift and it opened and closed with the sound effects from a horror movie. I'd rather have the smell of urine than the gothic creaking and groaning that emanated from this tin box I was getting into. I got to the relevant flat and spent thirty of your tax-paying minutes calming a hyperventilating, panic-stricken 44 year-old female who is 'sensitive to stress'. I told the crew I would handle this one myself and set about re-programming her breathing with a long chat about life and the Universe. I bored her into submission and she was cured when I left. Oh and no oxygen used for that one. I played it by ear.
I got back out of the lift from Hell and thought I might need to wear a long black cloak and fangs for this job soon.
Next up, another hyperventilating female but this time I lost her and the crew. The address was completely wrong and the ambulance (there were a few more on duty now) showed up just as I was searching the area for the hostel in question. The crew had no better luck than me but they weaved their way down the street and I followed. However, when I got to where they had landed I found them gone - already with the patient, I presumed. This was tricky. They were a Tech crew and if the call was not as given I would have to rely on one of them to come out and get me if things were serious and I was needed, either that or I could search for them, which I did without any luck. So I waited behind the ambulance like a lemon in the car.
Luckily the call was exactly as given and the crew appeared with a young girl and her mate, both looking healthy and in good spirits, so I left the scene and got on with it.
Once or twice I've had to search for a bus that just isn't there. A call for an unconscious female on a bus had me driving up and down Waterloo Bridge and the Aldwych, scanning for something big, red and with the same number on it that I had on my screen. Unconscious people on buses tend to be drunk and fast asleep - bus drivers will not touch them to wake them up, they'll shout a couple of times or throw things from a distance and then call us. We are the removal service for buses. We need to start charging a fee for our professional services methinks.
Control eventually tells me that the 'unconscious' person has alighted then decided to get back on the same bus to go home. An ambulance arrived as I received this information. The crew were just as pleased to hear the news as I was.
Someone put a hi-vis jacket and hard hat on one of the Gormley statues standing on Waterloo Bridge. I didn't get a chance to photograph it but I took one 'au naturelle' for you. I can't wait until summer kicks in to see what these poor defenceless statues get done to them (I'm sure various forms of fancy dress are in the pipeline).
I got a sniff of coffee at my home station then went to another estate to help a 70 year-old diabetic recover from his hypoglycaemic confusion. He was sitting in his flat, surrounded by his concerned family, smacking his lips and staring at whatever took his fancy. His BM was 3.1, which isn't critical but its low. He wouldn't take anything orally and had a strong grip, which he demonstrated every time I tried to coax him to eat.
I injected glucagon and waited a few minutes. He ate some glucose gel after that and became a little more lucid as time went by. The crew arrived but their role was going to be supervisory; he wouldn't need to go to hospital.
His family made him some sandwiches and by the time I left his BM had risen to normal - he was thanking us and tucking into some life-saving bread. The crew stuck around to ensure he was 100% recovered.
I got a break after that job and spent an hour or so replenishing my own sugar supplies. My next call was for a 22 year-old, unconscious in his cell at a police station. These calls are rarely as given and this one was no exception. The police officers had tried to wake him up as he lay sparked out on the filthy cell floor but had no luck getting any response. I pinched his shoulder muscle hard and he wriggled away from me, opening his eyes just enough to size me up. I did the same again and again until the police officers, the crew (who had just arrived) and the Forensic Medical Examiner in charge were convinced that my theory "he is sleeping it off" held water.
Just as I was putting the lights out in my head for the shift I was given a call that I was sure would keep me busy well past home time; a Red1 for an 'overdose, needle in arm, not moving'. It sounded like a classic heroin overdose - they die so fast the needle they have just injected themselves with is still in position. I was sure this was going to be a messy resus.
I arrived to find that the people in charge of the place had locked themselves out. They were banging on the front door and screaming for someone to let them in. I thought the call was going to descend into farce. I knew the location - I had been there a few times before. It's a hostel for the lost and unlikely to recover individuals of society. It houses drug addicts, alcoholics and ex-cons who inhabit its squalid rooms in singles or pairs, depending on whether they own a dog or not. This guy owned a dog.
He was sitting outside his room and he wasn't dead. Neither did he have a needle in his arm. He told me that he had injected himself with heroin (he thought) and that he had also taken a load of prescription pills of various colour and type. I checked him thoroughly and thought it was unlikely he had taken anything in fact. He had taped a note to his door reading 'by the time you read this I will be dead - take care of my dog for me'. Poignant but pointless, I thought.
The man was generally unpleasant and his cry for help was just one of many he had tried in the past. Without counselling, advice or structured support he has nowhere to go but down. On the other hand, not to dismiss the good people out there who do offer these services, maybe he just doesn't care. Drugs do that to people - they lose the self-interest they need to improve their lot.
I popped my head around his door to say hello to his dog. On the floor, wrapped in a blanket was a well-mannered and frightened mongrel. I offered him my apologies before I left the scene. I think he understood although I could still see deep misery in his big brown eyes.
