All done

This weeks shifts are now over with but I lied (unintentionally) that I had 4 days off. I had completely forgotten that I'm doing an overtime night shift on Sunday, Doh!

In the end we only did 4 jobs last night and managed to get some shut eye which is a rare occurrence.



1. Cat A Unconscious. A lady was found on the promenade by some people out walking, she collapsed in front of them and they dialled those 3 magic numbers. We arrived to find a group of people congregating around her. My crew mate took one look at her, looked at me, rolled his eyes and said 'Come on Gill (not her real name) get up. We know you can hear us!' She didn't respond. I touched her eye lash and it started to flicker. She wasn't unconscious at all. After thanking the bystanders they all started to disperse, we could then get on with the task of finding what was wrong this time. Our lady was a regular patient but she was a bit far from home, 7 miles to be precise. I got the trolley out and moved it over to her but as soon as we mentioned moving her and the 'police' she miraculously recovered, got up and walked towards the sea. She told us she wanted to go into the sea and die but because she had informed us of that we couldn't allow that to happen. We called the police and then spent the best part of an hour preventing her from going in the sea. The usual crowd of spectators had gathered and some annoying kids kept getting closer and closer asking all manner of questions. Eventually our friends in blue arrived and we got her up to the patrol car. They arrested her for being drunk & incapable and took her to the local custody suite.

A quality start to the shift, not!

2. Fall. Male fallen in the road. ? dislocated knee. A male in his fifties had been out walking his dogs when one ran off pulling him off balance causing him to fall. It was now dusk and after meandering down what seemed to be a dirt track we found our casualty. He was on the floor and his wife was comforting him. One look at his knee told us all we needed we to know. His knee cap (patella) was sticking out to the side of his knee and he was in immense pain. Out with the Entonox and he was soon away with fairies. Sometimes we can manage to relocate a knee cap just using Entonox, relaxation and gentle pressure with both thumbs, using both forefingers as guides. Not this time, it was stuck fast so we weren't going to mess about. After checking for a pulse in his foot and immobilising his leg we got him onto the trolley using our scoop stretcher. Asked whether the gas and air was working he replied 'I feel pissed as fart, I love it!' No need for anything stronger so off we went to hospital. I felt sorry for him as he was such a nice chap and being self employed he wouldn't be able to work for quite a while. His knee didn't look like all the other knee cap dislocations that we've seen before. It was more deformed and a passing DR took one look at it and said 'We'll need an X-ray of that to rule a tibial plateau fracture.' Oops, that could mean months off as may mean surgery. Poor guy.



In between jobs I had to provide a statement to the police with reference to fatal RTA that I attended where I had to pronounce the driver dead.



3. Fall. A chap with Parkinson's had fallen out of bed and wasn't injured. We helped him back in but discovered he had a high temperature, 38.5. He was also prone to urinary tract infections (UTI) but refused hospital or for us to even get the out of hours (OOH) GP to contact him. He did agree for me to contact the OOH GP to get them to pass on his details to his surgery in the morning.



4. Overdose. Not an overdose at all but a young girl who had been out drinking with friends and couldn't find the entrance to the holiday park she was staying at. A totally inappropriate use of an ambulance. Come to think of it, why were we even dispatched? She was cold and intoxicated so I wrapped a blanket round here and gave her a lift to the main gate. It was far simpler and quicker to do that than try and find security to come and open up the beach gate. The whole call lasted less than 5 minutes and I soon was back on base to continue my power nap.

An easy night shift and finished on time again. Nice.