him for ten months and I’ve only seen him fit once, so I’m afraid I got scared and called for an ambulance.’
I reassured her that this wasn’t a problem and that she had done the right thing.
I looked after the patient, it was an easy job, and I spent some time waiting for the ambulance to arrive. (I was ‘single’, so I had been asked to work on the FRU again; the alternative was to work out of Waterloo station.)
I looked around the room they were staying in. It was not what you would call ‘homely’; it was the typical house of a young alcoholic (he was the same age as me). Cans of cheap cider were lying around the place, there was no furniture apart from a settee and a TV, empty cigarette packets littered the floor and the pictures hadn’t been mounted on the walls.
There was an axe leaning against the fireplace.
His fiancée was young and not obviously unattractive, she didn’t seem particularly stupid and she didn’t look like a fellow alcoholic. So I was confused as to why she would want to marry an alcoholic.
I’m afraid it just befuddles me as to how you can love someone who loves their next drink more than you. In any partnership you will come second to an open bottle of cider.
I just don’t understand.
We help the people of Newham.
One of these people has seen fit to ‘tag’ one of our ambulances with graffiti.
This means that the ambulance will be taken off the road so that it can be cleaned.
This will cost money.
It will also remove an ambulance from the road.
This means an ambulance might get delayed coming to a call.
I hope it is a call to the ‘tagger’, and I hope that they are in a great deal of pain.
In the past we’ve had people break into our ambulance station to steal radios from the cars parked there as well as steal the station’s TV. When you are working yourself into an early grave on a cold and wet night shift it makes you want to pack the whole job in.
Canary Wharf has a skating rink at the moment and my crewmate and I were sent there to attend to a ‘fall, head injury’.
‘Excellent,’ we thought, ‘a nice simple job—nothing complicated.’
We were met by a worried-looking ice rink worker who wobbled across the pavement on his skates to meet us.
‘We wouldn’t normally bother you guys, but we think it might be serious.’
Grabbing my bags I was led to a woman sitting in the changing area with two youngsters, both of whom were looking a little concerned.
‘Hello there. I’m with the ambulance, what seems to be the problem?’ I normally start with a version of this as a conversational opening gambit.
The patient replied, ‘Well, I had a bit of a fall—’ She paused. ‘I—’ She paused again. ‘Head…hit…migraine—’
She seemed to be having trouble finding the right words to use. I quickly examined her, and was happy that she hadn’t hurt her neck and the small lump on the back of her head didn’t look serious either. So why was she acting so strangely?
‘I get migraines,’ she told me. ‘I…lose…um…er…um…words, and I…eyes…eyes…go blind.’
This is a pretty rare presentation of migraines, but not unheard of.
We got her into the back of the ambulance and all my examinations there were normal. She was complaining of ‘losing her words’ (expressive dysphasia) and of going blind in her right eye. She didn’t seem too upset by this and had already taken her normal migraine medication, although I’m not sure how paracetamol and metoclopramide would help with these symptoms as I’m not an expert on migraine treatment although I know that triptans can sometimes be used.
Her symptoms started to get worse, she couldn’t find any of the words that she wanted to use, and so I needed to get a more thorough history from the two youngsters. They were her nephews and she had been treating them to a trip to London. Although young, they were both very mature and helpful and after some prompting from the patient (‘Laptop…look…laptop’) we found a patient information card in her purse. The card let us know that all the symptoms that she was experiencing were indeed part of the presentation of her migraine.
It was a short trip to the hospital, during which she started to make a slight recovery and we left her in the capable hands of the A&E nurses. Unfortunately for the patient, the hospital was extremely busy, so I’m guessing that she had to wait a little while for any treatment.
The three of them had come from Surrey, so they didn’t know the area well, although we were able to give them directions home from the hospital. We had chosen this one over another slightly closer so that it would be easier for them to get home after any treatment.
A day out in London turning into a trip to the hospital—it happens more often than you would think.
For the past five nights the majority of my patients have been sick with one or more of the following:
High temperature,
Runny nose,
Vomiting,
Night sweats,
Lethargy,
Cough,
‘Generally unwell’.
So there must be at least one highly infectious disease epidemic in the area. While you or I might want to curl up in bed with some Lemsip and paracetamol, it would seem that a large number of Newham’s population would rather sit for hours in an A&E waiting room.
Madness.
Which leads me to the point. Ambulance crews spend a lot of time around these infectious patients, who have often never been taught the good manners of putting their hand over their mouth when they cough.
So is it any wonder that I’ve got painful eyes, a streaming nose, a constant mild headache and a feeling that I’m suffering from a mild hangover.
But:
Ambulance crews mustn’t have more than three periods of sick leave in an 18-month period.
So I’m having to drag my potentially infectious body into work—where maybe I can infect some more people…
So in conclusion:
Send me nurses—pretty female ones with plenty of drugs.
Some patients with chronic lung disease need oxygen, and rather than keep them in hospital, these patients often have cylinders of oxygen delivered to them at their home.
Until recently it was the pharmacist who supplied these cylinders, but the government in its infinite wisdom has decided to privatise the supply of oxygen. This means more paperwork.
And now a patient has died, possibly because of a delay getting her oxygen delivered. It drives me crazy that I spend my time in my ambulance going to 23-year-old men with coughs, yet