Two girls and a two bikes

For those of you that are interested in a) Girls, b) Cycling and c) Travelling long distances until you destroy your knees, then please drop in on this blog. My good friend Abbi and her good friend Kirt are currently pedaling their way across France and on into Spain. They'll complete over 1,000Km and will both, I imagine, need medical attention when they get home!

I'm their official 'remote medic', so on-call for them should they encounter any difficulties. And by that I mean physical injury... or French boys.

Give them your support please!

Xf

The thing about dead stars is...

I was working when this call came in. Our crews did an excellent job and were very professional about it all. Of course, inevitably, the news leaked out and it was all over Twitter, then Wikipedia, then the 'proper' news picked it up. Amy Winehouse was found dead and, apart from what I've written so far, that's as much as I can go into the subject.

Every now and then this job throws up 'special' cases, where we get up close and personal with ill, dying or dead celebrities. But they are just human being, aren't they? What makes them different is our perspective of them. Nevertheless, it's still a huge testament to this profession that crews dealing with these individuals behave no differently than they would if it was your mother or brother. They might be a bit phased, or if they are a fan, a little shocked and grieved, but the actions are the same; the procedure is professional.

Amy Winehouse had a family and friends, just like everyone else. Forget who she was and what she achieved; she'd dead and her family will be grieving about it, just like any normal family. The Press will help to make her death a publicity vehicle but her nearest and dearest will not be interested in the hype. They, like the relatives of any other dead person we encounter, will want to remember her as the person they knew, and we couldn't imagine.

Her version of Valerie was played at my wedding, as part of the list of songs we specially requested. I was never a great fan of everything she did, but she was an extremely talented and unique singer. So I hope her family and friends are given the peace they deserve.

Be safe.

The Station - out very soon!

Yeah, yeah... self-promotion but I have no choice.

The novel is finished and it's just going through it's 'growing pains'; editing, review and pre-publishing... which will take a month I think. Still, it should be an e-book sometime in August, and available for you to download on Amazon and other online places.

I agree with those of you that love a proper book, I do myself - but I can't afford to print it yet and getting a publisher is nigh-on impossible in this climate, so I'm self-publishing until it dies because it's rubbish, or it succeeds and a proper publisher pays for it's printing and promotion. I can also look at download sales and consider whether they are strong enough to take a few thousand pound risk and print it myself.

It's my first ever novel and I'm proud of myself for finishing it. Whether it's good, great, average or rubbish, isn't as important right now as the fact that I actually finished it! If I never write again, at least I can say I did what a lot of people only talk about, so I'm chuffed.

I can't promote or market it hugely because of the costs involved but I can do something else... I can appeal to all my readers (that is, those of you who read what I write because you like what I write and want to read it) to download it and promote it if you like it, in other words, get your friends to download it too - don't share it, because that will spell the end of sales for me. And just so you know, this isn't about getting rich because, unless I've written the next Harry Potter and have the same luck, I will only be paid something like 30 to 50p a book - that's all author's get once the wolves have had their share. It would be nice to get paid back for the years I put in writing it though.

But only get your friends and family to buy it if you truly feel they'd like to read it, that's up to you. But what if everyone who did this spread the word to all of their Facebook and Twitter friends, and they in turn did the same? Wouldn't it become a best-seller overnight? That would be cool and I'd certainly want to write more if it was even moderately successful.

A Paramedic's Diary has done, and is still doing, very well as you know, but this is a work of fiction and so much harder to sell in a forest of other novels. It is also without a big name to promote it, so I have a weak card to play here.

Some of you have read the preview... and a few tweaks have been made, but it has become a 38 chapter, 120,000 word story with a beginning, a middle and an end... and a plot, so I hope you will sign up to this!

If you are and you think your friends and family will be too, let me know here, or on facebook... or Tweet me (although I don't do much Tweeting myself). I will let you all know how order it soon. I'll put a link here with a little ad for it.

Thanks in advance. Let's make it something from nothing!

Xf

Another day on the FROO

Abbi was with me today; she was experiencing frontline FRU work and the general routine of the ambulance service for the purposes of research. It's always nice when people take an interest I think, don't you?

A couple of NPCs started the shift off. There’s nothing quite like running on lights and sirens to a call, just to be writing it up as ‘crew on scene, dealing’ or ‘not required’. It makes the risks much more pertinent I think.

