Demented

Eight emergency calls: one cancelled by the crew on scene, one refused and six in genuine need. These calls do not include the ten cancellations I ran on!

The statue on the bridge is now wearing a flowery dress, cut down the centre to expose its private parts. It looks like an angel from behind and a pervert from the front.

My first call of the day was to a 28 year-old female with back pain at a bus stop. I was on scene in four minutes and she was wailing and moaning even before I spoke to her. She couldn’t speak much English and the words she uttered made no sense to me anyway. She pointed to the top of her back, claiming severe pain but I found it hard to convince myself of anything serious here. Her back looked fine and she was able to move around but when I touched the area she had pointed to (very lightly) she screamed some more.

This lady made a lot of noise and fuss but couldn’t offer a reason for her sudden condition. She hadn’t been hit, she hadn’t fallen, she had no back problems (as far as I could ascertain in our fragmented communication with each other) and she had no real medical problems. Pointing and wailing was all she could do for me.

I gave her entonox and hoped it would do the trick before the crew arrived. I made her stand on her feet because she was dragging me to the ground with her dead weight dying swan act. I couldn’t see real pain on her face, all I saw was a need to get attention. The crew took her away and saw no reason to do anything for her either.

Then a 47 year-old with chest pain at a medical centre. He had no cardiac history and the pain improved with rest. His ECG was anomalous so he was taken to hospital for further investigation.

I was cancelled as soon as I arrived on scene for a 45 year-old male with DIB who ‘felt weak’ at a bus station. The crew confirmed my redundancy and I completed my paperwork and took off for my next adventure – a 31 year-old male suffering palpitations. He had been abroad and may have brought more than duty free back with him; his temperature was 39c but he refused to go to hospital. A crew had arrived before me and were attending so I stood in to listen and offer my help if it was needed. Sick as he seemed to be, he felt he could take care of himself (his colleagues had called us) and so we were dispersed back to our rolling workplaces.

After my break I was sent to St. James’ Park for a 45 year-old with DIB. I crawled through the park, carefully avoiding the myriad tourists and foreign school kids. I meandered around the small lake until I got to a point I didn’t recognise. The solo motorcycle paramedic also turned up behind me and we both looked around. There was no sign of the patient but I was in luck. One of the park employees (I don’t know what they are called these days) signalled to me and guided me to a man who was sitting on a bench. He was a known alcoholic and was living on the street (or in this case, the park).

My patient didn’t have any DIB – he was just tired, cold and hungry – three things I will help anyone out with. I knew that if he went to the right hospital he would get a bed, a sandwich and a sleep for a couple of hours while some junior doctor got to practice his diagnostic skills on him – fair’s fair.

The man was almost hypothermic so we got him onto a warm ambulance as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the foreign kids were walking by in a line, turning their heads to have a look at what was going on and every one of them, without exception, missed bashing his/her head on the opened tail door on my car. They were like German/Dutch (choose your country) lemmings. No matter how many times I warned them to steer clear they just kept walking into it.

As soon as the patient had been taken away we (the MC para and myself) were asked to go to the other side of the lake to attend to someone who had broken their leg. The police were on scene with us now and they escorted me to the spot where our patient should have been. However, when we arrived there was some confusion over who the injured party was. The police carried out a small area search and I waited with my bags at the ready. The MC para was still on his way to join me.

I watched as a squirrel scurried up a tree (rather clumsily) and then a member of staff announced that she had made a mistake and that an injured animal had been reported; a squirrel, in fact. I think I had just watched my ‘patient’ scramble up a tree. He had a broken paw and no nuts, judging by the way he had expressed himself as he climbed.

The MC para arrived and I told him it was a false alarm. We then exchanged stories with the police about various heroic animal rescues we had been involved in. It was amusing and it passed a few minutes in the rain. Obviously we had to report back to our Control desks that no further resources were required, just in case an ambulance turned up. Luckily the person at the other end of the radio had a sense of humour.

"So, you don't need an ambulance for your second patient?"

"No thanks, our second patient was in fact a squirrel."

"Oh. Right. well, we don't do those."

Shame we don't I thought, a few drunken teenage squirrels might bring about a funnier shift or two over the summer weekends to come. Suicidal squirrels perched on the edge of the highest branches could be saved by the heroes of the LAS. "Don't do it, its not worth it!", we'd shout.

As soon as I greened up from this escapade in the park I was sent to a RTC involving a motorcycle and a car. The MC para was assigned too and he sped ahead of me. As you can see from the photo, this was a fairly high impact incident - the entire front part of his bike is obliterated.

The biker was on the ground, flat on his back with a few people, including a doctor, milling about. I took control of his head and neck whilst my colleague carried out a survey for injuries. The doctor was concerned about the possibility of damage to the man’s spleen; he had abdominal abrasions and complained of pain in that area, but I hadn’t been given the full story of how he came to be in the middle of the road, so I left it to my colleague to determine the mechanisms.

The ambulance crew arrived within minutes and they set about preparing to ‘scoop’ him up and getting him to hospital. The patient was fully conscious and had no neck pain or significant external bleeding. He complained about his abdomen a lot though.

We completed our checks, including a check for possible abdominal injury prior to moving him, and placed him on the scoop and stretcher. He was taken to hospital in a stable condition – in fact he was damn lucky. I looked at the car involved (the MC rider had ‘T-boned’ into it as it turned right, he must have been doing a fair speed (he said 30mph but a police officer had asked him, so whether it was an honest answer is anybody’s guess). His body was instantly propelled up onto the roof, where his mid-section made contact with the cross structure. He carried on, flipping once or twice, according to eye witnesses, before landing 15 – 20 feet on the other side of the car – where we found him.

I was told the next day that he had no significant injury – no spleen rupture or neck fracture. He got away with a fractured wrist and nothing more. Lucky man.

Then, after a rest, I was off to see a 44 year-old with chest pain. He had a chest infection and the antibiotics he was given (fairly recently) hadn’t resolved the problem. His pain was most likely pleural, not cardiac. His obs were good and he had no difficulty in breathing, still an ambulance was required and he was taken to hospital for a change of antibiotics.

I went into one of the posh houses in London that used to be a Georgian terrace (at least I think they are Georgian). Inside it was like walking into a tardis – huge. Now it was divided into lots of small flats for the rich elderly and those who have managed to cling on to life and high living with a rent control order. I went there to see an 87 year-old lady who had collapsed and was now sitting in her front room talking gibberish and waving her arms and legs about like she was a child.

After a short chat, during which she made no sense and was very loud at times, I carried out my obs – which were normal. Her neighbour confirmed that she was not behaving normally and it was possible (I thought) that she was suffering from dementia, either as a result of a stroke – the cause of her initial collapse, or she had developed fronto-temporal dementia and it just hadn’t been noticed ‘til now.


Either way, when the crew arrived and took over they got pulled into her fantasy world. One of them even started talking to her in German, convinced that she preferred to speak that language after hearing her say something in the Teutonic tongue. However, she ignored him and told him she didn’t understand a word he was saying. Probably because it was all in German.

Be safe.