I gave my handover to the crew and the police, decided I needed to do nothing more here and drove south to my car, my civvie fleece and the long, horrible journey home.
A frantic night. We were short of vehicles. Not crews, vehicles. There were five crews at station when I arrived and only one ambulance between them. Too many are off the road for repairs or are short of equipment, or something else is wrong with them. I was one of only two FRU's running so there was going to be a lot of slack to pick up before my colleagues were able to assist.
My first call came in before I had drawn breath for my VDI. I was running to a pregnant female who had fainted in the street, at least that's what the call description read. When I turned up (along with the only ambulance available), the 'pregnant' female turned out to be a fat drunken woman from Scotland. Nothing warms my heart more than a fellow Scot proudly showing the colours on English turf.
She needed nothing more than a prod in the right direction - that's the opposite direction to us - and off she stumbled, groaning all the way. I think she liked me; she gave me a gummy grin before she left.
So, a waste of all the resources available for a so-obviously not pregnant (or sober) woman. Some of these calls are generated by the public just so that they can have an eyesore removed from their doorsteps. There was a pub across the road and the locals probably didn't want her spoiling their evening drink, so a call for an ambulance is very convenient. I remember going to a call for a 'dead man in the street' just to remove a sleeping drug addict from the sight of the snooty lady who had called us out. She didn't like the fact that he chose to slump across from her window. She didn't like to have her view spoiled by another, less well-orf, less informed and less clean human being.
My next call was for a diabetic, possibly hypo, in a shop in NW1. I found him alert and fully recovered. He had eaten something to sort himself out and the call had been made by panicking shop staff who thought he was going to die on the floor. Again that would be terribly inconvenient, so reach for the phone and dial 999. The guy's blood glucose had dropped a little and he had become confused, that's all. He hadn't demonstrated any desire to keel over and snuff it but I guess the judgement of the panick-stricken few is somewhat skewed.
As soon as I completed my paperwork I was off to Islington for a 35 year-old male who was fitting in a pub. When I got on scene, he was recovering on the floor. He is a known epileptic and normally his condition is quite well controlled but he had been drinking and not eaten very much, thus asking for trouble. He was still post ictal when the crew arrived to assist but he was able to stand up and walk for us. On the way out, he decided to finish his pint, so we stood at the door with our mouths open in disbelief. He wasn't willing to give up the alcohol he had paid for just because of a little seizure. We could wait.
One of the pub staff came out to walk her dog while I was preparing to do my paperwork for the epileptic pint-finisher. He was a lovely little Jack Russell puppy and he sank his excited teeth into my gloves as he bounced and rolled his way back and forth on the pavement. I thought he might wet himself if he doesn't calm down, so I let him be and got on with my job.
I was half way back to my own area when I got dragged back up to Islington for a call to a 4 year-old boy with a head injury on a bus. This one sounded serious, so I did a quick 360 and headed back up the road.
The child was unhurt. He had no head injury and had simply been bumped into by a man who was getting off the bus when the driver hit the brakes a little too hard. The adult lost his balance and collided with the little boy as his mother stood him up to leave. He was sitting in his buggy and I spoke to his mother about the incident. I remarked that he didn't have any injuries and that taking him to hospital would be pointless. The boy's little head nodded sagely as I spoke. His mother told me that he was two years old in fact and I was shocked to notice how in tune he was with what I was saying, so I directed my conversation at him.
He was an incredibly clever young man for his age and he described, in some detail, the reasons why he might want to see his doctor whilst acknowledging my sensible explanation about a trip to hospital being a waste of time and likely to upset him more, let alone the unnecessary use of precious resources. I was so taken with him (as were the two police officers who showed up) that I stuck around for a while just to chat to him. He was very entertaining.
After completing my forms for the mother I said my goodbyes and left the bus. I did have one last thing to advise before I went though. I suggested he might want to use the buggy less and his legs more if he didn't want to end up overweight and unfit. He seemed to understand. I noticed his mother walked him off the bus after that.
I found myself in a grotty estate after my pleasant encounter with the boy. I was looking up at a block of flats that may, or may not have been the one I was looking for. There was no name plate and it was covered in scaffolding and nets. I asked a teenage girl who was walking through the vestibule area if I had the right place and she blanked me completely. It was a simple, courteous question but I got nothing from this rude moron. She did turn around when I shouted "thank you for that" sarcastically. She noted my annoyance and said "Yeah, it is" to answer my original question. Life would be so much easier if we all went back to real parenting.
Anyway, I got into the lift and it opened and closed with the sound effects from a horror movie. I'd rather have the smell of urine than the gothic creaking and groaning that emanated from this tin box I was getting into. I got to the relevant flat and spent thirty of your tax-paying minutes calming a hyperventilating, panic-stricken 44 year-old female who is 'sensitive to stress'. I told the crew I would handle this one myself and set about re-programming her breathing with a long chat about life and the Universe. I bored her into submission and she was cured when I left. Oh and no oxygen used for that one. I played it by ear.
I got back out of the lift from Hell and thought I might need to wear a long black cloak and fangs for this job soon.
