Dizzy

Day shift: Four calls; three by car; one by ambulance.

Stats: 1 unwell adult; 2 vertigo; 1 ?PE.

The day started with warm sunshine and the return of the commuter run for the first day of the week. I’m working a few days of overtime this week, so will be on for seven days straight on this tour. I’ll be tired at the end of it, so my writing may slope off the page by Friday.


It starts with a request from a motorcycle colleague to transport a 41 year-old lady who began to feel unwell on her way to work. She had been suffering from a chest infection recently and vomited earlier. We found her sitting on a step with the MRU paramedic, looking under the weather (the patient, not the medic). It was a short hop to hospital, so, after a handover to the student, we delivered her to A&E.


We were then asked to investigate a 39 year-old female who’d started vomiting and felt dizzy at a children’s hospital. He child was waiting for an x-ray and her grandfather was taking care of her as mum languished on the bed of one of the medical rooms awaiting our arrival. No ambulance had been dispatched and the staff in the ward had been warned they may have to wait an hour for one but the problem was easy to solve. I gave her Metoclopramide to stop her from vomiting and then we got her to the car and took her to A&E. She had a history of Vertigo, so there was no clinical reason for her to wait for an ambulance.


This was closely followed by another Vertigo-related vomiting call; this time for a 36 year-old male at work. He hadn’t yet thrown up and he wasn’t given anything because his main complaint was dizziness. That soon turned to throwing up when he got into the car but he wasn’t nearly as bad as the previous patient.


A 20 year-old female called us from a train station after experiencing chest pain that she’d felt before – a few times in fact, when she’d suffered multiple Pulmonary Embolisms (PE) – okay, it’s emboli in the plural but I’m talking in the collective here. Anyway, grammar aside, she refused to go in the chair when the crew arrived and had no interest in the trolley bed either, even though she still had chest pain. A few paramedics have been sacked and struck off for walking a chest pain that subsequently collapsed and died, so she was asked again to allow the use of the chair but she was adamant. So, the PRF was signed to verify that she had refused this important element of her care.

She also refused to get her backpack off and to have her belongings carried by a colleague. She was very stubborn and I’m not sure if she had issues with us, herself or her fears. She got into the ambulance at least but the struggle to get her to comply for her own sake continued and I left the crew to it.

Be safe.