I have been summoned by the AGM (Area General Manager) for chat. I wonder what it’s all about?

Previous experience of being summoned would suggest there has been a complaint. Yet, surely one of his minions would have dealt with me already were that the case?

Instead, I sit here at Felixstowe enjoying my break. Not a care in the world.

Very strange. I am to seek him out whenever I am next in Ipswich apparently.

Two possibilities spring to mind. Either he is going to deal personally with a rather nasty complaint, perhaps too sensitive for a duty operations manager, or he is acting on behalf of someone else.

Intriguing yes?

I wonder if my threat to make war on a particular department has rattled someones cage? Someone high up I would imagine.

Interesting.

Watch this space.

M

Fortunately for me that is exactly what’s on the cards. Some well calculated and strategic booking of annual leave has ensured I am off from the 11th of Jan till the 11th of Feb. That’s a whole bloody month! I fucking well need it though.

How so? I hear you ask. Why I would have thought being a paramedic, whipping around on blue lights and saving lives would be a fantastic job surely?

Well it is and it isn’t. There are times when I enjoy the job. I get to a really sick patient double quick, sort them out and come away feeling as though I have made a real difference. The problem is that that kind of patient is a ‘once in a blue moon’ kind of patient. If you consider my working week as a group of four twelve hour shifts, that’s days and nights then I will try and outline briefly what I do with that time. Let’s say I start work on the Monday morning at maybe 7am. This is a record of a genuine day. Okay here goes…

7am – Phone rings. Please proceed to McDonald’s in Utopia for standby.

Make our way down. Sit there for 30 minutes staring at people. The maximum time you can be allocated to a standby position is 45 minutes in our area. Sitting on your arse in a car park for this length of time is truly mind numbing. Its not conducive to a happy working environment and can get a little tense. Especially if you don’t get on well with your crew mate.

7.30 – Red call (that’s an emergency to you and me) to a woman fallen from bed. Arrive to find an elderly woman on her bedroom floor. No injury. Assisted back into bed. Left scene.

8.30 – Urgent call (that’s a timed pickup. Usually between 2 and 4 hours) to an elderly male struggling to walk. Arrive to find a man with a urinary tract infection. A local GP has booked him into hospital and we are to be his taxi. Roger that, you call we haul.

11am – Red call to man with a knee injury. Arrive to find a 34 year old man who has injured his leg while out running two days ago. He has now decided that he requires an ambulance to take him to hospital because his friend is first aid trained and advised him to get an x-ray. Neither have a car and threaten to complain if we do not take them. Fuck it, get on then you wanker. Watch through gritted teeth as man hobbles out to ambulance negotiating a flight of stairs on the way.

12.30 – Return to base. Stood down for break. Munch on cold sandwich.

1300 – Sent to local Asda on standby.

1445 – Call up and ask to be moved on as have achieved Lv10 Mind Numbness and Lv8 Bladder of Fullness. Drive back towards base and receive red call en route.

1450 – Red to a woman short of breath. Woman is 80 and has a chronic lung condition whereby they are slowly failing over time. She is a lifelong smoker and is happily puffing on a fag as we walk in the door. She is assessed as having a probable chest infection. Attempt to pass to her own GP for management at home. GP feels pt is likely suffering something else but does not know what. Advise we take the patient to hospital. Arrive at A&E to a poor reception. Why didn’t I refer the patient to their own GP? Do I think it is appropriate to bring this minor chest infection to a busy A&E department? Grit teeth and smile.

1700 – Return to base.

1702 – Red call to a man collapsed in the street. Arrive to find a man drunk on the floor. Police are also on scene. Fierce debate between myself and police officer ensues. Police officer states patient is drunk and it is therefore a medical problem. I state patient is not a patient. He is a drunk in a public place and therefore he is committing a crime. In the end they refuse outright. They know we can’t leave a man laying in the road. Even if we could it would a matter of mere minutes before some do-gooder called again. The police won’t show a second time though.

1830 – Return to base and pray no one else calls us.