Anyhoo, a private taxi driver decided to cut in towards the pavement to park up, without considering an indication or even to look in his mirror at the cyclist who was pedalling along beside him – allegedly. Now, arguably, the cyclist should not have been on the inside (the nearside if you’re a driver) because that is just asking for trouble. Plenty of cyclists die doing that each year. But, equally, the car driver should have looked before he swerved across the poor guy’s path.

I found him in a heap on the road, with quite a few people around him as he bled from a very deep gash in his arm. It had been very well dressed by a first aider who’d stopped to help, and the local hotel had supplied a sheet for him for some reason. The sheet, I should point out, became useful later on when I mopped up his blood with it. We can’t have pools of blood in the street, can we? I did go into the hotel and apologise for destroying the item and they were only too happy for me to keep it and dispose of it properly.

The cyclist was conscious and alert. He had no other injury, apart from his arm, and the driver of the car, who could have killed him, stood over him as if checking to see that he didn't give an errant version of the truth. He never once asked if the guy was okay.

A crew arrived shortly after me and we got the cyclist into the ambulance, where his dressing was removed so that we could examine his injury properly. It was deep; a big chunk of his muscle had been torn out, but the bleeding, which had been described by the first aider as ‘spurting out’, was under control. It was unlikely that an artery had been torn – it was more than likely mistaken identity and a large vein had bled, giving the impression that it was a more important vascular structure. Still, blood is blood and he wasn’t losing any more.

We worked out that the cyclist had clipped the car mirror on his way over the bonnet and landed onto the very sharp chain spokes of his bike. It was those tines that had ripped into his arm. If he’d landed on them with his head or neck, we’d be singing from an entirely different hymn sheet.

Another cyclist who came off his ride wasn’t hit by anything. His chain has failed, jamming his wheel and catapulting him into the air and over his handlebars. He landed in the road and a couple of passing cops stopped to help him out.

When I got on scene, he was sitting with them. He had minor scratches to his elbows and knees. Unlike the last chap, his arm muscles were intact – no chunks missing, so he was lucky.

I popped him in the car and took him up to hospital. En-route we discussed PhDs and stuff. As you do.

Calls to babies with head injuries are always a worry, but rarely found to be serious. So my next job, which took me to the bank of the river, caused me undue concern. First of all, I couldn’t find anyone to open the barrier that stopped me from gaining access to where I needed to be, so I wasted what could have been precious time tapping on my steering wheel, tutting a lot and using the radio as a means of relaying my frustration. Eventually, a security person came and set me free.

Secondly, the mother was walking up to meet me – baby in arms and nothing wrong with it. The little thing had taken a two-foot tumble from her push-chair... onto grass. Mum was worried because her tot ‘wasn’t quite right’ to begin with after the fall. Now, of course, the baby was right as rain.

I took them both to A&E for a check anyway because I do understand the concern she felt, although it might have been a little over-cooked..

A 17 year-old fainted apparently. Well, truth be told, she hadn’t fainted. After climbing the stairs and wending my way around a college, I found her lying on the floor of her classroom, with staff members in attendance. They’d described her as having ‘fitted’ and fainted. I could see the girl was conscious a mile away (which is about the distance you have to walk to get from the entrance to the classroom in this place), so I did the ‘eyelash’ thing and she proved herself a liar.

This young girl just wanted to get out of there. She didn’t want to communicate with anyone; it’s not that she couldn’t. Once she realised the game was up, she miraculously recovered, sat up and spoke to me in the customary, and necessary-for-effect whispering voice that I can’t hear.

Try not to be upset with me, because I know a few of you think that when I talk like this, I am showing disrespect to patients but I’m not – I’m just emphasising that there are other problems that people have – emotional problems, that do not, and should never, fall under the remit of the emergency ambulance services. Every minute spent with a teenager who just doesn’t like her life, is a minute less available for someone who is really fitting, or who had really fainted... or whose emotional crises is so great that they are suicidal or in need of rescue. ‘I don’t like college and I’d prefer to be somewhere else’ doesn’t qualify.

I took her and her friend (they always take their mates with them) to hospital and I taught the teacher the eyelash trick for future reference.

