Day shift: Eight calls; two assisted-only; one false alarm; the others by ambulance.
Stats: 3 eTOH (one with a head injury); one asleep; one with MH issues; two faints; one unwell adult.
Two bus-sleeping drunk calls and my first was to a 30 year-old man, given a Red1 because the bus driver couldn’t or didn’t want to approach in order to confirm the presence of breathing. I have never had a call to a cardiac arrest on a bus after a boozy Saturday night, so I went there knowing what I’d find.
The slumbering man woke up after my second attempt to get his attention and he lazily sloped off the bus and into the morning air, thanking me for ‘helping’ him as he lit a cigarette. The crew had arrived just in time to see him leave.
On my way to this call I was nearly totalled when a van in front of me slammed on his brakes, rather than pull over to let me pass. I found myself running at 40mph with nowhere to go and hoping that my brakes would stop me in time. They did but I wasn’t happy to know that I could have been injured or killed because of someone who got drunk and snoozed or because a bus driver refused to try and get some facts for us.
After that an 83 year-old lady apologised and told me she didn’t need an ambulance when I entered her flat. She was lying in bed and had tripped her emergency call button by mistake. Her ‘DIB’ didn’t exist but I noticed that her inhalers were empty, so I made sure her GP was alerted so that she could have a replacement. I left her in the care of her carer.
Drunk on a bus number two was slobbering saliva down his chin as he lay slumped in the aisle between seats. He too was breathing, obviously but he too had been made an emergency by the driver who refused to touch him and preferred to have an ambulance person do it instead. Again, I woke him up and walked him off and again the crew arrived to witness their redundancy. Lots of tax money going down a drain with these calls I fear.
A man with mental health issues who hadn’t been taking his prescription Librium was lying head first over a small wall. His feet were dangling over the edge and he could have been dead…but he wasn’t. A passer-by had called us and she looked on anxiously as I pulled up to ‘rescue’ him from the dirt and the spiders that were crawling over his face as he slept.
‘I don’t feel very well’, he said as I hauled him up onto his rear end. I couldn’t haul him any further because he wouldn’t help me, the space I had clambered into was tight and he was bigger and heavier than me – still, a valiant effort on my part.
When I finally managed to convince him to help me lift him onto the edge of the wall, he seemed unbalanced and I don’t mean in a mass versus gravity way. He didn’t like me touching him, even to hold him steady (he’d been drinking) and he had that ‘not-going-to-help-you-help-me’ look on his face. I thought he might try to swing a punch or kick at me, so I prepared to move quickly if he did. He probably had no mind to but I was on my own now and not willing to take the risk. It’s too cold to get beaten up.
When the crew appeared, they helped me get him off the wall and into the ambulance. He had collapsed across the road from the hospital, so at least my colleagues would have a short-lived risk if he was a danger to anyone.
Period pain can be quite agonising, by all accounts and from my second-hand experience with it, so my next call to a 28 year-old who’d fainted because of the pain wasn’t a surprise to me. She had a strange combination of problems associated with her monthly cycle; diarrhoea, vomiting, faint and severe pain. Luckily she didn’t suffer like this every month but she’d had this combo before and she looked quite ill as a result.
Her boyfriend had called an ambulance when she passed out and I found her in the small ladies’ toilet in a cafe in a posh part of town – so posh that I doubt they’d have approved of her being there with such a pale face and sickly look.
I rescued her out of the range of glaring, staring people as they trooped by and met the ambulance as it landed outside. She was taken aboard and privacy was restored – privacy and dignity.
As I left the crew to it and stepped out of the ambulance, I was confronted by an irate motorist who’d got out of his car and was marching over to give us all a piece of his mind for parking in the middle of the road. I had parked near the pavement but the ambulance had nowhere else to go – it was a very narrow street and with cars parked all along on both sides, it was impossible to situate the vehicle other than where my colleague had put it. Yet despite this and the fact that he must have seen the patient being taken onto the ambulance looking like death warmed up, he insisted on getting in our faces about it. His journey to wherever was simply far too important for an obstruction from the likes of us to interfere with it.
I’ve heard from at least one cop who says they get this problem too but I still doubt that this whipped up driver would have come out and stamped around like a child if the police had been there instead of us. I had to use my firm but professional voice (that means I said sir at least once) to get him away from us and into his car again. People like that can create an unnecessarily threatening atmosphere for a patient.
Two for one again! I was called to yet another ‘unconscious male on bus’ and arrived to find that the police were getting aboard and there were two of them, slumped in their seats. Like babies, only not so cute and not worth fostering.
I woke one of them up after trying my best with the other, who had a bleeding head wound caused by falling on his face at some point (judging by the little pool of blood on the floor of the bus). His mate awoke and looked at me with disdain – not even a ‘hello’. It took a few more tries to get his sleeping buddy to rouse.
Both men were Eastern Europeans and neither gave a damn about me or the cops or why we were there...or the cost of it all. I was happy to leave them in the street to be honest because the arrogance and low-level threatening behaviour of the non-head busted drunk was starting to annoy me and it had been a long day so far.
Eventually it was agreed that the man with the head wound, which I’d now dressed, should go to hospital (across the road – yep, same hospital that wall-man went to). His friend demanded to go with him but I said that he could walk himself over there. He wouldn’t get through the doors in that state and he would be a threat to the crew, so it was best to separate them.
The crew hated me for a few seconds. They had been cancelled on a run to a genuine injury for this and they weren’t impressed. Some poor patient had to wait because their limb injury was a lower priority than that of two sneering, alcohol-loving, Brit-hating Lithuanians with no jobs, no prospects and no hope of contributing to a generous, caring and ultimately easily walked-over society.
I greened up just in time for FRED to send me miles out of my area for a ‘?CVA’ that was nothing of the sort. ‘Close the door or the cats will get out!’ the 61 year-old woman said as I entered her flat with my MRU colleague (why two solo’s? I’ve no idea).
She was sitting on the bottom stair, cradling her head and complaining of feeling unwell. The call had described her as ‘collapsed behind doors. On floor’. Not quite what I saw, however and she seemed more pre-occupied with the possibility of an escaping moggy than her current state of health. I left as soon as the crew was on scene. I’d done nothing but pass bits and pieces along to my colleague anyway.
I needed to get away by end of shift time – I had an important prior appointment but, as always and I should really know better, you cannot make plans in this job. Typically, I was given a late job...it was a few miles south and there were no ambulances available. So, I spent 30 minutes of my own time (sarcastically called overtime) baby-sitting a 38 year-old woman with a headache who’d fainted earlier. She was surrounded by kids – her son and a few of his mates – all of whom harangued me about how long it was taking to get her to hospital. If I’d been less tired, I’d have driven her there myself.
I shouldn’t moan so loud because some of my colleagues have been caught out and spent more than a few hours on enforced overtime when they had better things to do.
Be safe.
Monday, 3 November 2008
Sunday, 2 November 2008
Cold and wet
Day shift: Six calls; one declined after treatment; the others by ambulance.
Stats: 1 eTOH; 2 EP Fit; 1 RTC with leg injury; 1 Near drowning; 1 DIB.
A bag was found in our station bin this morning. It was discovered by the rubbish men (refuse technicians or whatever the PC term is). Inside was some clothing and an ID for a Clinical Pharmacologist from UCL. How it got there is a mystery but only two theories for its presence hold water as far as I’m concerned. The young man was either robbed and it was dumped there, or he got so drunk the night before that it was abandoned. Cynical of me I know but my world doesn’t offer much else in the way of explanation. Needless to say we will be trying to reunite the bag with its owner.
And so a Saturday morning, freezing with the start of true winter, opens with a call to a 70 year-old man who has collapsed outside his hostel. I know this place well and none of us particularly enjoy coming here. The old man was drunk and had just returned from a morning shopping trip in which he purchased breakfast – a bottle of cider. He is, of course, an alcoholic and somehow he’d lost his balance and fallen, giving himself a minor head injury. His trousers were half way down his legs, revealing his naked behind as I approached – it was his introduction to me.
