The patient had fallen from her bunkbed so her friends (who had run off) had lifted her back onto the top bunk. She was screaming in pain (which is fair enough I suppose), and wouldn’t let us near her. This little problem was solved by giving her a lot of Entonox (known to some people as ‘laughing gas’). After enough of this stuff she started laughing and we essentially ‘grabbed’ her off the bed.
Then she refused to sit in the carry-chair, but because we were upstairs she needed to go in it. After a lot of persuasion, and a lot of her screaming very close to our ears, we managed to get her to sit down; this had the rather excellent side-effect of popping the kneecap back in place.
This would normally mean that the amount of pain goes down by a lot, but this girl had a touch of ‘hospital phobia’ so she continued screaming. While screaming she was also arguing with the teenager who was with her, telling him that he needed to come to hospital with her but he was refusing because ‘How am I gonna get back home?’ I must admit I really wanted to tell him to walk it, because the hospital was only about 1 000 yards away. Despite her pleading with him, he wasn’t for budging. He set his Burberry baseball cap square on his head and refused. I don’t think she is going to be too happy at him next time she sees him.
Once that argument had run its course (and my crewmate and I managed to stop laughing), we had to get the patient downstairs – this was made more difficult by a sideboard that was in the upper hallway by the stairs. To counter this problem, we had to lift her completely over the banister. Luckily she was a lightweight, and my crewmate and I are – cough – both strapping, good-looking men.
We saw her later in hospital, having a plaster cast put on her leg, so that the kneecap wouldn’t slip out of place. She was much happier and surrounded by her parents. She even managed to give us a smile, which, in the end, made the job worthwhile.
So, this is what we occasionally have to deal with, not so much the life-threatening stuff, but more the silly little things that can make an ‘easy’ job much trickier.
We got called to a pub (which is always promising), to a 24-year-old female who was having ‘difficulty breathing’. When we turned up at the pub, we were met by a man who, after letting us know he was a ‘first aider’, told us that she was fitting and that she had stopped breathing, but that mouth to mouth resuscitation had ‘brought her back’.
Entering the pub we found the woman thrashing around on the floor. She wasn’t having a fit, it was more like a temper tantrum. Throwing himself on top of her was her husband, who was reluctant to let us approach her. People in the pub told us that they had both been drinking heavily.
We near enough had to force the man off of his wife just so we could examine her properly, and it soon became apparent that she was just very, very drunk. Out of the corner of my eye I saw sudden movement and ducked quickly as the husband threw his wife’s shoe at a man standing behind me. We decided that loading her onto the ambulance would be the best thing to do. The husband demanded to be let in, but we told him that we needed room to properly examine his wife. He banged on our windows twice, but then left, apparently running up the road – possibly as a result of him throwing a pint glass at another of the pub’s customers. (This was very unwise of him, because half of Newham police force were 200 yards up the road dealing with an armed incident.)
By this time a second crew had turned up, as someone had called 999 and told our Control that the woman had stopped breathing. We stood them down, although, on reflection, they could have been of help keeping the woman on the trolley because she was still throwing herself around, refusing to lie still, and generally making life difficult. We managed to get a blood sugar, pulse and blood pressure (all of which were normal) but she refused to stay on the trolley and wouldn’t sit on a chair – so we let her lie on the floor.
At times like these, I think I’d give my eye-teeth to be able to put people like her in a 4-point restraint, but it’s something we are not allowed do.
Later, while I was driving to hospital, she made an attempt to leap out the back of the ambulance, and it was only the rugby skills of my crewmate that prevented her escaping under the wheels of a following car. The rugby tackle was all the more impressive given that my crewmate is 5-foot-nothing tall.
We finally managed to get the patient to hospital, where she threw her vomit bowl (with vomit) over the floor and tried to hit a nurse. Luckily I was standing behind her and grabbed her before she could damage any of the staff, or even a patient.
To cut a long story short, the nurses let her phone her sister to come and pick her up, and then kicked her out the department.
Two things about this job that bring a smile to my face: (1) one of her shoes is still lying in the gutter, where we picked her up from, and (2) her husband got out of prison today and, given his attitude and behaviour, he’ll soon be back inside.
So, it’s not just weekend nights we get the violent drunks, it’s every damn night …
We are not taught how to restrain patients who might be violent but sometimes it is essential – for example, in the event of someone having a serious head injury and becoming violent. So, we have to make it up as we go along and hope that it turns out alright.
The other night I had my favourite type of job, the type of job that meant I wasn’t upset to be late leaving work.
People who are diabetic sometimes have very low blood sugar; this makes them confused, agitated and sleepy, and this can lead to unconsciousness and even death. Their blood sugar can become low for any number of reasons. Most often they have done more exercise than normal and not eaten enough to raise their blood sugar.
The treatment for this condition is to either give them sugar or an injection that ‘frees up’ some sugar that is stored in their liver.
Our patient last night normally controls her diabetes very well; so much so that her family had never seen her with a dangerously low blood sugar (the medical term for this is hypoglycaemia). They called us because she was acting confused and was unable to speak properly or stand upright. We arrived, and found out she was a diabetic; checking her blood sugar we got a reading of 1.6 mmols (the normal range for a diabetic is around 4.5–12.0 mmols) – this is very low and explained why she was losing consciousness.
The family were understandably upset, as they had never seen this before. They saw her slipping into a coma in front of our eyes, so we explained what was going on as I prepared the injection that would raise her blood sugar. I gave the injection (this injection is called glucagon) and waited for it to take effect, all the time reassuring the relatives.
Within 10 minutes she was up and talking, we then gave her some sugar jelly which raises the blood sugar some more. Soon she had made a full recovery, with her blood sugar reading 5.6 mmols. We gave her some carbohydrates (for ‘slow-burn’ energy) and left her in the care of her exceptionally happy family.
The reason why this is such an enjoyable type of job is that we are actually saving a life (for a change) with the treatment that we can give, and that the recovery is normally rapid, and always impressive. From unconsciousness to 100% fitness in the space of about 15 minutes really impresses onlookers … and it does our ego good to be praised every so often.
Yesterday was the last day of the Notting Hill Carnival. The police are calling this year’s carnival a success, with little reported crime, but I would tend to disagree: it’s just that the crimes all happened to people as they travelled home.