Boy racers

We'd just got back to base when the job pinged on our screen. Car on fire. Great. Just around the corner, about 30 seconds away.
I drive, my mate jumps in next to me, we've already put our jackets on. We drive around and control get back to us again saying there is a car on fire. I see a car pull out of a pub car park and think there is something dodgy about this one, you know the feeling you get?
Anyway, I drive on and see people waving us down. We pull up alongside and I jump out grabbing the fire extinguisher. I take the scene in; i'm being filmed by sick people on their mobiles. Someone shouts thats it's OK - they're out of the car. I walk across the bomb site, which is exactly what it resembles, I have never seen anything like it in my life. I don't recognise the make of the car. I look inside and don't really recognise what I see either.
The driver is dead. I can tell that by looking at his injuries. I feel the carotid of the passenger, he is sitting upright looking nothing like the driver is. I shout for my mate to get me the trolley. I can't feel a pulse but I can tell this kid is young and I need to try and do something. My mate brings my helmet, which I throw away. A responder car turns up and starts sticking pads on the drivers chest. I tell them to leave it, that he's dead but he carries on. He's in PEA he shouts at me. No shit. "Leave him alone and help me get the door open" I say, actually I shout it because the idiot is intent on focusing on the damn driver.
Another crew turns up, thankfully they're a crew that I know and a whole lot more switched on than the responder. The Fire Service turn up and yank the door off, I quickly collar the lad, for the good it will do him. We get him on board and I suction him, he fills up again. I can't clear his airway, I look to tube him but I don't recognise any of what I should. Thankfully the hospital is 5 minutes away and we blue light him in. They call it pretty much straight away, he had dissected his trachea, amongst other things.

A few days later my boss calls me at home; What are you doing tomorrow? He asks. The boys mum wants to talk to you about the incident.

Shit.

You just never know...

Class 2 doctors urgent. Again. That's all we'd done all day. The sort where the patient had driven themselves to the doctors, the doctor says they should go up to the hospital and arranges an ambulance. The patient drives home and goes upstairs to bed and somehow loses the ability to walk. Anyway, I digress. Abdo pain, GP admission. Sprightly old chap wanders out and we wander up to him. He springs up (literally) into the ambulance, suitcase in either hand and flops down with a grin saying those mortal words...."Phew...when they said I had a AAA they didn't tell me it would be THIS painful!" Holy moly. Can I just have a feel of your tummy sir? One of my regular chat up lines. Sure enough there it is. Bi-lateral greys at the ready just as he performs his latest trick...the ironing board impression.

It's strange how you don't remember their names.

Her Majestys Finest

"Her Majesty's Armed Forces STOP OR I'LL FIRE!!!!!"
WTF??! We are driving down a very quaint street, admittedly it's 2am but that itsn't quite what we wanted to hear. "Can we help you sir?" as he threw himself onto our bonnet, blood smearing down across the AMBULANCE sign thats written backwards.
"275590611 Murphy Her Majesty's armed forces" he shouts again. I look at my crewmate who rolls his eyes back at me. It's going to be one of those nights. By this time a female sergeant has arrived, a copper sergeant, not a soldier one. He gets in the back of the truck and looks like he's been hit by a train. "I demand a medic" he shouts and spits at me. I think about that scene in Withnail and I.
He commando crawls along the floor towards the open door. "Mr Murphy" I say-too late. Another couple of scratches and bumps to add to the collection as he smashes his face in to the concrete.
I get out and stand infront of him. He is delerious and on drugs. "I demand a medic" he yells again and shouts a different set of numbers at me. He is commando crawling towards me, I don't move and he tries to go through me, not around me.
This is what I became a Paramedic for. Mr Murphy spends a night in the cells, at her Majesty's pleasure.

Not how it should be

You get to see lots of awful things, things that people shouldn't see. You also get to hear about many more.

I had just gone clear at the hospital when we saw a man in a wedding suit coming towards us. It was dark and he'd been crying. Having been messed about all night by control and other idiots we had a laugh commenting that trouble had probably kicked off at his wedding and the inlaws had a ding dong. Or his wife had run off with the best man.....or been killed in a tragic accident. Black humour, we all have it. Next thing a job pings up on the screen, a discharge. Its 2345 we're in our meal break window, for God's sake.

"Need to get this job completed as soon as possible" it read. 25 yr old Male terminal cancer just got married wants to die at home. Shit. Do I feel bad now.

Professional head on as we head to the ward. The nurse pulls us aside to give us the gen...diagnosed 3 weeks ago, due to get married in November but told to bring the wedding forward. Shit.

They had just fitted a syringe driver and were topping him up with more morphine. I stuck my head around the door. There is no way he's going to make the journey I say to the nurse. Doctor says he will. Who am I to argue. His mum comes out and tells us what a wonderful day he's had.