The man has no medical problems but it’s impossible to completely rule out a non-alcohol related reason for a fall like this, especially as he obviously made it to the shop and most of the way back without toppling. Could it be that the very anticipation of a drink made him walk too fast for his aged legs? He had to go to hospital regardless of my theories and suppositions because his habitual drunken state would mask any problem related to his head injury or a medical cause for it.
His undignified transfer (trousers around his ankles) to the ambulance from the street was witnessed by the hostel staff and everyone else who just happened to have business in the area at that time in the morning. He was helpless despite the help offered by the crew. Beyond help is probably more accurate.
My first of two EP fits was a 45 year-old man who collapsed in a shop. His groceries were all over the floor and he was recovering when I arrived, although he was still a bit confused. He confirmed his condition and was taken to the ambulance and off to hospital. I managed to gather his shopping together and the kind staff allowed me to take it to the patient even though he hadn’t yet paid for it, so I felt like a shoplifter as I left.
My second fit was a 38 year-old man who fell down a few stairs at work in front of his colleagues. He was unconscious when I got to him and there was a little blood coming from his mouth (this is common). He regained consciousness over the next few minutes with oxygen and, although he remained vague and restless for a while longer, he began to recover to the point where he understood what was going on. He told me he was prone to have more than one fit at a time and so I put a line in just in case. There’s no point in getting caught out. The crew arrived soon after and he was taken away. His colleagues looked very relieved. I think they thought the worst. Until I could establish that he was epileptic, which none of them knew for sure, I too, was concerned.
A minor RTC in Central London next. The relentless cold rain was bound to throw up more than a few of these today. A young woman fell off her moped when the vehicle lost traction on a slippery drain as she rode along the busy road. She had leg pain and the police and a passing ambulance crew were on scene when I got there, so she was already being taken care of. I helped her up and into the ambulance for further checks. The low speed and low height of her fall meant she probably had no more than a bruised knee. She was lucky not to have fallen in front of a bus.
This is the season for suicide and my next call, to a male who’d jumped from Blackfriars Bridge, had been fished out of the river by the RNLI. My MRU buddy, the one I seem to always get tough jobs with, told me that he’d been taken further up river to the lifeboat station because he was dead. Normally, we are asked for an opinion first, so that seemed very strange. Nevertheless, off we went in search of our supposedly dead patient.
When I arrived at the station, my colleague was already inside and I made my way down the slippery jetty and into the small floating cabin that serves as a first aid room for the RNLI and river police. I could see a man lying on his back on the bed and I noticed that his chest was rising. So, not dead then.
A lifeboat man had dragged the suicidal man from the river after he was spotted floating face down under the bridge. He wasn’t breathing and his rescuer, a man called Paul Ward, began resuscitating him. By the time he’d reached the station, his charge was breathing again and conscious. So all our efforts were now concentrated on keeping him that way. He was re-heated (his temperature had plummeted and couldn’t be read on our thermometers) with blankets and warmed IV fluids. I’d already cut away all of his wet clothing to accommodate the process and now we waited for his body temperature to rise and for his vital signs to normalise.
Meanwhile, two officers and an ambulance arrived and a plan was prepared for his removal. The deck and walkway of the lifeboat station is very hazardous when wet and I’ve tackled it more than once with patients (dead and alive). The risk of slipping is high, so we needed all hands to remove our patient to the safety of the ambulance.
It took almost half an hour for the man’s body heat to recover to normal; two bags of warm fluid and loads of blankets did the trick. His vital signs were good and he was making sense, although his ambition to die had been thwarted, it seemed he regretted trying. Apparently he had mental health issues and woman problems.
I’ve named Paul with his permission because these men and women don’t get enough recognition for the job they do. The majority of recoveries from the river will be dead and there’s never any thanks for that I guess but when they do save a life, it seems to be seen as part of their function and that’s it. I shook the man’s hand, thanked him myself and introduced him properly to the patient, informing him that he now knew the person who’d saved his life. I don’t know if he’ll ever visit Paul and his colleagues to say thanks personally but at least the job was done in part and by proxy.
I ended the shift with a call to an underground station for a 58 year-old man with DIB. I arrived to find him wheezing dramatically but still able to talk to me in full sentences. His wife and friends were with him and he told me he had a history of MI. He had no chest pain and this event had been triggered by a skateboarding teen who’d whipped past him on the platform, giving him a fright. He may have been bumped by the wheeled maniac and it looked to me like he was just winded. He requested (and got) oxygen and within two minutes was fully recovered and declining further aid.
I cancelled the ambulance and walked down the platform after bidding them farewell and an enjoyable evening. A female member of the underground staff squared up to the male staff member who’d led me to the patient and demanded to know why there was such confusion over the location given to me when I arrived. I hadn’t noticed any problems but I left them arguing at full volume as I made my way back to fresh air.
‘I told you where to send him!’
‘No you didn’t’
‘Oh, yes I did!’
‘No you didn’t’
Christmas has come early...
Be safe.
Stats: 1 eTOH; 2 EP Fit; 1 RTC with leg injury; 1 Near drowning; 1 DIB.
A bag was found in our station bin this morning. It was discovered by the rubbish men (refuse technicians or whatever the PC term is). Inside was some clothing and an ID for a Clinical Pharmacologist from UCL. How it got there is a mystery but only two theories for its presence hold water as far as I’m concerned. The young man was either robbed and it was dumped there, or he got so drunk the night before that it was abandoned. Cynical of me I know but my world doesn’t offer much else in the way of explanation. Needless to say we will be trying to reunite the bag with its owner.
And so a Saturday morning, freezing with the start of true winter, opens with a call to a 70 year-old man who has collapsed outside his hostel. I know this place well and none of us particularly enjoy coming here. The old man was drunk and had just returned from a morning shopping trip in which he purchased breakfast – a bottle of cider. He is, of course, an alcoholic and somehow he’d lost his balance and fallen, giving himself a minor head injury. His trousers were half way down his legs, revealing his naked behind as I approached – it was his introduction to me.
The man has no medical problems but it’s impossible to completely rule out a non-alcohol related reason for a fall like this, especially as he obviously made it to the shop and most of the way back without toppling. Could it be that the very anticipation of a drink made him walk too fast for his aged legs? He had to go to hospital regardless of my theories and suppositions because his habitual drunken state would mask any problem related to his head injury or a medical cause for it.
His undignified transfer (trousers around his ankles) to the ambulance from the street was witnessed by the hostel staff and everyone else who just happened to have business in the area at that time in the morning. He was helpless despite the help offered by the crew. Beyond help is probably more accurate.
My first of two EP fits was a 45 year-old man who collapsed in a shop. His groceries were all over the floor and he was recovering when I arrived, although he was still a bit confused. He confirmed his condition and was taken to the ambulance and off to hospital. I managed to gather his shopping together and the kind staff allowed me to take it to the patient even though he hadn’t yet paid for it, so I felt like a shoplifter as I left.
My second fit was a 38 year-old man who fell down a few stairs at work in front of his colleagues. He was unconscious when I got to him and there was a little blood coming from his mouth (this is common). He regained consciousness over the next few minutes with oxygen and, although he remained vague and restless for a while longer, he began to recover to the point where he understood what was going on. He told me he was prone to have more than one fit at a time and so I put a line in just in case. There’s no point in getting caught out. The crew arrived soon after and he was taken away. His colleagues looked very relieved. I think they thought the worst. Until I could establish that he was epileptic, which none of them knew for sure, I too, was concerned.
A minor RTC in Central London next. The relentless cold rain was bound to throw up more than a few of these today. A young woman fell off her moped when the vehicle lost traction on a slippery drain as she rode along the busy road. She had leg pain and the police and a passing ambulance crew were on scene when I got there, so she was already being taken care of. I helped her up and into the ambulance for further checks. The low speed and low height of her fall meant she probably had no more than a bruised knee. She was lucky not to have fallen in front of a bus.
This is the season for suicide and my next call, to a male who’d jumped from Blackfriars Bridge, had been fished out of the river by the RNLI. My MRU buddy, the one I seem to always get tough jobs with, told me that he’d been taken further up river to the lifeboat station because he was dead. Normally, we are asked for an opinion first, so that seemed very strange. Nevertheless, off we went in search of our supposedly dead patient.
