The bad bee

It’s quite cold out; this month was supposed to be the hottest on record – not as given then.


A bee sting in the middle of the shift took me to a theatre – I can’t say which one but its part of an Hotel that I could never afford to book a room in, probably. Although when I win the next forty million on Eurolottery I’m sure I will pop in there for a weekend (Royal Suite). Anyway, the lady in the audience slapped something on her arm (not her husband) and discovered by means of a sharp sting to her finger, that it was a bee. She didn’t identify the thing - I did. There was a stinger and venom sac sticking in her digit. The sooner it was removed the better because she’d be getting the detrimental effects of the whole container if not... and she was sensitive to stuff, like insect stings.

Bees sting when they are threatened and their venom can cause irritation and pain – it can also set you up for Anaphylaxis, if you are that way inclined. The first time you get stung, your reaction will be fairly normal but the next time and subsequent events could result in a full-blown Anaphylactic reaction with potentially fatal consequences. But let’s not fall out of our prams with distress here; generally you will not react that way or you will get plenty of notice that things are bad – generally.

I told her to monitor herself and if she gets stung again to look out for a reaction that is, shall we say, over the top. Apart from this, she got a plaster on her wound and a check over. Then she happily went back to watch the rest of the show.

The bee, meantime, would have gone off and died somewhere having had it's little backside taken away by a complete stranger. You can read that whichever way you want :-)

Be safe.

For charity

Mr Tonsilpus has caught your imaginations I see. The FB group is up and running and I have now registered him for his own website, so look out for the link (he may have his own blog soon too)!

The charity I have chosen is the London Air Ambulance and you will find a widget on the left so that you can donate (if you wish).

I'm hoping Mr T will raise at least five grand for the charity and it is up to you to make that happen. Of course, he'll need to have those adventures we are all talking about now, right?

He's been promised a 'rideout' on the air ambulance and car very soon and he starts touring the UK in a few days before leaving the country for warmer climes.

Thank you for your enthusiasm with this - it's been great fun so far!

Xf

Mr T's Facebook group

I've created the FB group for you all to join. Please click on the photo of him on the left side bar to join. Alternatively, click on the title above to go directly to it.

So far, he has been invited to more than 40 different places around the world and will be going out for a day or two with some very important people! If you want him for a while, please join the group. If you are not on FB or you don't want to join FB, please email your request instead.

I hope to create a website for him as he travels, so pics and videos will also appear on that.

Let's have some fun!

Xf

Rabid dogs

The torrential rain has eased and tonight was clearer and drier but it didn’t stop yet another driver from trying to kill me as I ran on a call. She turned right ahead of me at a major junction as I sped towards her at 60mph but instead of continuing so that I could just drive past, she stopped dead in the centre of the road, blocking my path. I heard a loud screech from my brakes as I slowed and took evasive action by swerving around her tail. Then she coolly drove off.


The police helicopter (India 99) hovered overhead as I tried to find the scene of a RTC in which a woman had suffered neck injuries and I got three different locations sent to me until I eventually arrived to find a bit of chaos in a narrow street.

An armed pursuit had taken place and the people the cops were chasing had crashed their vehicle (well, the one they'd nicked) before legging it out of the area. They left a poor 50 year-old lady trapped in her car after they’d rammed her off the road. Her door was crushed against a post on the pavement and the passenger door was stuck fast – the front end of her vehicle had been ripped open when they collided.

It took almost an hour to free her from the car. The roof had to be cut off by the Fire Brigade and then she was taken out on a board. She had mild neck pain and lower rib pain but otherwise seemed unhurt. Emotionally, however, she was a wreck. I hope they catch these selfish violent mongrels.


On the subject of violent mongrels, two females, one after the other, approached the car saying they'd been punched in the face. The first girl had been assaulted by another female who thought she deserved it because she was ‘fat’ and the second was punched so hard by a man outside a club that she hit the ground and her nose was broken. ‘I can’t believe a man hit me. No-one deserves this’, she said through angry Irish tears.

Of course, she’s right but as the clubs spilled out in the early hours, the rabid little drunken hounds that muddy the waters for a good night out mixed among those trying to go home peacefully. With such individuals in the crowd, these random, unprovoked assaults are sadly predictable.

Be safe.

Misty nonsense

No time for a VDI this evening as a Red3 was passed to me and I was sent to a 'broken nose'. I couldn’t get an answer from anyone about why this would be categorised so high but when I got on scene I found police with a male who’d been badly beaten up and who’d sustained very deep, almost to-the-bone lacerations to his face.

The man was an ice cream vendor and he’d been attacked during an argument. The assailant had pulled his T-shirt over his head and then proceeded to punch him heavily with a hand that was covered in rings. The poor man’s face was a mess and he had a broken nose and possible broken cheek. The possibility of a fractured base of skull was real too, so I got an ambulance for him as soon as possible.

Once again, society’s Neanderthals show off their big-man prowess by beaten the hell out of someone who flogs sweets from a van. Regardless of what the argument may have been about, there is no need to make a point by trying to kill someone. I know the price of a '99' has gone up considerably but, please...


Once again the battery drained on the car as I sat on stand-by waiting for the next call, trying to demist my windscreen. The fan was running at top speed for only a few minutes and the screen stubbornly refused to clear, giving me the prospect of a dangerous journey to the abdo pain that had come in. Unfortunately the power required to achieve (or in this case, fail to achieve) the task of producing visibility removed the power required to start the engine. So, I was off the road and waiting for another rescue.

Luckily, within an hour, the man in the van showed up and I was empowered once more. I didn't do anything after that though. Everyone seemed to have forgotten I was around.

Be safe.

