Most of the time, stabbings turn out to be ridiculously trivial affairs involving handbags at dawn in some form or another.  But none the less, you still try and get to them quick . . . just in case it might be something real for once.

My car screeched* to a halt outside a busy intersection and I was instantly greeted by an unusually dressed Shoreditch trendie looking rather flushed.  He gestured, over theatrically I thought, toward a young man propped up against a lamp post clutching at the side of his chest in pain.

“Quick!  He’s over there!  He says he’s been stabbed!” Continue reading →

When you turn up for any traumatic incident you take in what’s called a “global overview”.  You very quickly assess the situation for a rough idea of what’s gone/going on – this includes safety, numbers of casualties, by-standers, damage, critical urgency etc etc.

After a while of being in this job you also pick up on the smaller things too, tending also, not to panic so much.  This is a handy trait to develop as most people who come across a traumatic incident do tend to panic.  In fact, you can loosely gauge the seriousness of an incident by the actions and panic of the by-standers around.  Continue reading →

“I’m going to be sick . . . ”

There’s generally only two times when ambulance personnel will be seen to move fast.  The first is when someone is genuinely life threateningly sick – and there is something we can do about it (especially kids).  The second is when someone is about to be sick.

I leapt, Gazelle like, to one side thinking it was inevitable.  Noticing he still had another second or two left before eruption I raced into the kitchen to find a receptacle of some sort.

“BBLLLLLLLEEEEEEEAAAAAAUUUUUUUUGHGHGHG!!!!!!!!” Continue reading →

People do crazy things when you’re driving on blue lights.  Some will swerve into the middle of the road, some will slam on their anchors and stop right there.  Some will “surf the blue wave” and speed up, some will tail gate.  And some might even do the correct thing by signalling and pulling over to the left!  But not many.

Pedestrians also do crazy things.  And the one thing I really hate and fear is when people jaywalk across busy roads.  But not the ones who make it to the other side – no, the ones who just stand dumb-ass in the middle waiting for a break in the traffic.  You’ll see them all over London, putting their lives at risk, completely unaware and unamused by the vehicles zooming past them in both directions.

Yesterday I had a very scary moment with a Jaywalker . . . Continue reading →

The Police blue tape was laced everywhere, marking an obvious boundary of where not to pass.

Within the boundary, several Armed Response Vehicles were parked in the middle of the road.  Armed police wandered back and forth from these points, their guns gripped with purpose.

Continue reading →

“Ok, mind out, sharps . . .”

A Tech 4 took the sharps needle from me and deposited it into my little sharps bin attached to my bag.

I’d blown the vein . . . which was annoying really, as it was huge, like a hose pipe.  So confident was I about getting it in I’d gone straight for a size 16 cannula – a big one.  But, our patient was suffering exacerbation of his [tippy title=”COPD” URL=””] “Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease”.  A generic term used for a long term illness associated with the lungs – eg, Asthma, Emphysema, Bronchitis etc.  Patients with COPD usually present with difficulty in breathing (DIB) and are a high percentage of our call-outs.  Smoking is a massive influence to this condition – I reckon if we could take the general public round with us sometimes to visit the folk who are COPD due to smoking, it would probably turn things around. [/tippy] and wasn’t in a particularly good way.  As such, he was sat in a tripod position desperately trying to force air both in and out of his lungs.  This, of course, made him highly agitated and was the sole cause for my failure in cannulating . . . well, that’s my excuse anyway. Continue reading →