Next up, another hyperventilating female but this time I lost her and the crew. The address was completely wrong and the ambulance (there were a few more on duty now) showed up just as I was searching the area for the hostel in question. The crew had no better luck than me but they weaved their way down the street and I followed. However, when I got to where they had landed I found them gone - already with the patient, I presumed. This was tricky. They were a Tech crew and if the call was not as given I would have to rely on one of them to come out and get me if things were serious and I was needed, either that or I could search for them, which I did without any luck. So I waited behind the ambulance like a lemon in the car.
Luckily the call was exactly as given and the crew appeared with a young girl and her mate, both looking healthy and in good spirits, so I left the scene and got on with it.
Once or twice I've had to search for a bus that just isn't there. A call for an unconscious female on a bus had me driving up and down Waterloo Bridge and the Aldwych, scanning for something big, red and with the same number on it that I had on my screen. Unconscious people on buses tend to be drunk and fast asleep - bus drivers will not touch them to wake them up, they'll shout a couple of times or throw things from a distance and then call us. We are the removal service for buses. We need to start charging a fee for our professional services methinks.
Control eventually tells me that the 'unconscious' person has alighted then decided to get back on the same bus to go home. An ambulance arrived as I received this information. The crew were just as pleased to hear the news as I was.
Someone put a hi-vis jacket and hard hat on one of the Gormley statues standing on Waterloo Bridge. I didn't get a chance to photograph it but I took one 'au naturelle' for you. I can't wait until summer kicks in to see what these poor defenceless statues get done to them (I'm sure various forms of fancy dress are in the pipeline).
I got a sniff of coffee at my home station then went to another estate to help a 70 year-old diabetic recover from his hypoglycaemic confusion. He was sitting in his flat, surrounded by his concerned family, smacking his lips and staring at whatever took his fancy. His BM was 3.1, which isn't critical but its low. He wouldn't take anything orally and had a strong grip, which he demonstrated every time I tried to coax him to eat.
I injected glucagon and waited a few minutes. He ate some glucose gel after that and became a little more lucid as time went by. The crew arrived but their role was going to be supervisory; he wouldn't need to go to hospital.
His family made him some sandwiches and by the time I left his BM had risen to normal - he was thanking us and tucking into some life-saving bread. The crew stuck around to ensure he was 100% recovered.
I got a break after that job and spent an hour or so replenishing my own sugar supplies. My next call was for a 22 year-old, unconscious in his cell at a police station. These calls are rarely as given and this one was no exception. The police officers had tried to wake him up as he lay sparked out on the filthy cell floor but had no luck getting any response. I pinched his shoulder muscle hard and he wriggled away from me, opening his eyes just enough to size me up. I did the same again and again until the police officers, the crew (who had just arrived) and the Forensic Medical Examiner in charge were convinced that my theory "he is sleeping it off" held water.
Just as I was putting the lights out in my head for the shift I was given a call that I was sure would keep me busy well past home time; a Red1 for an 'overdose, needle in arm, not moving'. It sounded like a classic heroin overdose - they die so fast the needle they have just injected themselves with is still in position. I was sure this was going to be a messy resus.
I arrived to find that the people in charge of the place had locked themselves out. They were banging on the front door and screaming for someone to let them in. I thought the call was going to descend into farce. I knew the location - I had been there a few times before. It's a hostel for the lost and unlikely to recover individuals of society. It houses drug addicts, alcoholics and ex-cons who inhabit its squalid rooms in singles or pairs, depending on whether they own a dog or not. This guy owned a dog.
He was sitting outside his room and he wasn't dead. Neither did he have a needle in his arm. He told me that he had injected himself with heroin (he thought) and that he had also taken a load of prescription pills of various colour and type. I checked him thoroughly and thought it was unlikely he had taken anything in fact. He had taped a note to his door reading 'by the time you read this I will be dead - take care of my dog for me'. Poignant but pointless, I thought.
The man was generally unpleasant and his cry for help was just one of many he had tried in the past. Without counselling, advice or structured support he has nowhere to go but down. On the other hand, not to dismiss the good people out there who do offer these services, maybe he just doesn't care. Drugs do that to people - they lose the self-interest they need to improve their lot.
I popped my head around his door to say hello to his dog. On the floor, wrapped in a blanket was a well-mannered and frightened mongrel. I offered him my apologies before I left the scene. I think he understood although I could still see deep misery in his big brown eyes.
I gave my handover to the crew and the police, decided I needed to do nothing more here and drove south to my car, my civvie fleece and the long, horrible journey home.
Be safe.
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5 comments:
sounds like you had a right mare of a night mate there. We get those in my job (police) and you can have enough of them. I like your blog mate its very interesting to see things from your perspective. Where I work we have a very good relationship with the LAS and its always nice to see you guys when we need you!
Keep safe
Just curious; Why is a long horrible journey home?
Your blogs are brilliant by the way keep smiling soosie
sam
thanks for that.
soosie
I live quite a distance from work and the traffic is always a pig on the way home. When I have just finished twelve hours of driving I really don't relish the trip home.
enough said
;-)
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