When I arrived at the station, my colleague was already inside and I made my way down the slippery jetty and into the small floating cabin that serves as a first aid room for the RNLI and river police. I could see a man lying on his back on the bed and I noticed that his chest was rising. So, not dead then.
A lifeboat man had dragged the suicidal man from the river after he was spotted floating face down under the bridge. He wasn’t breathing and his rescuer, a man called Paul Ward, began resuscitating him. By the time he’d reached the station, his charge was breathing again and conscious. So all our efforts were now concentrated on keeping him that way. He was re-heated (his temperature had plummeted and couldn’t be read on our thermometers) with blankets and warmed IV fluids. I’d already cut away all of his wet clothing to accommodate the process and now we waited for his body temperature to rise and for his vital signs to normalise.
Meanwhile, two officers and an ambulance arrived and a plan was prepared for his removal. The deck and walkway of the lifeboat station is very hazardous when wet and I’ve tackled it more than once with patients (dead and alive). The risk of slipping is high, so we needed all hands to remove our patient to the safety of the ambulance.
It took almost half an hour for the man’s body heat to recover to normal; two bags of warm fluid and loads of blankets did the trick. His vital signs were good and he was making sense, although his ambition to die had been thwarted, it seemed he regretted trying. Apparently he had mental health issues and woman problems.
I’ve named Paul with his permission because these men and women don’t get enough recognition for the job they do. The majority of recoveries from the river will be dead and there’s never any thanks for that I guess but when they do save a life, it seems to be seen as part of their function and that’s it. I shook the man’s hand, thanked him myself and introduced him properly to the patient, informing him that he now knew the person who’d saved his life. I don’t know if he’ll ever visit Paul and his colleagues to say thanks personally but at least the job was done in part and by proxy.
I ended the shift with a call to an underground station for a 58 year-old man with DIB. I arrived to find him wheezing dramatically but still able to talk to me in full sentences. His wife and friends were with him and he told me he had a history of MI. He had no chest pain and this event had been triggered by a skateboarding teen who’d whipped past him on the platform, giving him a fright. He may have been bumped by the wheeled maniac and it looked to me like he was just winded. He requested (and got) oxygen and within two minutes was fully recovered and declining further aid.
I cancelled the ambulance and walked down the platform after bidding them farewell and an enjoyable evening. A female member of the underground staff squared up to the male staff member who’d led me to the patient and demanded to know why there was such confusion over the location given to me when I arrived. I hadn’t noticed any problems but I left them arguing at full volume as I made my way back to fresh air.
‘I told you where to send him!’
‘No you didn’t’
‘Oh, yes I did!’
‘No you didn’t’
Christmas has come early...
Be safe.
Radio Five Live
I'm back and I will be chatting to Donal McIntyre tonight on his radio five live show at 7.30pm. He wants to discuss the rising violence against paramedics (and by that I think he means ambulance staff in general).
Tune in if you can. I'm on duty today, so hopefully I'll get back home in time to take his call!
Xf
Tune in if you can. I'm on duty today, so hopefully I'll get back home in time to take his call!
Xf
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
Blind
Night shift: Four calls; all by ambulance.
Stats: 1 eTOH; 1 ?TIA; 1 Unwell baby; 1 Assault with eye injury.
Sundays tend to be quieter and I took advantage of the downtime at the station. I might as well because every weekend from now until next year will gather momentum in terms of call volume. We are taking around 4,000 a day at the moment.
So, in typical fashion, I was cleaning up the dregs of Saturday with a drunken Spaniard who went to sleep at a bus shelter. He spoke no English and his fractured bottle of Chivas Regal gave away his hobby. I cleared the litter and then stood him up. The crew arrived and he was taken off the streets. So we cleared the litter twice.
Botox, funnily enough, can numb the face. A call for a 48 year-old female who lay in the corner after a party in which hundreds of people milled around, claimed she couldn’t feel one side of her face (the side she’d had treatment on). She was drunk and told me she had high blood pressure, which I didn’t doubt. Her anxious friends kept getting in the way and the shy patient told them she wanted the room cleared before she’d move for me. That wasn’t going to happen and when the crew arrived she was taken away in a chair in full view of everyone.
Now, having said all that, Botulinum can cause problems if it travels down nerve pathways and into the brain, so the woman may have been suffering a genuine neurological insult and doubtful as I was, given that she was drunk and her behaviour was more of an embarrassed inebriated person rather than a stroke victim, there’s no room for error on assumption.
Unwell children are among the worst type of call and I always worry a little about the condition a child will be in, regardless of the call description. Regular readers will know why. So, a call to a 20 week old baby with DIB had me thinking the worst. The little girl was currently being treated for an infection and rash and now she had diarrhoea and her breathing was laboured.
The parents stood by as I climbed over the makeshift bed on the floor of their flat to examine the child. She was sleeping and I felt guilty waking her up. I felt even guiltier piercing her tiny foot with a needle in order to get blood for a BM. She was active and her breathing seemed fine, if a little fast. The crew took her to the hospital where she’d been born – they’ll have more information about her there.
I stood by in Soho for a while but I moved off after a prostitute approached the car and asked if I was Mike. I told her I wasn’t. ‘Is Mike not on tonight then?’ she asked. I know several Mikes at work but I doubt she knew any of them. ‘Well, you look like Mike’, she said before bidding me a good night and wobbling off. Things are a bit tight if they have to resort to picking up emergency service personnel on duty. I expect she hit on a cop next.
Another eye injury tonight. A 49 year-old man was assaulted on a bus with a weapon and his left eye was so badly damaged that blood had entered the space in front of the eyeball. This condition is known as hyphema and it isn’t always sight-threatening. In fact, I couldn’t see this problem because it was dark and he had a wound above the eye which needed covering, so I learned about it from my colleague on the ambulance that took him away. He had told me he couldn’t see but that could be temporary. Hyphema can clear up on its own but it depends on the extent of the damage and the treatment given.
While I was trying to treat him, he insisted on getting up to go. Only the cops on scene could contain him because all he wanted to do was get revenge. He obviously knew his attacker and he was hell-bent on going after him. This is how things get out of hand and people get stabbed to death.
Be safe.
Stats: 1 eTOH; 1 ?TIA; 1 Unwell baby; 1 Assault with eye injury.
Sundays tend to be quieter and I took advantage of the downtime at the station. I might as well because every weekend from now until next year will gather momentum in terms of call volume. We are taking around 4,000 a day at the moment.
So, in typical fashion, I was cleaning up the dregs of Saturday with a drunken Spaniard who went to sleep at a bus shelter. He spoke no English and his fractured bottle of Chivas Regal gave away his hobby. I cleared the litter and then stood him up. The crew arrived and he was taken off the streets. So we cleared the litter twice.
Botox, funnily enough, can numb the face. A call for a 48 year-old female who lay in the corner after a party in which hundreds of people milled around, claimed she couldn’t feel one side of her face (the side she’d had treatment on). She was drunk and told me she had high blood pressure, which I didn’t doubt. Her anxious friends kept getting in the way and the shy patient told them she wanted the room cleared before she’d move for me. That wasn’t going to happen and when the crew arrived she was taken away in a chair in full view of everyone.
Now, having said all that, Botulinum can cause problems if it travels down nerve pathways and into the brain, so the woman may have been suffering a genuine neurological insult and doubtful as I was, given that she was drunk and her behaviour was more of an embarrassed inebriated person rather than a stroke victim, there’s no room for error on assumption.
Unwell children are among the worst type of call and I always worry a little about the condition a child will be in, regardless of the call description. Regular readers will know why. So, a call to a 20 week old baby with DIB had me thinking the worst. The little girl was currently being treated for an infection and rash and now she had diarrhoea and her breathing was laboured.
The parents stood by as I climbed over the makeshift bed on the floor of their flat to examine the child. She was sleeping and I felt guilty waking her up. I felt even guiltier piercing her tiny foot with a needle in order to get blood for a BM. She was active and her breathing seemed fine, if a little fast. The crew took her to the hospital where she’d been born – they’ll have more information about her there.