So there you have it. Yes there is a fair bit of sitting around and yes I suppose there is a lot of variation. There is also a lot of piss-taking too. People will always deem an emergency to be what they personally deem to be an emergency. For this reason they will not stop calling. Ever.

Its not one thing in particular that causes me to feel particularly stressed. So how would I describe how I feel?

Imagine your empathy, your caring nature if you will as the face of a massive cliff. Occasionally a big wave of stress is going to come along and give your face a bit of a battering. You can handle that though. You can shrug it off because its expected and doesn’t happen very often.

Life as a Paramedic, for me, consists of a near constant low level erosion. That’s is to say that all those minor irritations are ever present and nothing is done to prevent or change that fact. My cliff of empathy has been gradually eroded to the point that am I just as likely to stab my next patient as I am to treat them.

That’s the NHS though. They simply do not believe in tidal defences to protect the staff. They believe in burnout. Its a given. It will happen.
You simply cannot care 100 percent of the time. Not when you can easily compare old Doris and her heart attack with young Pete and his hurty knee. You feel sorry old Doris has had to wait so long for a response but Pete? Pete can fuck off.

Yep, it’s time for a break.

Me.

“Early weather reports are suggesting the public, particularly if you live in the East of England should prepare for snow.” – BBC Reporter, two days before.

“We have never been more prepared. We have stock piled ten times the amount of salt and grit we had this time last year. We are ready.” – Spokesman for Suffolk County Council and mirrored by another in Essex.

“The people of the east of England are today waking up to hear weather reports saying there is going to be winds blowing over from Siberia and that this will bring a lot of snow with it. I kind of doubt that, this is England. I mean… We don’t really get snow this time of year do we?!” – A member of the publics reaction to the BBC weathers ‘extremist’ reporting.

“The snow is expected to fall over night. Experts predict a fall of at least six inches.” – Local weather report on the day.

“Yes, we’ve watched the weather reports, yes as I said before we are prepared. As a matter of fact we have seventy drivers extra and they will all be reporting in at 6pm. They will be on standby from then on.” – Spokesman for Suffolk County Council. Three hours prior to the fall.

At roughly 5 pm on Thursday 17th the snow began to fall. It was earlier than expected and it caught us all by surprise. The sheer amount that fell in the first hour was more than any of us thought possible in England. Now before I go any further I don’t want you to think I am trying to make this into some tragic hollywood style story. No, I just want to get down on paper the events how I saw them as a paramedic on duty that day. I’m sure the rest of the world ground on as usual oblivious to awful cock up going on around them but hey, that’s just life isn’t it?

If you had been out had about on that day, christmas shopping or whatever, you too would have thought, ‘Gosh! That’s a fair bit of snow. I thought that wasn’t supposed to come to tonight?’ You wouldn’t be wrong for thinking that either. Hell, thats what we all thought. I mean that’s what we were told wasn’t it? Then as time dragged on and the traffic in front of you started to back up you’d likely start getting a bit concerned. You’re an hour away from home and you’ve moved maybe half a mile in the last hour. Worse still is that the snow has not stopped. If anything its coming down thicker and quicker if that seems possible. You look outside your window and see people trudging through snow thats laying on the pavement. Its at least three inches already. You notice your fuel light is going to come on if you don’t fill up soon so you make a point of pulling into the next garage you slowly approach. Oh dear, the garage has closed its doors and switched its pumps off. You sit in your car paralyzed with dread. Its getting bitterly cold out. The snow is heavier than ever, you’ve got no fuel, little Johnny and Mable are starting to get hungry and cry, your heating is not adequate and… wait, over there! Why, there’s an ambulance sitting next to one of the pumps. One of the paramedics is walking over right now in his hi-vis jacket. You wind the window down.

‘You need to turn around miss. The fuel station is closed,’ I say.

You look at me gob smacked. Your eyes are brimming with tears and you wince as your children scream.

‘Why?’ you ask as I move to walk away. I shout over my shoulder to busy and caught up in what the hell I and my colleagues are going to do to notice how cold and uninterested the words that come out are.

‘There’s no bloody grit. Chief in there can’t keep the forecourt open if its covered in ice,’ I say gesturing to a man in the forecourt shop sitting behind his till all nice and warm. And with that I’m gone.

