Getting a reputation

3am the shrill tones of 'The Bat Phone' cut through the near silence, there is still a slight rumble of snoring coming from the other room, its been a peaceful night so far.

I reach out a hand towards the sound that calls us to almost instant wakefulness.

"Concrete Jungle, 2" I must sound awful, I'm forming the words but its just not sounding right.
"Got an treble 9 for you. Female 8 months pregnant, Bleeding, known to have Placenta Previa*"
"Great! Thanks!"

Stickler* sticks her head around the door, hair sticking up at an odd angle "What is it?"

I tell her and get a funny look. Last time I worked with Stickler this happened.
"We're going to get a reputation for these jobs you know!"

We drive quickly and steadily through the early morning darkness to the address. I'm the driver this time so Stickler gets the experience of being in the back.

We get buzzed into the flat by a heavily pregnant lady, she is on the phone "Ok, their here now, I'll see you in a minute". She looks flustered but not particularly panicked.

"Hi, that was my parents, there heading over to watch my son while we go in."
"Ok, erm, whats been happening?"
"I got up about an hour ago with a slight pain in my belly, not too bad, but went to the bathroom and found I was bleeding. I have Placenta Previa and had a bleed about 2 months ago, they told me if it happened again to call you guys and go in"
"Ok, do you still have the pain now?"
"No"
"Bleeding?"
"No"
"Right, well we better get going."
"I need to wait for my parents, I can't leave my son here"
"How long will they be?"
"Not long"

This usually translates into 'bloody ages' in real time, but we bite our tongue and wait, monitoring her as we sit there. I go down and contact control to advise about the delay on scene. Usually crews get to maternity jobs and are at the hospital within the ORCON time never mind just the address! Maternity jobs are the scariest ones I can think of.

The parents arrive and while Dad stays with the son, Mum gets in the back with her daughter.

"Which unit are you seen at?"
"Big City Maternity"
"Right"

I contact control and ask them to alert the unit of our arrival. They call me back and tell me to head to Ward 3 when we arrive.

Its a smooth journey in, not much on the motorway at 3.30 in the morning. I can hear Stickler going through all the questions in the back. The patient and her mother are still complete unfazed by the whole thing. I find myself slightly irritated at being used in this way, but I'd rather have her calm and fine than writhing in pain and trying to deliver, I must just be tired.

We arrive and give a hand over before cleaning the trolley and heading back to the motor.
Stickler turns to me "I'm not working with you again if your gonna keep attracting maternity jobs!"
"Me? Why is it always me that's the jinx?"
"Cos your the newest on station, that's how it works!"
"Thanks!"

*Placenta Previa - The placenta attaches across the bottom half of the uterus instead of the within the body. Placenta Previa is when it then partly separates from the wall of the uterus causing bleeding.

________________________________________________________________________


Please continue to support the Mountain Rescue Challenge from my previous posts........... I will keep bugging you all about it!

MRT update

In a horrible twist of fate and as if to prove the importance of my last post this has happened.

Thoughts are with the families of the men who died.

Please read this post and if you can dig deep.

Thank you

"Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are naught without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end"

Edward Whymper, Scrambles amongst the Alps

MRT Challenge

I'm going briefly off topic to promote a fundraising challenge

As some of you know I am a keen mountain walker, its one of the reasons I moved to Scotland to be closer to the amazing scenery and a choice of thousands of mountains to get my teeth into.

I am also in a couple of online forums where I meet people with a similar interest and love of the Mountains all over the UK.

One of the regular forum members is Michael Tunney. He is undertaking an amazing challenge in May this year to raise money for the Oban and Arrochar Mountain Rescue teams and the Northern Police Treatment Centre.

Michael was in need of all these services after a fall while walking Beinn Achaladair and Beinn a'Chreachain in November 2006. Please visit his website and read his account of the accident and his subsequent recovery.

The medical bods amoung my readers will appreciate the extent of his injuries and the very real possibility that he may not have made it. You will also appreciate the amazing recovery he has made to get to the point he is at now. The hill walkers amoung you will marvel at the work of the MRT'S and Rescue 177 HMS Gannet to get them off the mountain safely. Read the MRT members accounts of the rescue for another perspective.