I stood by in Soho for a while but I moved off after a prostitute approached the car and asked if I was Mike. I told her I wasn’t. ‘Is Mike not on tonight then?’ she asked. I know several Mikes at work but I doubt she knew any of them. ‘Well, you look like Mike’, she said before bidding me a good night and wobbling off. Things are a bit tight if they have to resort to picking up emergency service personnel on duty. I expect she hit on a cop next.
Another eye injury tonight. A 49 year-old man was assaulted on a bus with a weapon and his left eye was so badly damaged that blood had entered the space in front of the eyeball. This condition is known as hyphema and it isn’t always sight-threatening. In fact, I couldn’t see this problem because it was dark and he had a wound above the eye which needed covering, so I learned about it from my colleague on the ambulance that took him away. He had told me he couldn’t see but that could be temporary. Hyphema can clear up on its own but it depends on the extent of the damage and the treatment given.
While I was trying to treat him, he insisted on getting up to go. Only the cops on scene could contain him because all he wanted to do was get revenge. He obviously knew his attacker and he was hell-bent on going after him. This is how things get out of hand and people get stabbed to death.
Be safe.
Monday, 27 October 2008
Indiscriminate
Night shift: Eleven calls; one no-trace; one false alarm; one declined and the rest by ambulance.
Stats: 1 Faint; 1 Abdo pain; 3 eTOH (including assaults); 1 Assault with head injury; 1 DIB; 1 Unwell.
The weekend continues with an assortment of calls, including the usual suspects involved with alcohol.
The no-trace was for a collapsed 40 year-old male who didn’t exist when I got on scene. A witness had called us but declined to stick around – that always looks dodgy. The police arrived a few minutes behind me but the guy had either walked off after his sleep or he hadn’t taken up pavement space in the first place.
A first aider from a theatre ran out looking very worried and said ‘hurry up, she’s getting worse!’ and so I asked Control to speed up the process if possible, thinking that my 45 year-old female patient who’d fainted was having a cardiac event.
Once inside, however, it was clear she’d just passed out and was unwell with the heat of the place. She told me she’d been experiencing hot flushes and at times felt cold. Her hands were tingling (probably because she’d been hyperventilating) and she had abdo pain to start with. I asked her if she was menopausal and she confirmed that she’d just started it. This was probably the culprit but she was taken by ambulance just in case. Meanwhile her friends were digging her because they’d only just arrived to see the show and now they were going to miss it. There was good humour in their comments though.
Another abdo pain in a restaurant next. A 54 year-old woman passed out after complaining of stomach pains. I found the place after negotiating the terrible road closures around the Covent Garden area – the poor woman and her partner were left sitting in the basement for a long time before I got there and none of the staff even asked if she was alright. I had to find my own way down to her.
Her BP was low, so she was laid down for a bit until it recovered but once the crew arrived and her ECG was checked I found a couple of anomalies and thought it would be best if she went for a check-up.
A suspect vehicle was found in Mayfair, close to an Embassy, so I was asked to attend the RVP with a crew and a couple of other resources as the police explosives dogs sniffed around the cars in the little side street. There were at least ten vehicles on scene, including the specialist bomb team whose truck houses an explosives robot. The lorry had been seen parked there for hours and a couple of PC’s weren’t happy with it, so we were all unleashed to the area. Plenty of people in the local buildings found the scene entertaining but they must have been concerned about their proximity to all this activity.
We were stood down after 30 minutes when nothing was found. A lorry driver is going to get more than a ticket when he comes back.
A six foot plus Norwegian man was allegedly assaulted in the doorway of his hotel and he lay on the carpet completely confused. He had blood coming from his lip but no significant injury and I spent some time trying to persuade him that he should get checked out. A witness told me that he’d seen him ‘flying’ through the door and I reasoned that if he’d been punched it would have been by someone at least his own height. The possibility that he had just tripped awkwardly seemed more likely. He was very, very drunk.
In the end, after the police had arrived and a crew was on scene, he was taken away by a friend who said he’d look after him.
Two young girls were assaulted in a Soho night club by a man when he took offence to them. ‘I don’t care if you are a man or a woman’, he’d allegedly said to one of them just before he head-butted her. Then he smashed a glass over the head of her friend who tried to defend her.
When I arrived a couple of doormen were pinning the guy to a wall outside, waiting for the police. His girlfriend was with him…she must be very proud of her man.
Another young woman was left abandoned by her so-called friends when she became too drunk to stand. She vomited all over the toilet floor and passed out. I arrived to find her bent over a sink feeling sorry for herself and apologising to me for the trouble she was causing. I asked the ‘booze bus’, which is running every weekend, to come and collect her. She didn’t have enough money for a cab home, so she would spend the night on the good ship NHS until she was fit for the bus.
A fight broke out on the Embankment and two 28 year-old men were given head injuries. One of them, in an attempt to escape across the busy road, slammed into a car. Both had no memory of being hit and both needed to go to hospital, so I needed two ambulances for them. I was draining our resources single-handedly this weekend.
There was a bit of aggression between them and another man and I was caught in the middle of it. For a moment I thought I might get myself punched just for being there in the wrong colour, so I made my usual de-fusing speech and things calmed down as I treated the men’s injuries.
For an hour or so I bantered with the crew of the booze bus, which I love dearly, in Soho, where they park up and wait for calls. I had time to laugh and relax with coffee for a change.
I wasn’t required for the DIB outside a hostel because the crew arrived with me, so I left them to it.
An unwell 37 year-old woman who said her heart was ‘fading’ prompted an emergency call at her workplace but the more we spoke to her (crew on scene), the less I believed her. She had no medical problems at all and seemed to be tired. She wanted a night off work I think.
My last call was for a 19 year-old woman with sickle cell crisis but I didn’t see her because the crew arrived with me and I let them get on with it. Thus my Saturday night passed into the annals of history…until the next one.
Be safe.
Stats: 1 Faint; 1 Abdo pain; 3 eTOH (including assaults); 1 Assault with head injury; 1 DIB; 1 Unwell.
The weekend continues with an assortment of calls, including the usual suspects involved with alcohol.
The no-trace was for a collapsed 40 year-old male who didn’t exist when I got on scene. A witness had called us but declined to stick around – that always looks dodgy. The police arrived a few minutes behind me but the guy had either walked off after his sleep or he hadn’t taken up pavement space in the first place.
A first aider from a theatre ran out looking very worried and said ‘hurry up, she’s getting worse!’ and so I asked Control to speed up the process if possible, thinking that my 45 year-old female patient who’d fainted was having a cardiac event.
Once inside, however, it was clear she’d just passed out and was unwell with the heat of the place. She told me she’d been experiencing hot flushes and at times felt cold. Her hands were tingling (probably because she’d been hyperventilating) and she had abdo pain to start with. I asked her if she was menopausal and she confirmed that she’d just started it. This was probably the culprit but she was taken by ambulance just in case. Meanwhile her friends were digging her because they’d only just arrived to see the show and now they were going to miss it. There was good humour in their comments though.
Another abdo pain in a restaurant next. A 54 year-old woman passed out after complaining of stomach pains. I found the place after negotiating the terrible road closures around the Covent Garden area – the poor woman and her partner were left sitting in the basement for a long time before I got there and none of the staff even asked if she was alright. I had to find my own way down to her.
Her BP was low, so she was laid down for a bit until it recovered but once the crew arrived and her ECG was checked I found a couple of anomalies and thought it would be best if she went for a check-up.
A suspect vehicle was found in Mayfair, close to an Embassy, so I was asked to attend the RVP with a crew and a couple of other resources as the police explosives dogs sniffed around the cars in the little side street. There were at least ten vehicles on scene, including the specialist bomb team whose truck houses an explosives robot. The lorry had been seen parked there for hours and a couple of PC’s weren’t happy with it, so we were all unleashed to the area. Plenty of people in the local buildings found the scene entertaining but they must have been concerned about their proximity to all this activity.