I walked away from that car without a seconds thought. The sounds of the screaming children abruptly muffled by the stressed out mum closing her window.

My colleague was actually filling up at the time I had that brief conversation. We’re allowed you see. The petrol stations have to keep a reserve for us and allow us to fill up when we need. Incidentally had I turned up in my own car and flashed my ID I would have been able to fill up too. It’s not just the vehicles. Vehicles are useless without staff to drive them.

We finished filling and left. Anarchy had started early. We did not want to be around to watch the public shouting abuse and gesticulating mob fashion at the poor clerk indoors. It just goes to show how close to a complete break down our society is, when the most minor of things occurs. I say minor because, not 300 miles further north is Scotland. Now I’m pretty sure they won’t be acting the same way these crazed-its-the-end-of-world-nutters are acting. What about the Swiss? I’ll bet they’d be laughing their arses off. England! One little snow storm and they fall to pieces. Its true, we do fall to pieces. Then again, it doesn’t matter how minor the weather is if you’re not prepared for it.

We were most definitely not prepared.

By 8pm, Utopia was at a standstill. Literally. The major junctions and roads were gridlocked and nothing was going anywhere.

Those that tried had pretty good odds on not getting to their destination either by getting stuck which was the most likely option or by coming off the road altogether and crashing.

I lost track of the number of road traffic accidents I heard over the radio. But why? Why was this happening?

We got a red call to a woman with a broken hand up in a nearby town. Ordinarily it would take us maybe fifteen to twenty minutes to get there on blue lights from Utopia. On this occasion it took us an hour and a half. The A14 was down to somewhere in the region of 10 – 20mph for the majority of the journey. To make matters worse… it was just a bloody hand injury for crying out loud! Why the hell someone up in the control centre couldn’t have seen sense and told them to sod off I don’t know. No sooner had I got the patient aboard the husband announced matter of factly that he’d be following in his car. I gave my best sneer and evil eye and slammed the door. I think he could tell we were not impressed.

I heard a cardiac arrest (someones heart has stopped beating – this person is dead without help) go out in the immediate area and a roll over RTA (a car has rolled over, likely trapping the occupants inside) somewhere in Utopia as I rejoined the A14. My fists clenched till my knuckles cracked as I listened to the woman in the back making demands of my colleague and asking why we weren’t going faster. My colleague to his credit, kept his cool and simply grinned back. A bit of drool swung pendulum like from his gritted teeth (this is how to tell if this particular colleague is stressed out – you watch for the drool bungie) as his glared at her. It must have worked as she apparently wouldn’t dare make eye contact again for the rest of the hour long journey back in.

So, between us getting that call and finally dropping the bitch off and hospital our ambulance had been tied up for nearly three and a half hours. On any other day we should have knocked that one out in around one hour. This was happening all over the county. It didn’t take long before we had no ambulances left to send. The police were in a similar pickle, and the fire brigade I am happy to say didn’t know what had hit them. No sleep for them tonight. Gits.

A Thursday night this close to christmas is going to a busy one for everyone involved in any area of public services. The snow really couldn’t have come at a worse time. Most of the major drinking and eating establishments had some form of christmas do on and it was late night shopping.

A little before midnight, the buses decided that they were not going to play anymore. It was just too dangerous on the roads, and they couldn’t move for traffic anyway. Not half an hour after they had pulled out the taxies also decided that they had had enough. Now I am no mathematician but to my reckoning that left a few thousand people stuck with no way home either because all public transport was suspended or because they simply could not get out of Utopia with the roads in the state they were in.

So, what happens now? Well, if your not stuck freezing in your car somewhere, in a ditch upside down, getting hypothermic outside waiting for a taxi that will never arrive then your probably tucked all nice and snug indoors and completely oblivious to nightmare that hasn’t really even started yet.

Its just gone midnight and the snow is still falling. A call comes in for a man collapsed in the street. Initial reports are sparse but we know he’s young and we know he’s not half a mile from the hospital. There are no ambulances available.