At a tube station an 11 year-old tourist fell onto a bit of wood and cut his knee open. It wasn’t a big wound but an ambulance was called regardless. There was a teacher with the child and he was quite prepared to take him to A&E on the bus, but I was already there and I said I’d give them a lift. The underground staff had called 999 for this, which is not like them. They have good first aiders and they know how busy we are.

On the way out, with injured child and teacher in tow, we passed his school group and they all waved and wished him well. They gave him worried looks and nodded in his direction. But did they smile at the friendly paramedic... nope.

Finally, an urgent call from a MOP who found a man lying in the street ‘unconscious’ with bruises on his head. I pulled up and walked over to the dead man. The tall tourist standing beside him looked like he was in shock. It never occurred to him that if this man on the pavement was in such trouble, how come everybody else was walking past? How come the local people hadn’t taken an interest? The answer my friends, is because he was a known alcoholic - maybe not to the kindly, concerned traveller, but certainly to me and to half of Soho.

I woke him up and he moved along, after a short chat about not sleeping in the middle of a busy pavement in broad daylight and scaring the public.

He did have bruise on his face, but they were nothing more than fresh street-battle scars. They all have them.

‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise. He just wouldn’t move at all for me,’ said the tourist man.

‘That’s okay. It’s not a big deal because I was close by and now we can save an ambulance trip,’ I replied.

And that’s the big truth I guess. When I get to wake them up before every alarm bell sounds for nothing, then an ambulance goes somewhere else, where it might actually make a difference. If we could cut out the nonsense calls, the emotional calls, the alcohol-related calls and the hoax calls, we’d have a very excellent ambulance service here. Abbi will take that information back with her.

Be safe.

Help the aged

A 40 minute Epistaxis, a concerned first aider and a little office bin full of bloody tissues started the shift off. The 58 year-old had been in a meeting and his nose had started to bleed without warning. It kept bleeding, despite the valiant efforts of the first aider who'd been summoned to help. The man was taking aspirin every day, so this was not exactly a shock for me.

I reassured him, as you do, and checked that he had no sinister medical history I needed to know about, before taking him and his newly-dressed nose ( a dressing is tied tightly around the head and under the nose) to A&E in the car. There was no further drama; the dressing was doing its job. He'd have a good old clot in his nose when they removed it though.


A 'pain all over' job for ? Meningitis was nothing of the sort. The 25 year-old Spanish woman, whose 12 year-old daughter acted as my interpreter, had seen her GP the day before and been given cream for a rash on her arms and legs. The rash had cleared up but now she was claiming that she couldn't move and that her neck hurt.

The history of a rash, regardless of the fact that it was now gone, the neck pan and 'pain all over' syndrome, meant it would go RED for Meningitis and so I went to the house to check it out. The absence of a headache and photophobia gave me cause to doubt the alarm.

She was in her bed, feet elevated for some reason, and her daughter was deeply concerned. It turned out she had no rash (obviously) and that her neck pain was caused by what looked like a Ganglion Cyst on the back of it. As for the 'couldn't move' thing; I gave her the option of walking down to the car with me, or waiting a long time for an ambulance to come. This gave her the inspiration, power and energy to make it to the car.

Another minor drama - and one of those calls that make me deeply unhappy about the state of humanity - was to a 38 year-old cleaner who, when dusting around a fluorescent strip light, had an unfortunate meeting with it when it collapsed and slapped her on the head. Now, the thing weighs a few kilos for sure, but she had insisted on an ambulance, even though her only injury was a minor scratch to the forehead.

Please, please do NOT harangue me about the possibilities for serious injury etc, with this kind of mishap, because she was fine. Absolutely fine. She needed a gauze swab and a sit-down for a few minutes. She'd had a glancing blow to the head and nothing had been broken - not even the strip light!

This is all about ensuring the most is made of a minor event - turn it into a crisis and there may be a few quid at the end of it. That, I'm afraid is all it was about in my humble opinion. The cleaner was working for one of the big name food supermarkets and they are notorious for shelling out when people complain, just to keep bad Press away. You see, the big names have a lot to lose if they get too many injury-associated complaints, so they just pay people off. My advice to them, as if they'd listen, is STOP doing this! You are absolutely encouraging such individuals to make stupid claims. Force people to prove their claims in court!