Michael is going to walk from Aviemore to Fort William over the nine 4,000 ft mountains also taking in another 14 Munros., this is approximately 30,000 ft of ascent, more than a single ascent of Mount Everest. Now I have issues getting up one mountain sometimes so this challenge of physical and mental strength is mind bogglingly hard! He will be camping and using bothy's during the route so will also be carrying his supplies for the trip.

Please visit his site and if possible make a donation via the links. Mountain Rescue is a volunteer organisation who are called out at any hour and any weather to try and help people in trouble and rely mainly on donations from the public.

Also using this a blatant excuse to publish a couple of my own photos!! The top one is a view of Ardgour from the Pap of Glencoe and the bottom one if the north east face of Ben Nevis. Just to give the non-mountain walkers amoung you an idea of what Michael is dealing with, Ben Nevis is just one of the 4,000 ft peaks (the biggest!).............. he's climbing 9 of them plus another 14 Munros (peaks over 3,000 ft).

So stick your hand in your pocket, even just for a couple of quid and help the Mountain Rescue teams.

Thank You!!

That Knock on the door (Part 5)

Part1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

We make progress towards the Holy Hospital silently but lighting up the night with blue strobes. SoItIs* is trying his best to get the balance between speed and smooth travel.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10......

"Hang on, stop a minute" Delboy* from the RRU has come in the back with me. There is too much for one person to do.

He suctions the frothy red blood coming from her airway. We've been doing this routine since we left the scene. I can't get anymore than 10 compression in before needing to stop and clear her airway.

Airway, Breathing, Circulation...... thats your priority......... we're finding it difficult to get past A but we continue in the face of certain failure.

I hold on to the yellow bar that runs along the roof of the interior ambulance as we negotiate another roundabout. I know where we are and how far from the hospital we are just through awareness of this road, having driven it thousands of times.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10................

Another pause. Blood is falling from the spinal board in the floor around the trolley.

C, control of haemorrhage. Her abdomen is growing before my eyes, blood continues to come from her lungs and the blood matting her hair masks the further loss from the horrific head injury that is the only external wound on her. This haemorrhage is beyond the level we can deal with, so we continue to concentrate on A and B

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10...........

I leave a bloody hand print on the ambulance wall as we take the long sweeping corner which indicates we are approx 4 minutes from the hospital.

As we leave the corner and I begin to compress and count again.

I notice her wrist is broken.

Its amazing what the mind latches onto and remembers.

__________________________________________________________


I will have to leave a longer interval for part 6. I haven't found a way of writing the final part without the job, and therefore myself, becoming instantly recognisable. Also finding the words to convey the scene we were faced with aren't quite within my literary capabilities yet. Add to that the resulting investigation still being under review and I have to leave it for some time.

Shouting at the TV

I've just found myself yelling at the TV, because of this story

Now I may be about to sound pretty callous but...................

Well done Grampian Fire Service.

Well done for setting and having a standard that when someone is unable to meet it and are therefore not safe or able to carry out their full duties, are warned and given opportunity and then are unable to meet it, they are dismissed.

Now, there is an argument that the 3 months he was given was not long enough for the expected changes needed and therefore he was set up to fail. I am of the opinion (and it is just that, MY opinion) that you should maintain the level of fitness and health necessary to do your job. It is a physically demanding job, you may be required to lift, carry or to squeeze through small spaces to enable you to rescue that person from a fire.

How would you feel if a family member of yours was trapped and fire personnel couldn't save them because they were physically unable in fitness and in size?

The fire service provide treadmills, rowing machines and weights on station to assist in this. The Fire service get preferential rates on gym membership from our council (we don't because we are an NHS trust, not an NHS board? Figure that on out!) . They are obviously aware that they are required to keep fit and healthy.

He knew he would be expected to have a certain level of fitness to cope with his job.

This level of fitness would not have disappeared suddenly over night, he would not have woken up suddenly a few stone heavier or less able to cope with carrying an oxygen tank. This has happened over a period of time longer than the 3 months they gave him as an ultimatum. The first report that I can find of him being fired for being unfit was July. Now that is 6 months back, and I'm fairly sure something will have been said to him well before the papers got hold of it, in short he has been aware in plenty of time to do something about it.