We were stood down after 30 minutes when nothing was found. A lorry driver is going to get more than a ticket when he comes back.
A six foot plus Norwegian man was allegedly assaulted in the doorway of his hotel and he lay on the carpet completely confused. He had blood coming from his lip but no significant injury and I spent some time trying to persuade him that he should get checked out. A witness told me that he’d seen him ‘flying’ through the door and I reasoned that if he’d been punched it would have been by someone at least his own height. The possibility that he had just tripped awkwardly seemed more likely. He was very, very drunk.
In the end, after the police had arrived and a crew was on scene, he was taken away by a friend who said he’d look after him.
Two young girls were assaulted in a Soho night club by a man when he took offence to them. ‘I don’t care if you are a man or a woman’, he’d allegedly said to one of them just before he head-butted her. Then he smashed a glass over the head of her friend who tried to defend her.
When I arrived a couple of doormen were pinning the guy to a wall outside, waiting for the police. His girlfriend was with him…she must be very proud of her man.
Another young woman was left abandoned by her so-called friends when she became too drunk to stand. She vomited all over the toilet floor and passed out. I arrived to find her bent over a sink feeling sorry for herself and apologising to me for the trouble she was causing. I asked the ‘booze bus’, which is running every weekend, to come and collect her. She didn’t have enough money for a cab home, so she would spend the night on the good ship NHS until she was fit for the bus.
A fight broke out on the Embankment and two 28 year-old men were given head injuries. One of them, in an attempt to escape across the busy road, slammed into a car. Both had no memory of being hit and both needed to go to hospital, so I needed two ambulances for them. I was draining our resources single-handedly this weekend.
There was a bit of aggression between them and another man and I was caught in the middle of it. For a moment I thought I might get myself punched just for being there in the wrong colour, so I made my usual de-fusing speech and things calmed down as I treated the men’s injuries.
For an hour or so I bantered with the crew of the booze bus, which I love dearly, in Soho, where they park up and wait for calls. I had time to laugh and relax with coffee for a change.
I wasn’t required for the DIB outside a hostel because the crew arrived with me, so I left them to it.
An unwell 37 year-old woman who said her heart was ‘fading’ prompted an emergency call at her workplace but the more we spoke to her (crew on scene), the less I believed her. She had no medical problems at all and seemed to be tired. She wanted a night off work I think.
My last call was for a 19 year-old woman with sickle cell crisis but I didn’t see her because the crew arrived with me and I let them get on with it. Thus my Saturday night passed into the annals of history…until the next one.
Be safe.
Sunday, 26 October 2008
Friday in Hell
Night shift: Seven calls; one assisted-only; six by ambulance.
Stats: 1 Chest infection; 2 Stabbings; 1 eTOH/drugs; 1 eTOH fall with facial injuries; 1 eTOH; 3 Assaulted with head injuries.
Friday night and although I’ve written up seven calls, there were more but I’m too tired to record them all. I had an observer with me tonight – an LAS bod from Admin called Scott. This was his first trip out in a Fast Response Unit. Probably his last after he’d witnesses a typical weekend starter.
A Red1 for a ‘choking’ was in fact nothing of the sort – the patient, a 77 year wheelchair-bound lady had a chest infection but her call for help somehow translated as life threatening to the Careline people, who tend to panic if not sure. The rapid trip to the flat was complicated by our (the crew was on scene with me) inability to find the exact address given. We ran into a block of flats with the worry that we’d left a potentially dying woman behind locked doors too long to save her. There were no police units available to assist us should we need to force the door and I intended to do just that if we found there was no way in.
Unfortunately the block we’d gone into didn’t have the relevant flat in it, even though the buzzers listed it. We’d gone past the little gate that opened into the patient’s home and when we found it we knocked loudly. There was no reply and I tried the door. We’d been told it was locked but it opened right into her front room and there she was…sitting in her wheelchair with a surprised look on her face.
‘I thought I’d locked that’, she said.
‘We were told you were choking’, I said.
‘No, I’ve had a bad chest infection, that’s all’.
I left the crew to deal with her and I met the police, who were running towards me in panic mode. I told them it was a false alarm and they wound themselves down to catch their collective breaths. It was a punchy start to the shift.
A 19 year-old man was stabbed in the back of the head for no apparent reason as he walked through a busy West End street. I say no apparent reason because his behaviour as I dressed his wound, which was deep enough to require stitches, was shifty to say the least. Police were on scene and his answers to questions like ‘what’s your name’ and ‘where do you live’ were delayed and vague. He made no eye contact and continually looked about as if he was late for something…a gang meeting perhaps. Very judgmental of me, I know, but that’s how it felt.
After he’d been treated a man appeared at the corner of the restaurant where the patient had been, fiddled with his belt and positioned himself at the corner, near the entrance. I knew what was coming. Bearing in mind that the police were right there with me, interviewing the victim and the place was heaving with people going about their night’s business, I felt sure he wouldn’t have the bottle to go through with his next action…but he did. He unzipped his fly and began urinating right onto the pavement in full view of me, my observer, the police, CCTV and hundreds of others. It was only when I asked the nearest police officer to intervene that he was noticed.
‘What are you doing?’ asked the cop.
‘I’m pissing, what does it look like?’ replied the drunken and obviously stupid man.
One of the plain clothed police officers turned to him as he continued his acidic waterfall display and asked ‘do you think that’s alright then?’
The first officer then added ‘your lucky I’m busy with something more serious at the moment’.
The man shook his weapon of mass destruction and grinned. It was the grin of an idiot on patrol. Then he buzzed off after several more warnings from the cops. It was moot because the damage had been done and a little river of urine travelled towards my boots, which I deftly lifted out of the way after a quick warning from my observer (who was very observant, obviously).
The eating customers in the restaurant had not only been treated to the sight of the man with the gashed head, they’d also had a special bonus treat and got to watch Mr. Urinator do his thing for them. Cool.
I waited a long time for an ambulance on the next call. I was with a 40 year-old woman who’d been found collapsed, apparently drunk, on the floor of a club. The security people had dragged her outside (they do that) and left her on the pavement for me to collect – like rubbish.
At first she did seem drunk but her behaviour wasn’t consistent with just alcohol and I found out she was a nurse. Her boyfriend was with her and he was an EMT, so it was a big family get-together for medical types, except she wasn’t enjoying it. Her breathing was laboured and stertorous and she stopped and breath-held every now and again, for reasons I cannot explain. It wasn’t respiratory depression, she just wanted to stop.
Meanwhile a small, wide black woman from the crowd was shouting and swearing and making a real nuisance of herself, claiming that her mother was a nurse and that she knew what was happening and that I didn’t have a clue. She stood over the head of the patient just at the moment I noticed her breathing stop again and she obstructed me so much that I couldn’t move to reposition her in order to assist with her airway. This kind of obstruction is illegal now but the mad midget had no intention of letting me go about my business without putting herself in the frame.
I asked the door staff to help me but they were stopped in their tracks when she belted out ‘you can’t touch me, that’s assault’. She was eventually shepherded away by someone else, a man who became quite abusive towards her and who was hell bent on punching her lights out. Unprofessionally, I thought it would be a good idea.
Now my patient was floppy and her breathing wasn’t good, so I put oxygen on and prepared for the worst, although I still felt she was over-playing this. Her boyfriend remained strangely calm about it all – this was only their first date and I doubted he’d be inviting her out for another.
I called again and again for backup until I was forced to ask for urgent police when the mouthy woman from a few minutes ago returned to my horizon. She made racist comments about me and generally insulted me. I’ve never been called a bitch before, it was a new experience and I didn’t quite know what to do with it. All I could hear, despite the presence of dozens of other noisy people, was her shrill crackling voice as she berated me. I’d never met this lady in my life before. I must have done something to her in my past life…perhaps when I was a practicing psychiatrist.
Almost an hour past and the police had arrived and contained the little horror south of me and my patient. I could still hear her arguing with them. Now she was telling them her relative was in the CID and she knew lawyers too. I was gobsmacked that she had any siblings because I’m quite sure they would all have topped themselves after ten minutes in her presence.