For example, I was involved in a call recently, where an ambulance had been demanded by a customer of one of these stores. She'd slipped on tomato ketchup that was spilled on the floor. Whether it was actually spilled by staff or not is irrelevant, but when she was told that an ambulance would be a while (it was a very busy night), she went crazy and moaned about her aches and pains. I have to tell you that prior to me calling her, she had made no complaint of actual bodily harm. The poor store Manager was very upset because she knew there was nothing wrong with this woman.

As my conversation with her progressed, she started to escalate her injuries. Now she had neck pain. Obviously we have no choice but to send an ambulance and she knew this. Not only that but while I was talking to her, another 999 call was made by her sister, who was elsewhere in the store, claiming that staff were causing undue stress to her sibling and making her injuries worse. Now, I'm asking you all, as sensible people here, and I'm making no judgement on this... but does this sound like a planned set-up to you?

I took fluorescent strip woman to hospital in the car. En-route, she made several phone calls, each one of which was to a close friend or relative, and each one made her injury sound more than it actually was.

And the last call of the shift made me stop and think about all the stuff that had gone before. It was a 'trapped behind locked doors' for an 80 year-old woman who hadn't been seen in two days. She normally answers her phone when her friend calls, like clockwork every weekend, but this time she hadn't. Two days had gone by without a word from her, so her two old friends called the police and we all gathered - her friends, the police and myself - on the balcony, figuring out a way to get in. The door was protected by an iron gate, so the small bedroom window was our only option.

I have to say, there didn't seem much hope in this case. I have done a lot of these and when the person hasn't been seen for a while, and they have a very set pattern of behaviour (and they are house-bound), then the chances of finding them alive are slim to nothing. I think her friends knew this.

Anyway, we borrowed a chair from a neighbour - they were all out watching this show - and I teetered on it, quite literally, preparing to go through the window when the cops had forced it open. However, there was a delay because the officer in charge of cracking it open with a crow-bar, didn't have the heart to damage it, so the process was slow.

'I don't want to break her window,' he said.

'But if you don't we'll be waiting even longer to get in. She could be in trouble in there,' I suggested.

'Yeah, but it's the poor old lady's window,'

'It's the poor old lady's life,' I said.

This prompted a bit more aggression because this thoughtful cop had clearly forgotten why we were there. Or maybe he thought another few minutes wouldn't make any difference. I don't know. Either way, he meant well.

The window burst open and I clambered in. Now, I say clambered and I mean it. I usually get stuffed into windows because I am (usually) the smallest of the bunch in a gang of cops and paramedics, and anyone whose seen me go through a window will tell you I'm no athlete. I was standing on the thinnest ledge imaginable; if I fell backward and they didn't catch me, I would go right over the balcony and drop off the third floor. I had no faith in the ledge or the cops waiting to grab me.

I fell into the little room and a tall cop followed me immediately. he just stepped over the ledge with his lanky legs. We went into the flat and I was expecting to see a dead body. I walked into the front room and there, in front of me and sticking out from behind a wall, were a pair of legs. Not moving legs I should add.

'Hello, are you alright?' I shouted. This made the legs move. I was very relieved, as was the police officer standing with me.

I went to my patient and she was conscious. She'd been lying in the corner for two days, although she repeatedly told me, and the crew that arrived later on, that she'd only been there since this morning. Her front room was a wreck; it looked like she'd tripped several times and launched herself into the wall, landing in that corner - probably knocked out. I think she'd had a stroke.

I had to claim stroke anyway for this lady, just to get an ambulance in good time for her. You see, this is why I get so annoyed with certain people. This poor old woman, who could have died in that corner, had to wait almost an hour until a crew came for her. This was because ambulances were being cancelled on my call and sent to 'higher priority' calls, one of which was a 'headache'. Come on now, that's just not fair. So, I advised Control that I suspected a CVA and that changed the priority.

None of this is the fault of our crews or the Control staff; it is the fault of people who think their every little ailment is a major emergency. Or those who will not go and see their GP, or take the trip to A&E themselves.

It's time the elderly, vulnerable and genuinely sick of this city (and indeed entire country) got a fairer deal. This, as you know, gets much, much worse at weekends.

Be safe.

Sirens

I watched one episode. I'm not impressed. I'm not sure how Tom Reynolds will be reacting to it either, now that he is no longer in the ambulance service.

It could have been something good, a la Green Wing or Scrubs but instead Channel Four apparently see us all as a bit thick and professionally rude. I know it's only fiction but it claims to be based on 'Blood, Sweat and Tea', which is NOT fiction and was well written by Mr. Reynolds... unlike this melodramatic rubbish.