The Tonsilpus adventure

Well, thank you all very much for being so enthusiastic about this! I have so far received almost thirty invites for him to travel across the USA, Australia, New Zealand and other far-flung (and a few not-so far-flung) places.

So, the plan is to create a Facebook group which you should all join when you get the invite (I will place a button on here). Then I will send out a little form for you to fill in if you are taking custody of him. I'll need to know where he's going, when and what you plan to do with him. All of your personal stuff; name and address, will be kept strictly private but I need to have a valid postal address.

Mr Tonsilpus will travel with a little passport which custodians will sign and record a little note in, stating where he's been. You may photograph him and video him and they can be shared with everyone on the FB page.

Then, after your holding period is up, I will email you to advise you of his next destination. This means, of course that you will have the next person's mailing address and will be responsible for posting him off (at you own cost, I'm afraid) but I will try to keep the next destination within reason to limit your postage costs.

If you don't mind this, then please re-apply when the Facebook page is up. Incidentally, my email address has always been accessible via the blog - it's thexfileman@aol.com.

The DEADLINE for initial applications (just an email or message to say you want him) will be the 1st of September. After that, he will be prepared and sent off to the first applicant, probably in the UK for a tour of his home ground before setting off abroad. Of course, you can still apply to have him as he travels but I will want him posted off in a logical way to limit the time he is exposed to the outside world (he's only little and a bit fragile).

He will return to a UK host before finally coming back to me at my office address in London.

This is all a bit of fun but I'd like, with your permission, to do something magnanimous with him - if this goes well, I'd like everyone who is taking him (and those of who are just watching) to contribute a little bit to a charity that I have in mind. A link will be set up so that you can donate directly to it and then, when he returns home with all his experience and a fully completed passport, I will auction him off, passport and all - again for charity.

If you want to ave a little Tonsilpus of your own, I can ask Lottie - who made him - to knit you your very own Mr T! Just email me and I will pass on the request. She will probably need to charge for him but I will leave that to you and her.

What do you think? If he travels to a lot of places, I might pack myself in an envelope and try it!

Xf

Alcol-demic

I had a look at some of the vehicles that may be suitable for our new Fast Response fleet and have decided on this. At a mere £170,000, I think the investment will pay off in around twenty or thirty years. However, we must consider the comfort of our patients (oh, and the FRU pilots) – and with a 0-60 in less than 5 seconds pedigree, surely getting to them before they vomit into the gutter is important? I can't wait to take delivery of it - and I hope the Booze Bus crews get a similar re-vamp; perhaps a Rolls Royce Estate? :-)


So, the big headline news is that we are currently dealing with one drunken (or alcohol-related) person every eight minutes. I did a bit of calculating and this is what I discovered: there are 288 hours in 24 hours (clever, eh?); that means there are 36 eight-minute periods every day. Effectively, as long as we are taking on an alcohol call every eight minutes, there are thirty-six crews in work if they all take one call a shift. There would still be three or four crews employed if they were dedicated to taking every call of this nature every shift.

Alcohol-related calls are a waste of time for the most part, as well as other minor and time-wasting jobs that we encounter every single day, 24-hours a day, but the caveat here is that dozens, if not hundreds of additional people are gainfully employed as a result – across the UK, that could amount to thousands of individuals, including of course, nurses and doctors.
I don’t like the waste – you all know that; our tax money and precious life-saving skills are frittered away on these people but I am pragmatic and realise that they are the source of some, if not most of my income. That, however, will not stop me believing that it is time to penalise them - a steep fine when they sober up is required.

The long four-night weekend starts now and a strange assault call came to me with a request to let Control know if an ambulance was required. The cops were on scene with a young girl who had (by her own admission) hit a 61 year-old man with a bottle, which shattered and sliced open his hand.

The man was denying this and stuck to a story in which he sustained the injury during a fight between two young men who were with the girl. He said he’d ‘smacked one of them in the mouth’ and the toothy contact caused the damage to his mitten. This story, of course, helped keep his ‘hard man’ character intact, whilst the other one – where a girl hit him with a bottle (and the evidence for that was everywhere) – led to his emasculation in front of his neighbours, who’d witnessed the fracas and, in fact, bore out the story given by the young girl.

It was strange to hear this teenager telling the cops all they wanted to know – confessing it all – while the assaulted man denied she’d ever hit him. It meant she’d get away with it and that, from what she was saying, was something she didn’t want. ‘I did it. Take me away if you need to, I don’t mind’, she said to the very bemused cops. They must have thought Christmas had come early.

I had to take him to hospital because a vein or two in his hand had been severed. Blood spattered and pooled, depending on his movements after the assault, all over the place. It smeared and dotted the windscreen and body of a car outside the man’s flat. The car belonged to some poor sod who’d wake up in the morning, stretch his body for the coming day and then scream blue murder at the sight of someone else’s blood all over his beloved carriage. If I could spend the extra time awake just to witness it I would.


It seems to be a bottle-themed night because the next call was for a man who’d been hit by one during an alleged robbery. He had a superficial head injury and hadn’t been knocked out. Here’s the test:

‘Were you knocked out at all?’ I ask.

‘Yes’, he answers.

‘Where were you hit?’

He points exactly to the place he was hit on the head.

‘If you can remember being hit and where on the head you were hit, then you must have been conscious when you were hit, don’t you agree?’

He nods.

He also knew what had been taken from him and, while his girlfriend (with tears in her eyes) and other friends stood around him, he seemed to feel a lot worse.

He was lucid and not at all bloodied by the incident. I wouldn’t want to detract the seriousness of his experience of course but I think he may have been clubbed by a rubber mallet. Maybe a clown robbed him.

Be safe.