The ambulance arrived and a Station Officer landed to give me backup too. I left the DSO to solve the little matter of the poison pixie while I concerned myself with the patient, who was still in bad shape. The crew took her away and I followed on but before I left I witnessed the police being harangued by the wicked witch to the point that they looked very tired of it all. They weren’t even going to do the paperwork for her and advised her, in the strongest terms, to leave the scene. She sloped off, shouting all the way, to the underground station where she would no doubt have entertained many people all the way to wherever she came from. Hell’s my guess.
Later on I was told that the naughty nurse had discharged herself from hospital with nothing wrong except too much alcohol in her blood. She’d been playing it just as I had suspected.
Outside St. Thomas’ hospital a little criminal, escorted by two big police officers, attacked them both as they took him away. He belted one of them so hard he hit the ground and all I knew of this was the frantic run up the ramp by one of the officers when he asked a crew for help. I drove down behind the ambulance and the poor cop was on the ground with a bruised face and a broken ego. The other cop was pinning Mr. Nasty to the pavement. How can a man like that possibly contribute to society?
It’s refreshing to know that we aren’t the only people that patients can make look like fools. A 35 year-old man who fell (drunk) and smashed his face was sitting with two PCSO’s in the street when I arrived. ‘I can’t get a word out of him’, one of the officers said as I knelt beside the bloodied patient.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked.
‘Mike’, he replied without hesitation.
That left the PCSO looking bewildered.
Then three young soldiers were set upon in W1 by a gang of youths; I watched as police vehicles, one after the other, raced towards the scene until I was called to attend. Each of the three had head injuries and one was laying on the ground – he had suffered the most. Weapons had been used and the patient on the deck described them as ‘batons like the cops use’. His two mates were wandering around as the police tried to contain them and, most unhelpful as usual, a female companion was dramatically running among them, crying and shouting out as if the whole world had ended for her.
I asked for two more ambulances and we got all three to hospital, especially my patient on the ground who had to be collared and boarded. The least injured was taken in my car because I only got two ambulances in the end.
Another assault in the early hours and I carefully approached a small car with steamed up windows because there were a number of people inside and I wasn’t entirely sure of my safety. The call had described a patient ‘bleeding from the eye’ and when the driver’s window was wound down at my request I could see four young black girls in the vehicle. One of them, in the driver’s seat, was holding her head as if crying. She had been attacked and the assailant had thrown her to the ground, kicked her and stamped on her hard enough for the heel of her shoe to pierce her eyeball. I had a close look at the damage and I’m sure she’ll have to live without sight in that eye now. She is only 19.
A drunken Chinese 21 year-old ended my shift. He lolled on the pavement, surrounded by his noisy, photo-taking friends. Every time I tried to carry out obs on him he’d thrash out at me and the crew that arrived decided enough was enough and called the police. They subdued him eventually and we dragged him onto a stretcher as he slumbered in alcohol-land. He needed a big needle and fluids and I obliged.
Be safe.
Stats: 1 Chest infection; 2 Stabbings; 1 eTOH/drugs; 1 eTOH fall with facial injuries; 1 eTOH; 3 Assaulted with head injuries.
Friday night and although I’ve written up seven calls, there were more but I’m too tired to record them all. I had an observer with me tonight – an LAS bod from Admin called Scott. This was his first trip out in a Fast Response Unit. Probably his last after he’d witnesses a typical weekend starter.
A Red1 for a ‘choking’ was in fact nothing of the sort – the patient, a 77 year wheelchair-bound lady had a chest infection but her call for help somehow translated as life threatening to the Careline people, who tend to panic if not sure. The rapid trip to the flat was complicated by our (the crew was on scene with me) inability to find the exact address given. We ran into a block of flats with the worry that we’d left a potentially dying woman behind locked doors too long to save her. There were no police units available to assist us should we need to force the door and I intended to do just that if we found there was no way in.
Unfortunately the block we’d gone into didn’t have the relevant flat in it, even though the buzzers listed it. We’d gone past the little gate that opened into the patient’s home and when we found it we knocked loudly. There was no reply and I tried the door. We’d been told it was locked but it opened right into her front room and there she was…sitting in her wheelchair with a surprised look on her face.
‘I thought I’d locked that’, she said.
‘We were told you were choking’, I said.
‘No, I’ve had a bad chest infection, that’s all’.
I left the crew to deal with her and I met the police, who were running towards me in panic mode. I told them it was a false alarm and they wound themselves down to catch their collective breaths. It was a punchy start to the shift.
A 19 year-old man was stabbed in the back of the head for no apparent reason as he walked through a busy West End street. I say no apparent reason because his behaviour as I dressed his wound, which was deep enough to require stitches, was shifty to say the least. Police were on scene and his answers to questions like ‘what’s your name’ and ‘where do you live’ were delayed and vague. He made no eye contact and continually looked about as if he was late for something…a gang meeting perhaps. Very judgmental of me, I know, but that’s how it felt.
After he’d been treated a man appeared at the corner of the restaurant where the patient had been, fiddled with his belt and positioned himself at the corner, near the entrance. I knew what was coming. Bearing in mind that the police were right there with me, interviewing the victim and the place was heaving with people going about their night’s business, I felt sure he wouldn’t have the bottle to go through with his next action…but he did. He unzipped his fly and began urinating right onto the pavement in full view of me, my observer, the police, CCTV and hundreds of others. It was only when I asked the nearest police officer to intervene that he was noticed.
‘What are you doing?’ asked the cop.
‘I’m pissing, what does it look like?’ replied the drunken and obviously stupid man.
One of the plain clothed police officers turned to him as he continued his acidic waterfall display and asked ‘do you think that’s alright then?’
The first officer then added ‘your lucky I’m busy with something more serious at the moment’.
The man shook his weapon of mass destruction and grinned. It was the grin of an idiot on patrol. Then he buzzed off after several more warnings from the cops. It was moot because the damage had been done and a little river of urine travelled towards my boots, which I deftly lifted out of the way after a quick warning from my observer (who was very observant, obviously).
The eating customers in the restaurant had not only been treated to the sight of the man with the gashed head, they’d also had a special bonus treat and got to watch Mr. Urinator do his thing for them. Cool.
I waited a long time for an ambulance on the next call. I was with a 40 year-old woman who’d been found collapsed, apparently drunk, on the floor of a club. The security people had dragged her outside (they do that) and left her on the pavement for me to collect – like rubbish.
At first she did seem drunk but her behaviour wasn’t consistent with just alcohol and I found out she was a nurse. Her boyfriend was with her and he was an EMT, so it was a big family get-together for medical types, except she wasn’t enjoying it. Her breathing was laboured and stertorous and she stopped and breath-held every now and again, for reasons I cannot explain. It wasn’t respiratory depression, she just wanted to stop.
Meanwhile a small, wide black woman from the crowd was shouting and swearing and making a real nuisance of herself, claiming that her mother was a nurse and that she knew what was happening and that I didn’t have a clue. She stood over the head of the patient just at the moment I noticed her breathing stop again and she obstructed me so much that I couldn’t move to reposition her in order to assist with her airway. This kind of obstruction is illegal now but the mad midget had no intention of letting me go about my business without putting herself in the frame.
I asked the door staff to help me but they were stopped in their tracks when she belted out ‘you can’t touch me, that’s assault’. She was eventually shepherded away by someone else, a man who became quite abusive towards her and who was hell bent on punching her lights out. Unprofessionally, I thought it would be a good idea.
Now my patient was floppy and her breathing wasn’t good, so I put oxygen on and prepared for the worst, although I still felt she was over-playing this. Her boyfriend remained strangely calm about it all – this was only their first date and I doubted he’d be inviting her out for another.
I called again and again for backup until I was forced to ask for urgent police when the mouthy woman from a few minutes ago returned to my horizon. She made racist comments about me and generally insulted me. I’ve never been called a bitch before, it was a new experience and I didn’t quite know what to do with it. All I could hear, despite the presence of dozens of other noisy people, was her shrill crackling voice as she berated me. I’d never met this lady in my life before. I must have done something to her in my past life…perhaps when I was a practicing psychiatrist.