A car has span out of control and gone sideways into a tree in the middle of nowhere. He can forget it. There are no ambulances available and even if there was it will be diverted way before it even makes out of Utopia. Gotta hit those times!

People are freezing on the A14 and A12. They abandon their cars and walk.

The calls to people outside and freezing go through the roof.

We have nothing to send.

An ambulance fast response vehicle (erm… it’s snowing?), okay response vehicle is dispatched to the collapsed male in town. It doesn’t make it. It spins off the road instead and gets stuck in the snow.

And on and on.

The male collapsed in the street did eventually get a response. He was twenty eight and he died because his heart had stopped while he walking home from a night out on the town.

A lot of the people who abandoned their cars on the roads were able to find their way to a late night Tesco. It had remained open and was sheltering anyone who needed it. A couple of hotels had also done the same.

Yet what had happened?

The gritters did eventually make it out on to the road but it was too late. The snow was too thick and deep and all the shit they sprayed just sat on top. Apparently they had been taken completely by surprise. Nearly six hours had passed before they were able to mount a response in force, around about the time they had expected the snow in the first place.

So there you have it. A bit sensationalist you may think, but hey I see this shit first hand. I am sure if you yourself work in any of the emergency services you may be able to testify to the utter chaos an unprepared town can find itself subject too. Maybe you have seen worse or maybe you think I am talking out of my arse. Well whatever you may think, if you ever find yourself in a blizzard in England, think carefully before you try and call for help. Do you really need help? Because I guarantee there will be plenty who do.

Sometimes, if I am not careful there is danger that this could spiral out of control and become ‘The Rage’.

I believe this is something many paramedics suffer with from time to time. Okay, daily. A little anger may cause me to throw in some sarcasm, or maybe a little reckless driving as the patient cradles a fractured arm. ‘The Rage’ will cause me to forget the fact that I am there to act in your best interests, to protect your life. This is rarely because I am late off or due a break. It is usually when I am called to deal with some ignorant scrotum with fuck all wrong and I can here the radio screaming with other life threatening emergencies in my area.

A case in point would be a call I attended recently for a man complaining of knee pain. He’d fallen over while playing football just before half time. Yet instead of coming off and resting it he decided to play the second half. He beamed with savage pride as his mate described three cracking goals he witnessed our poor wounded soldier fire into the back of the net whilst dodging between defenders like a ballerina on speed.

I could feel my eyes widening and my pulse quickening but above all an urge to allow my head to snap forward and nut him. I think my clinching fists gave me away as I stood trying to smile and look calm. He flashed me a toothy grin and asked where my chair was.

‘Chair?’ I enquired.

‘Yes, you have to carry him down the stairs. He could fall and break his other leg.’

‘Its that painful is it?’

‘Yeah! I can’t put any fuckin weight on it ya spastic!’

Looking back I can’t quite believe what I did. I bent down and picked up the guys fags, walked over to the window and threw them out. It was a calculated gamble but it worked. I balanced the fact that this guy was in genuine pain against the area of town we were currently in. Why? Because we were bang in the centre of benefit town and I was willing to bet this guy cared more his fags than he did for his own leg.

He stood bolt up right and hobbled towards the window, screaming abuse and dribbling. I could give a shit. Realising we weren’t ever going to take his ‘hurty knee’ seriously now he sat down and took a pen and paper from the table in front of him. He wanted mine and my colleagues names so that he could write a complaint.

Now complaints are a big deal. They are always investigated and usually stay around to haunt you for sometime. With this in mind I decided to take another calculated gamble. This time I was making the assumption that this chap was not overly intelligent and may cave if threatened himself. I told him he was welcome to have my name and to complain, but that I would be countering with my own.

‘Eh? Whatdouya mean? You can’t report me! I’m the fucking patient innit?!’

His mate looked on nervously. I had my sternest expression on as I launched a barrage of guilt loaded missiles. I told him very simple chimp english that wasting our time was a criminal offence and that if he persisted I would push for prosecution. Okay, so I am bending the law slightly but it worked. I rounded of with heart wrenching tale of how everyday some poor soul dies because our ambulances are tied up with people who should know better.