And not to be too technical, and based purely on the first episode, Channel Four continually refer to the characters as paramedics but not one of them is - they all wear Emergency Medical Technician epaulette sleeves. You'd think they'd get their research right.

As I said, I was looking forward to watching something funny and entertaining. Something that didn't make the profession look stupid. Historically, every single TV or movie based pre-hospital care professional I've seen has been depicted as low-class and subservient to doctors and nurses (in my opinion) and this piece of TV tat does that too. What did Green Wing and Scrubs do right that Sirens didn't? Or are we just no good at being entertaining unless it's real and people are actually suffering?

The police and fire service have both benefited, PR-wise, from good, long-running TV exposure, but the ambulance service just doesn't cut it somehow. I wonder why that is?

I'm releasing my novel next month. It'll be an e-book to start with. I expect I'll get a fair amount of criticism because writing fiction is hard; it really is. Getting the right balance of irreverence and raw humour and capturing the soul of the characters is daunting for a first-timer like me, but I can imagine the players in my own story acting out a better performance than I've seen with Sirens so far.

'A Paramedic's Diary' is still selling well after 4 years and I'm pleased of course but I've learned something about people out there. There are individuals that read some of what you've written and then submit personal attacks, as if you've just insulted their Granny or something. They don't critique the book; they have a go at the author. Are these the same people who get 'offended' at something on TV and continue to watch it, just so they can be really offended and write in about it? A sad bunch I think. So, to be balanced and fair, I will watch another episode or two and give it my best appraisal. It might improve but I'm doubtful.

Tom Reynolds might be pleased with it and if he is, I'm glad, but I don't think I'll be letting any TV luvvies 'interpret' what I've written in quite the same way.

Xf

One angel in. One angel out.

Thank you all for your very kind and compassionate messages; we've recieved so much moral support from around the world and we are very grateful to you all.



It’s been a rough ride for us so far; losing JT the way we did and facing the prospect of his funeral and the due date, which is on my birthday. And ironically, a few days before the events that so suddenly and horribly robbed us of our second son, I delivered a little girl to a mother as she lay on the carpet of her front room, screaming like the proverbial banshee.

I couldn’t write about this call for obvious reasons. Until now, that is. Now that I am able to face up to it.

I walked in on the screams after going to the wrong location on what seemed like miles of urban insanity in the form of layer-cake housing. The dad – a young man – shouted at me and the ambulance crew, who’d arrived at the same time. He looked scared and said ‘It’s coming. The water’s all over the place’. Of course, he meant her waters had gone, and she was a large lady, so possibly the contribution to her daughter’s protective swimming pool was matched by her stature and girth. Who knows what nature plans when it comes to who gets how much?

So, I was in first – a little flat with a flight of steps leading to the front room and the screams. Adult cries had given way to those of a baby and at first I was convinced the little one had already been born but it wasn’t the newbie – it was her other child; the one-year-old. He was witnessing his mother’s all-to-convincing panic as she lay there, waiting for the inevitable as if she’d never experienced it before.

I calmed them down and asked dad to take the child away. This wasn’t going to get any easier because it was obvious that things were advanced.

The crew was in behind me; one paramedic and one student para. I took the lead because I was there first… and for no other reason really, and we set about gathering the woman on the floor into a more suitable position. She was about to give birth and lying flat was out of the question, so she needed to be propped up a bit. She was, as I’ve stated, a large lady, so this was no mean feat and it took three of us to manoeuvre her frame into a more appropriate position for delivery.

This, as you probably know, isn’t new to me. Many of us have delivered a lot of children, or, more accurately, assisted in the delivery, since they pretty much deliver themselves. So I don’t flap about it. Not like I used to when it was new and scary and there were complications I couldn’t deal with alone.

She (the pregnant woman) was screaming so loud with every contraction (pain relief or not) that my eardrums ached – and that is a singular miracle because it takes a lot to shake those dull things. But she was very, very loud and I wondered how she managed with the first child. I mean, this one was going to arrive much quicker and would be, as it normally goes, easier to deliver. ‘Why are you making all that noise?’ I asked her. ‘This should be easy for you now’.

It’s a mistake to underestimate a woman’s labour tantrum, so I left it alone while she bore down on demand and sucked hard on a well-bitten plastic Entonox mouthpiece.