Almost an hour past and the police had arrived and contained the little horror south of me and my patient. I could still hear her arguing with them. Now she was telling them her relative was in the CID and she knew lawyers too. I was gobsmacked that she had any siblings because I’m quite sure they would all have topped themselves after ten minutes in her presence.
The ambulance arrived and a Station Officer landed to give me backup too. I left the DSO to solve the little matter of the poison pixie while I concerned myself with the patient, who was still in bad shape. The crew took her away and I followed on but before I left I witnessed the police being harangued by the wicked witch to the point that they looked very tired of it all. They weren’t even going to do the paperwork for her and advised her, in the strongest terms, to leave the scene. She sloped off, shouting all the way, to the underground station where she would no doubt have entertained many people all the way to wherever she came from. Hell’s my guess.
Later on I was told that the naughty nurse had discharged herself from hospital with nothing wrong except too much alcohol in her blood. She’d been playing it just as I had suspected.
Outside St. Thomas’ hospital a little criminal, escorted by two big police officers, attacked them both as they took him away. He belted one of them so hard he hit the ground and all I knew of this was the frantic run up the ramp by one of the officers when he asked a crew for help. I drove down behind the ambulance and the poor cop was on the ground with a bruised face and a broken ego. The other cop was pinning Mr. Nasty to the pavement. How can a man like that possibly contribute to society?
It’s refreshing to know that we aren’t the only people that patients can make look like fools. A 35 year-old man who fell (drunk) and smashed his face was sitting with two PCSO’s in the street when I arrived. ‘I can’t get a word out of him’, one of the officers said as I knelt beside the bloodied patient.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked.
‘Mike’, he replied without hesitation.
That left the PCSO looking bewildered.
Then three young soldiers were set upon in W1 by a gang of youths; I watched as police vehicles, one after the other, raced towards the scene until I was called to attend. Each of the three had head injuries and one was laying on the ground – he had suffered the most. Weapons had been used and the patient on the deck described them as ‘batons like the cops use’. His two mates were wandering around as the police tried to contain them and, most unhelpful as usual, a female companion was dramatically running among them, crying and shouting out as if the whole world had ended for her.
I asked for two more ambulances and we got all three to hospital, especially my patient on the ground who had to be collared and boarded. The least injured was taken in my car because I only got two ambulances in the end.
Another assault in the early hours and I carefully approached a small car with steamed up windows because there were a number of people inside and I wasn’t entirely sure of my safety. The call had described a patient ‘bleeding from the eye’ and when the driver’s window was wound down at my request I could see four young black girls in the vehicle. One of them, in the driver’s seat, was holding her head as if crying. She had been attacked and the assailant had thrown her to the ground, kicked her and stamped on her hard enough for the heel of her shoe to pierce her eyeball. I had a close look at the damage and I’m sure she’ll have to live without sight in that eye now. She is only 19.
A drunken Chinese 21 year-old ended my shift. He lolled on the pavement, surrounded by his noisy, photo-taking friends. Every time I tried to carry out obs on him he’d thrash out at me and the crew that arrived decided enough was enough and called the police. They subdued him eventually and we dragged him onto a stretcher as he slumbered in alcohol-land. He needed a big needle and fluids and I obliged.
Be safe.
Saturday, 25 October 2008
Unwelcome sight
Day shift: Twelve calls; one assisted-only; four cancellations; one treated on scene; six by ambulance.
Stats: 1 Chest pain; 2 Faint; 1 Assault with back pain; 1 eTOH; 1 Cardiac problem; 1 Inhaled foreign body; 1 Hypoglycaemic.
Well, the first two calls – a chest pain and a faint, aren’t worth noting because I didn’t do anything. Indeed it was a day of cancellations either when or before I got on scene. A frustrating sort of day then...
Until I managed to secure my place in today’s history by attending the 30 year-old lady who was pushed to the ground by a complete stranger. Now she had back ache. The motive for this vicious assault on a busy street in broad daylight is a mystery but the description given by witnesses of the man who perpetrated it seemed to match a regular street person with mental health issues that I knew.
The patient was only five feet tall and her assailant came from behind at speed and simply brushed her aside like she was an irrelevant obstruction. He was much larger and stronger than her, so when she fell, she crashed to the ground violently, hurting her back in the process. The witnesses were appalled and, even though they had places to be and things to do, they stuck around until the police had arrived in order to give statements and accurate descriptions of the man to blame. Whether the offender will be caught and punished is one of those lengths-of-a-piece-of-string questions.
Posh hotels (4 star and up) don’t really enjoy our company – we make the places look bad and the quicker we are out the better. In general, they are very nice to us but underneath the chat and smile you can detect a growing concern that their guests from the upper echelons of society may not take too kindly to staying in a place where people get ill or die. It’s sooo common.
So when I appeared in the room of a 33 year-old man who was ‘unresponsive’ and surrounded by hotel security I instantly felt at home with the edited responses to my questions. The man had been dumped at another hotel, allegedly by police (I find that unlikely) and then carted over to this hotel when his room key was found on him. He was completely out of it.
‘So, if he was brought over here how did he get to his room and onto the bed?’ I enquired.
‘We got him up here in a wheelchair’, replied the tall, beefy, dangerous-looking security man (‘security man A’ I shall call him).
‘Oh, right. So he arrived here in this state and you called an ambulance after you moved him to his room?’ I knew I was treading thin ice with a loaded question but I couldn’t resist. I don’t get many opportunities to be patronising with someone as large as security man A (I shall now call him SMA, for the sake of abbreviation – I quickly tired of the last name I used).
They didn’t want him seen in their foyer, you see. It was early morning when he was dumped on their doorstep like some adult-sized, drunken newborn and the guests would soon be at breakfast. There was no way on Earth they were going to leave him where he was until we arrived – we are just too unpredictable; we might have taken hours to get there.
Anyway, the crew arrive and I explain the problem. He’s rousable but not with it. We’ve ruled out diabetes, other medical problems and drugs…mostly because he’d been out all night with his friends (where they were nobody knew) and I pulled a full miniature of vodka from his pocket. So he was drunk and intact BUT not fit to stay here. He hadn’t been robbed and he hadn’t been assaulted but I requested the police because it was all too suspicious for me. The security men (including SMA) didn’t like that one little bit.
We cart him off to the ambulance and the police search his pockets more thoroughly than I’d dared, just to make sure there was nothing untoward going on. No drugs were found, no evidence of robbery (he had his money and phone with him) and no evidence of assault. So we were very sure that he was just drunk.
We managed to get him off the premises and out of sight just in time and for that SMA was grateful. I’m sure that’s why he thanked me as we left the red carpet behind.
A very unwell looking 35 year-old with a Mesenteric aneurysm, DVT and valve replacement history and a dodgy double-beat on his radial pulse had to go to hospital fairly quickly. A pulse couldn’t be detected on his other wrist and he was feeling ‘strange’. He may have developed an infection or his aneurysm was about to go ‘pop’. We couldn’t tell but we weren’t taking any chances with him. His blood pressures were wildly different from one arm to the other – not a good sign and possibly indicating an obstruction an the artery on one side. The MRU, myself and the crew all agreed to scoot ASAP.
An embarrassed 45 year-old lady asked me not to bother with an ambulance because she’d just given blood and fainted in a café as her worried friend looked on. He was the one who called the ambulance. She didn’t want the fuss. Neither did I. I told her I knew where I wasn’t wanted – she smiled and so did I.
But the 39 year-old crack-smoker who inhaled a piece of the metal upon which his delicacy was being cooked certainly needed me. The doctor who called us wasn’t too impressed with my ‘casual’ attitude. He’d asked for a blue light response because he was concerned that the patient’s airway would swell up and he’d die of asphyxia. Admittedly, the patient was a bit croaky and he had trouble swallowing but apart from that I saw no reason to rush into worry mode for him. I even considered taking him to hospital in the car such was the stability of his ‘condition’.