‘Chill out! I was only messin ya know? Look I can walk to the ambulance yeah?’

‘You can walk to the taxi,’ I replied.

This guy really wound me up. Yet he did cause me to think about how I react to some situations. Since this chap I now try and take several deep breaths before I say something I may regret. An even better tactic which I find works a treat is to simply do nothing but smile. Why? Well, if you can remain calm long enough when let’s say an angry chap is taking his shit out on you. Just think to yourself ‘This guy is clearly angry. He is having a shit day. This pleases me because he is an arse. I am happy he is having a shit day. I am happy!’

See? All I do is to make his shitty time my amusement time. It is working so far. I suppose its because when you get into an argument with someone your both trying to get one over on each other. But hey! If he’s already pissed off and having a shit time then what’s the point of continuing? Haven’t you won already by the sheer fact that he is having a shit day? I think so.

Well, enough mindless mumbling from me. Fuck off and find something else to do with your time.

M

Today I was visiting a patient in a local home and whilst waiting for a GP to call me back I do what I normally do and start having a snout about. I love looking at photos for example. I like to see what the old crusty looked like in their youth. There is usually a wedding photo or two. Except today it wasn’t a photo that caught my attention but a poster stuck on the back of the patients bedroom door. It said ‘Beatrice’s bath day is Wednesday’. I asked a member of staff about this and it was exactly as it read. Beatrice has one bath a week. On Wednesday.

Now I am not sure how familiar my dear reader is with residential homes and their clientele, and I don’t by any stretch want to tar them all with one large crusty brush but… Old people stink. Of course not all of them do, but you would be hard pressed to pink a rose out of a line up of ten.

Its by no means their fault. They might want to wash and bathe but many don’t have the strength, coordination or perhaps marbles to be able to. They need help which is unfortunately like everything else in this world, on a budget.

So poor old Beatrice, who in particular has all her marbles, but cannot get about due to a stroke she had four years ago wants a bath. Yet its Sunday and its not her bath day. She has to sit in her own urine (she also has a weak bladder and can’t get to the loo without assistance) soaked pad for hours a day until this evening. After tea, if the stench of twenty other similar residents hasn’t put her off her food she will be assisted up to her room. Her damp pad will be removed, a quick wipe with a flannel, a douse of talc, a new pad and that’s that. All clean apparently.

Is it any wonder these people are much more prone to skin infections, urinary infections, systemic infections and anything else you could reasonably expect from poor basic hygiene?

I wonder if there are other special days? Teeth cleaning day perhaps? Talk to someone day? Or maybe a day out? Okay, I may be stretching reality a bit by suggesting a day out – that only occurs if you have family and that they in turn give a shit.

Some homes are a damn site better than others. They are not all bad. I’ll touch on that another day though. I’m off for a bath now.

M.

Sorry! I find myself rushing back to the keyboard however to write about something which I am sure you will find just as interesting as I did. Beware though! I became a tad upset for a short time when I was told. I don’t blame you if you do too.

Yesterday I was sent to a road traffic accident. The control centre was being bombarded with multiple callers – a sure sign that the accident is a major one. As the information began to filter through to me a picture began to develop in my mind as to what had likely occurred. Witnesses had seen a car swerving violently between traffic on the dual carriage way. This had continued for about half a mile at high speed before the car flipped off the road and rolled several times up the embankment before rolling back down and ending up back on the carriageway facing the wrong direction. We were informed that there was one suspected casualty and that he was believed to be drunk.

Upon arrival there was debris every where. One lane was blocked by the police who were shielding the scene with their own car. The remaining lane together with both lanes of the opposite carriage was moving very slowly. This could have been because of the hundreds of blue lights everywhere, or more likely I suspect because of people slowing down for a good look. The casualty’s car was a wreck. He was trapped inside from what I could see as I approached and not doing a whole lot else. I side stepped several cans of beer as walked up the front of his car and looked in through the front window. I could see him staring out at me. I shouted loud so he could here me, ‘Stay exactly where you are! Focus on me and do not move your head. My colleague will now approach you from your right. Say yes if you understand.’

I was acknowledged with,

‘Fuck you!’