How do you celebrate I wonder? My mate is thinking the same. It's not like you can go get hammered and do the Hokey Cokey, because this isn't what it's all about.

The nurse asks for a hand, I go in and try to make him physically comfortable. What do I say to his wife? Have you had a good day I say and immediately try and grab the words before they go into her ears. She looks at me gone out. Your mum in law was just telling me about it I say and her eyes soften. I go out and tell my mate that there is no way he'll make the journey. It's about 40 minutes to his house by road. All of a sudden I get shouted back in and the nurse asks me to help her move him over the bed so his wife can lay next to him. We quickly move him but he dies in our arms. His mum pushes past to tell him quickly that she loves him before he can't hear her, and I go out, because it's a private time and I was in the way. the nurse is in tears. We're all in tears because it shouldn't happen like that. You are meant to get hitched have a family and grow old. Double shit.

Lawn mowers

"How much does he want for it?" I say to Edna "only a tenner" not bad for a lawnmower I guess. I haven't the heart to tell her I just bought a house with a yard, like the ones on Coronation Street. "Tell him i'll pick it up when I've finished the run" I tell her. It's been a long hot day and I duly pick up the mower and stick it in the back of the wagon. We're 20 minutes from our shift ending and about to go green. We're sure to go back to base. Good old control...they forgot a discharge who's been waiting all day and very, very pissed off. I wheel him in the back and he looks at the inconspicuously hidden under a blanket lawn mower and his face looks like its going to explode. "Is that what I think it is"? he splutters. "Actually yes" I reply "We were just on our way up to the ambucopter, we have to get it to hovver and we mow a 'H' in the grass so it knows where to land" thinking that i'm done for and I can see the complaint letter coming in. "Goodness" he says "I never knew you had so many different duties".
Got away with that one.

emails

Someone sent me some of these in an email, I don't know who wrote them originally but they're true...

• It Drives you absolutely nuts when someone calls you an "Ambulance Driver"



• You refer to firemen as trumpton.



• You know that full moon = Insanity



• When driving in your own car you try to book at scene when you reach tescos



• When you get to a cardiac arrest and they get an output back your gutted!!....too much work!



• You crouch down in your car as you go past accident scenes so the crew already there won't see you



• You remember every pt by their injury or disease and not their name



• when you wipe your feet on the way out of peoples homes



• When you back into parking spaces on your days off



• If you and your partner have discussed dinner plans over a dead body



• You thrive on serious trauma



• You're up at 3:00 am on facebook, all in a days work



• When you don't let anybody get between you and the exit route at social gatherings



• When you've wanted to hold a seminar on 'Suicide - How to Get It Right The FIRST Time'

Why am I in the job?

Why am I in this job? Good question. It's one I ask myself and I don't really know the answer to. I need to be in control. Not in a psycho way. I need to be able to take control. I was once in a situation where I wasn't in control, others were in control. I don't cope very well with that. I cope better when I pull the strings.

Peculiar names

I went to an RTC the other day, just a minor bump but you could see the pound signs kerchinging in the drivers eyes. She was an indian lady. Those of you in the know will know that RTC's are pretty noisy and chaotic. You know when you are talking to someone in a pub and the music is blaring out and just as you say something embarrassing the music cuts out and you end up shouting out so the whole pub hears you? Thats what happened at the RTC. My mate was in the front talking to her and I went off to get the collar and board, when I get back I asked the lady what her name was, it was noisy remember when she replied, and I didnt quite hear her...."Minjeeta?" I shouted, just as the whole scene went quiet. The Policeman nearly fell down the ditch laughing. In fairness it wasnt like it was Rosemary or something, it did sound similar.

Star jumps

Performing actions that make you look like an epileptic mating with a windmill will not speed up our arrival. In fact we may just drive past for the hell of it. Also, when we get there please don't tell me i'll need a stretcher. Does it look like the NHS make stretchers that bend around corners and go upstairs?

If the patient got themselves up to bed then they can as sure as hell get themselves down the stairs again, especially if they weigh 25 stone.

While we're at it...Abdo pain does not stop your legs from working. Out of principle I try not to carry anyone who is younger than me, admittedly i'm carrying more people than ever now.







I'm a Paramedic. That makes me smile.

I'm actually a Team Leader, that makes me smile even more.





If only they knew.

The beginning

I wanted to be a copper. Ever since our local beat bobby came and put handcuffs on me at primary school. Maybe I just liked being handcuffed. I wanted to be like the blonde one in Cagney and Lacey, although now, with hindsight my life seems to be more like Mary-Beths, only Harv doesn't work on a construction site.


So that was the plan, I looked into Hendon and how to get there (the tube seemed a viable option) but the only problem was I wasn't tall enough. Shit. I started yoga classes, i'll stretch myself.

Plan B. Just go for the ride and see what happens.