The small piece of metal had lodged in his throat somewhere to the right and just south of his pharynx and my best guess was that it affected his oesophagus more than his trachea. Okay, it had gone in red hot and he’d smelled burning flesh and had been in some pain initially but now that it had cooled, there was no imminent danger in my opinion. It was an accident that could have happened to any of us I reasoned. Well, any of us who use crack and have an unusually powerful suctioning action when smoking it.
He walked out to the street with me to wait for the ambulance because the doctor, who worked in the little surgery in the same building that housed the addicts, was making me feel uncomfortable. I think he took exception to my line of questioning and the presumption thereby that I thought he knew nothing of the matter. I just wanted a hand-over and I wasn’t prepared to get hyped up about it, that’s all.
I’ve said it before…sometimes saving a life is easy. A 27 year-old prop-hand and known diabetic was slumped in a chair at the back end of a theatre after collapsing during heavy lifting, which is his job. His boss and colleagues felt he must be hypo and called 999. I arrived, sussed out his BM at 2.1, gave him an injection of Glucagon, fed him on Lucozade and watched him slowly recover to 5.4 over a twenty minute period. See, easy.
He was left with a couple of donuts and after I’d done the paperwork, I saw him smoking a ciggie and leaning against a wall outside. ‘I’ve no idea why that happened’, he moaned, ‘I’m usually good at keeping my BM up.’
I believed him because most diabetics do their best to keep their condition under control but as they get older, more tired and more inclined to over-work, the delicate balance is ruined and a re-assessment of life is required. This was his second hypo in as many weeks and his boss promised him a lecture when I left.
After that, even the calls were rejecting me. I’d already had a day in which I felt unwanted by the public and professional faces I’d seen – now I was sent four calls and four cancellations in a row. I limped back to station wondering if Scruffs would turn his nose up at me when I got home.
Be safe.
Stats: 1 Chest pain; 2 Faint; 1 Assault with back pain; 1 eTOH; 1 Cardiac problem; 1 Inhaled foreign body; 1 Hypoglycaemic.
Well, the first two calls – a chest pain and a faint, aren’t worth noting because I didn’t do anything. Indeed it was a day of cancellations either when or before I got on scene. A frustrating sort of day then...
Until I managed to secure my place in today’s history by attending the 30 year-old lady who was pushed to the ground by a complete stranger. Now she had back ache. The motive for this vicious assault on a busy street in broad daylight is a mystery but the description given by witnesses of the man who perpetrated it seemed to match a regular street person with mental health issues that I knew.
The patient was only five feet tall and her assailant came from behind at speed and simply brushed her aside like she was an irrelevant obstruction. He was much larger and stronger than her, so when she fell, she crashed to the ground violently, hurting her back in the process. The witnesses were appalled and, even though they had places to be and things to do, they stuck around until the police had arrived in order to give statements and accurate descriptions of the man to blame. Whether the offender will be caught and punished is one of those lengths-of-a-piece-of-string questions.
Posh hotels (4 star and up) don’t really enjoy our company – we make the places look bad and the quicker we are out the better. In general, they are very nice to us but underneath the chat and smile you can detect a growing concern that their guests from the upper echelons of society may not take too kindly to staying in a place where people get ill or die. It’s sooo common.
So when I appeared in the room of a 33 year-old man who was ‘unresponsive’ and surrounded by hotel security I instantly felt at home with the edited responses to my questions. The man had been dumped at another hotel, allegedly by police (I find that unlikely) and then carted over to this hotel when his room key was found on him. He was completely out of it.
‘So, if he was brought over here how did he get to his room and onto the bed?’ I enquired.
‘We got him up here in a wheelchair’, replied the tall, beefy, dangerous-looking security man (‘security man A’ I shall call him).
‘Oh, right. So he arrived here in this state and you called an ambulance after you moved him to his room?’ I knew I was treading thin ice with a loaded question but I couldn’t resist. I don’t get many opportunities to be patronising with someone as large as security man A (I shall now call him SMA, for the sake of abbreviation – I quickly tired of the last name I used).
They didn’t want him seen in their foyer, you see. It was early morning when he was dumped on their doorstep like some adult-sized, drunken newborn and the guests would soon be at breakfast. There was no way on Earth they were going to leave him where he was until we arrived – we are just too unpredictable; we might have taken hours to get there.
Anyway, the crew arrive and I explain the problem. He’s rousable but not with it. We’ve ruled out diabetes, other medical problems and drugs…mostly because he’d been out all night with his friends (where they were nobody knew) and I pulled a full miniature of vodka from his pocket. So he was drunk and intact BUT not fit to stay here. He hadn’t been robbed and he hadn’t been assaulted but I requested the police because it was all too suspicious for me. The security men (including SMA) didn’t like that one little bit.
We cart him off to the ambulance and the police search his pockets more thoroughly than I’d dared, just to make sure there was nothing untoward going on. No drugs were found, no evidence of robbery (he had his money and phone with him) and no evidence of assault. So we were very sure that he was just drunk.
We managed to get him off the premises and out of sight just in time and for that SMA was grateful. I’m sure that’s why he thanked me as we left the red carpet behind.
A very unwell looking 35 year-old with a Mesenteric aneurysm, DVT and valve replacement history and a dodgy double-beat on his radial pulse had to go to hospital fairly quickly. A pulse couldn’t be detected on his other wrist and he was feeling ‘strange’. He may have developed an infection or his aneurysm was about to go ‘pop’. We couldn’t tell but we weren’t taking any chances with him. His blood pressures were wildly different from one arm to the other – not a good sign and possibly indicating an obstruction an the artery on one side. The MRU, myself and the crew all agreed to scoot ASAP.
An embarrassed 45 year-old lady asked me not to bother with an ambulance because she’d just given blood and fainted in a café as her worried friend looked on. He was the one who called the ambulance. She didn’t want the fuss. Neither did I. I told her I knew where I wasn’t wanted – she smiled and so did I.
But the 39 year-old crack-smoker who inhaled a piece of the metal upon which his delicacy was being cooked certainly needed me. The doctor who called us wasn’t too impressed with my ‘casual’ attitude. He’d asked for a blue light response because he was concerned that the patient’s airway would swell up and he’d die of asphyxia. Admittedly, the patient was a bit croaky and he had trouble swallowing but apart from that I saw no reason to rush into worry mode for him. I even considered taking him to hospital in the car such was the stability of his ‘condition’.
The small piece of metal had lodged in his throat somewhere to the right and just south of his pharynx and my best guess was that it affected his oesophagus more than his trachea. Okay, it had gone in red hot and he’d smelled burning flesh and had been in some pain initially but now that it had cooled, there was no imminent danger in my opinion. It was an accident that could have happened to any of us I reasoned. Well, any of us who use crack and have an unusually powerful suctioning action when smoking it.
He walked out to the street with me to wait for the ambulance because the doctor, who worked in the little surgery in the same building that housed the addicts, was making me feel uncomfortable. I think he took exception to my line of questioning and the presumption thereby that I thought he knew nothing of the matter. I just wanted a hand-over and I wasn’t prepared to get hyped up about it, that’s all.
I’ve said it before…sometimes saving a life is easy. A 27 year-old prop-hand and known diabetic was slumped in a chair at the back end of a theatre after collapsing during heavy lifting, which is his job. His boss and colleagues felt he must be hypo and called 999. I arrived, sussed out his BM at 2.1, gave him an injection of Glucagon, fed him on Lucozade and watched him slowly recover to 5.4 over a twenty minute period. See, easy.
He was left with a couple of donuts and after I’d done the paperwork, I saw him smoking a ciggie and leaning against a wall outside. ‘I’ve no idea why that happened’, he moaned, ‘I’m usually good at keeping my BM up.’
I believed him because most diabetics do their best to keep their condition under control but as they get older, more tired and more inclined to over-work, the delicate balance is ruined and a re-assessment of life is required. This was his second hypo in as many weeks and his boss promised him a lecture when I left.
After that, even the calls were rejecting me. I’d already had a day in which I felt unwanted by the public and professional faces I’d seen – now I was sent four calls and four cancellations in a row. I limped back to station wondering if Scruffs would turn his nose up at me when I got home.
Be safe.
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