Now don't misunderstand me. The man has 22 years service and has lost his job which I'm sure he loves and I'm sorry for that. There maybe other factors involved, the fire service may not have been very supportive in helping him to achieve his goals, maybe there are other reasons it has come to this.

But at the end of the day, in our line of work, if your not fit to do the job you should not be doing the job because its not just YOUR livelihood at risk...............

Its OTHER PEOPLE's lives

I wish that the ambulance service would take the same line and grow a back bone where some of its employees are concerned. Several of our members of staff are less than physically fit for the more demanding areas of work. Medically they could save your life ten times over and give you the care you may need. But if someone 19 stone, and carrying it all around their middle in a 50 inch waist, turned up and needed to to carry you down stairs............... would you be more worried about being carried or them having a heart attack while doing it.

If this post upsets anyone I do apologise but at the end of the day it is (as is everything on this blog) my own opinion of the situation.

Your own opinions are warmly welcomed!

That's That

As I press 'Go Mobile' on the screen I re-read the address, I know it. Not a regular caller but something in the back of my mind is recognising the number and the road in combination.

The job is a cardiac arrest, query Purple call (Purple - may have been dead for sometime)

We pull up and grab the kit, I know which door to the block it is. I head straight for the stairs not needing to look at the numbers. I already know its the orange door on the first floor.

We're met by a family member who shows us to a tiny room at the back of the flat. The man is lay on his back on the floor, very pale, mouth open, eyes starring blankly upwards. The family can't tell us how long he's been there. They only came round because they couldn't get him on the phone.

He had been feeling unwell last night, apparently having trouble with his breathing. He had decided to sleep sitting up in the armchair which partially blocks our entrance to the room. The small table next to it is littered with evidence of his illness, GTN spray, ventolin inhalers, aspirin.

We feel his temperature, he is still slightly warm to touch so we start to go through the motions which we know will be futile but at least we can say we tried. He is asystolic throughout and after 20 minutes we explain to the family what will happen. They knew he was gone as well but tell us they appreciate our efforts.

Control are informed and the police notified as is standard practise. I grab a blanket and the report computer to head back up. I'm racking my brain to think about when I saw him last. I think it was an urgent call for him to go to Holy Hospital for assessment as his GP wasn't happy with something, was it his heart? Breathing or something less obvious considering the position I find myself in now?

I had reasoned before that I felt detached from cardiac arrests and DOA's (dead on arrival) because I didn't know the person. As I didn't know them I was unaffected by their death, it's my job and that's that.

But this was different. I knew this person, not in any great detail but I had sat and talked to them and seen them very much alive, he may have told me about his family and what he did in the prime of his life. And yet I still felt unaffected by his death and my role in seeing the end of his life.

I guess I'm still learning that its my job and that's that.

Small Spaces

We're let into the front door by the first officer we could wave at through the door, the buzzer had been pressed several times, they were obviously busy.

The job had come through as a young male with chest pain having difficulty breathing in a police cell following arrest.

The clicks and clangs proceed our arrival at the heavy blue door, the custody officer points us to the cell. He looks unconcerned about the patient's difficulty breathing.

I walk in and see why, he's hyperventilating.

I begin the process of calming him down, talking softly and calmly explaining that he has chest discomfort and tingling because he is breathing too fast. While I'm talking my partner is checking his vitals and ECG, panic attacks and hyperventilating are pretty easy to spot but always best to check that there isn't something else going on.

After a few minutes he is calmer and tells us how this is the first time he's been in trouble and that he has never been good in small spaces. I look around the cell, I don't think I'd do great in one of these either.

Although his vitals and ECG are fine, we take him to Holy Hospital to get checked out, the colour returns to his face pretty quickly on walking outside.

We leave him at A&E with a police escort, they all seem pretty embarressed to be there. The young patient for being in trouble with the police and the officers for having to stand guard over him. One of the officers informs me that it was a weak charge but they have to follow it. So for the next few hours, as A&E is busy, two police officers are tied up at the hospital with someone who probably didn't need to go.

While we go on our merry way to the next customer.