Mud is slower than water...water wins

Day shift: Two calls; both by ambulance.

Stats: 1 Hypoglycaemic diabetic; 1 Abdo pain.


I’ve had a couple of strangely quiet shifts, probably because the computerised system, FRED, is now being used by the MRU’s (they used to self-activate). This means that the same number of calls is being handled by more resources in the area, which is good for the patients I guess but I honestly don’t think it will pan out in the long run. I have a feeling about it.


So, a 66 year-old diabetic man who’s not responding and has a BM of 1.1 (thus the lack of response can be nailed) needs urgent Glucagon to lift his blood sugar level. The man is an amputee and it looks like he will lose the second leg as a result of his disease soon; there are ulcers and signs of vascular breakdown all over it.

He responds well to the injection and within a few minutes he’s climbing out of his near-coma. Eventually his blood glucose reaches the dizzy height of 4.4 and all is well again. He still goes to hospital because his treatment regimen needs to be reviewed; he was only saved because his carer visited and couldn’t get a response when he knocked on the door over and over again. When he finally let himself in his charge was on the bed and almost out of the world.


A case of Polycystic Ovary (PCOS) caused abdo pain in a 20 year-old and she collapsed in a cinema with her friends around her. It was called in as a ‘fitting’ by the cinema manager who didn’t really check before she gave the diagnosis over the ‘phone, so the patient looked confused and I looked confused and it might have been funny except for the fact that she was in agony. I waited for an hour before an ambulance was available and I found that ironic considering the not-too-frantic day I’d had. I gave her pain relief and the crew arrived to whisk her away to hospital but by that time her pain score had dropped considerably and I figured she’d almost got over it herself (well, with the help of Mr. Morphine).


And so ended an action-packed day. To be honest, the rest did me good. I was able to catch up on stuff I needed to do, like reading and sitting in the car waiting for a call. Hasty sarcasm there, sorry.

Be safe.