The whole screaming-labour process lasted no more than twenty minutes and I watched as the baby’s head appeared. I’d already checked her for dilation and the mucus plug had gone – as had the waters earlier, so there were no surprises expected here. However, as she pushed to squeeze the little girl out of her, she began to deliver something else – something not quite so pleasant. She was doing what most, if not all pregnant woman in labour dread – she was defecating – right there, on the living room floor and right in front of me. This doesn’t always happen and so, I asked for an emergency kitchen roll to be brought in by her mother. ‘Is she pooing?’ asked mother. ‘Yes, I’m afraid she is’, I answered.

Unfortunately, baby wasn’t waiting much longer and as I juggled with the head-holding bit and asked the woman to pant and puff to slow the arrival, I had to act fast to stop the little thing from suffocating when she came out. So, I slipped my hand underneath as it delivered and allowed the neonate to land on my palm, just a few centimetres from the unfortunate mess, which would have caused more than a few problems in its first few minutes of life.

The baby was quite still for a few seconds and this is always the scariest bit… waiting for it to move and breathe. But, after a rub to stimulate it, she started to cry and I laid her on mummy’s belly. Of course, the screams had gone and now the woman was weeping with joy, as was daddy. He was standing there, crying like a child. He would be cutting the cord but the student paramedic, who told me she’d never seen a delivery from start to finish, got to place the clamps. Dad duly cut the cord and I gave him the cutters as a souvenir. He wouldn’t have got them from a midwife because they don’t allow it but I see this gesture as an important part of the dad-baby bonding process - he gets to hold on to the device that separated his daughter from his wife and made them a family.

We’d requested a midwife but (and this is not unusual I’m afraid) we were told that there wasn’t one available to visit. Then we were told, after a long wait, that I could go and collect one if necessary. Well, it was necessary and so I went outside to go to my car and sort this out.

When I got onto the landing outside, I saw two police officers walking around as if looking for trouble. I suddenly realised why they were there and approached them.

‘Are you here for us?’ I asked.

‘The neighbours have reported screaming coming from one of these flats’, the officer replied.

I had to smile; it was such an obvious story for them to tell when they got back to the station.

‘I wouldn’t worry about that’, I said, ‘The woman in number 52 has just given birth. She was screaming all the way through her labour. That’s all it was’.

They stood there looking bemused for a short time before leaving to find a real crime and I tried to call in about the midwife. I had no luck and Control got back to me and said they weren’t going to send one now and that I was to bring the woman in.

When I got back she’d delivered the placenta but there was a problem – it was still attached to her womb, so it was hanging from her. I explained the new circumstances to Control and they relayed them to the maternity unit but I got the same response – bring her in.

Now I’ve never had to deal with an attached placenta before (it’s called a retained placenta), so a plan was needed to move her while the thing was dangling from below. If it ripped, she could bleed badly and I didn’t want any more drama tonight, so I got the student to tie a plastic bag around it and attached it to her underwear (the woman's, not the student's), so that it stayed in place. It looked very bizarre, especially when we got her onto the carry chair. It bulged out from under her and looked like an operation that had gone terribly wrong. I felt sorry for her. Her dignity was already in tatters, especially with the neighbours, but she didn’t seem to care – she had a brand new baby.

Another crew was requested for the lift and transport of the mother and her baby, and they arrived very quickly. We got her out and to the ambulance without a hitch and she was taken to maternity, with her red-eyed happy husband and the new baby girl. We had a photo taken together – mum, dad, baby and her delivery team and then we left them to their lives.

It’s unusual for these photograph to surface again - they usually disappear into the family albums of those to whom they belong, so many of us don’t get a copy to keep for ourselves. I have one photo of myself, my colleague (and friend) Genna, and a mother and baby that we helped to deliver many moons ago, but that’s it. I haven’t seen any of the others.

Helping to bring a life into the world, (regardless of the chemical hazards that are sometimes involved!), is one of the most satisfying aspects of this job. I’ve been scarred by a few bad BBA’s as many of you know, but I still love the feeling of having a hand in the creation of a family by helping to safely deliver a newbie. Even after what Jac and I have been through, and with the utmost empathy and deepest respect to all those who have gone through similar or worse, I am still warmed by the thought of doing it.

Be safe.