A hefty mouthful of brownish gob spattered against the inside of his window. What a nice bloke. A copper approached and asked me what I thought the patient was trying to say. I can distinctly remember arching an eyebrow, surprised that the guy hadn’t quite realised that the patient was not only very likely drunk but also acting a little aggressive. We both looked back at the patient who had now obviously identified the policeman’s uniform given the look of disgust on his face. He started swearing and gesticulating toward the copper with his free hand.

‘I can only assume he’s trying to tell you that he is your number one fan,’ I remarked.

We both laughed and he went back to controlling traffic and collecting witness statements. I joined my colleague at the car who was battling to hold the patients head still so as to protect the spine. The stench of alcohol was near over powering. I dread to think how much the man must have drunk. After nearly half an hour of fighting with this idiot we eventually managed to free him from the wreckage and strap him down to a spinal board on our ambulance.

Then we all stood back. We were all waiting for the copper to do a breath test on the patient, thereby proving what we all already knew – that this idiot was massively over the legal drink drive limit. The patient however refused. Now this was hugely annoying. The policeman was not worried though, he explained that they would need blood tests confirming the result anyway and that we would get those from hospital.

So, another half hour later and we are all at the hospital. The patient however refuses again to do a breath test and then also refuses a blood test. Now the policeman begins to get very upset. He tries to remain calm and make the idiot see sense but it is no good. I ask the policeman why he is getting upset. Surely the fact that the guy reeks of alcohol is enough? Not so. The breath test is more of an indicator he tells me. If the patient agrees to do one and it is positive it suggests the patient is under the influence. However – it cannot be used in court. What?! You heard me. It is an indication of guilt only and does not provide any real proof. You need a blood test or sometimes urine to use in court.

I ask the policeman what this all means. He told me that had the patient provided a sample then, in his opinion it would have showed the patient was hugely over the limit and would likely receive a driving ban for many, many years. However, with no sample all they can charge him with is failure to provide a sample. This carries with it a immediate one year ban, but lets face it, that’s a pretty shitty deal when we know the guy probably has more alcohol than blood right now. He could have killed someone tonight.

The policeman informs me that in the eyes of the law the patient is only suspected of being drunk. I find this incredible and utterly mad of course. I fully intend to grab the next traffic copper I see and double check all of this nonsense. So what can the idiot expect? Well apparently they will push for dangerous/careless driving and… suspicion of driving under the influence. There must have been nearly one hundred pounds worth of booze in that car and I can only guess how much all over the road. What a wanker eh? And the less said about the law the better…

M.

I got a map book out, studied it for a while and then rang Carley.

‘Right…’ she said.

Not much of a response I know but it was better than I had first thought. I knew she wanted as much as I to escape Felixstowe so I was quietly confident we weren’t going to row. I felt guilty as hell though. We had been hoping to get Chelmsford. Yet as just about everyone else in my class was being allocated their respective stations I got a little impatient and rang up the human resources department instead of waiting for them to call me. Had I waited then I may have got my first choice. Okay my first choice was a little non-specific (I simply wrote Essex North on the form) but it still would have been a damn site better than Thurrock.

I firmly believe that this was one of those great forks in the road, where either choice is going to set you traveling down a road of immense change. I said to the lady on the phone that everyone else on  my course had pretty much been allocated and as we were nearing the end I needed to know roughly where I was going to be posted. I was going to have to move home from Suffolk to god knows where and so the more notice the better. She was very nice and explained that North Essex was a popular choice and they couldn’t guarantee I would be allocated Chelmsford. Why I didn’t ask about some of the other stations like Whitten, Colchester or even Harwich I don’t know. She said that if I wanted piece of mind and also give myself plenty of time to move… would I consider Thurrock in south Essex?

I must confess a few things. Firstly I was still over the moon about getting my foot in the door. I didn’t really care where I was going to be living. Secondly, I didn’t spare even one iota of a thought for Carley and what it would mean for her and ultimately for us. This I believe was a big mistake and exceptionally selfish.

Yet, young reckless me probably wouldn’t have listened to reason anyway. So I accepted and promptly rang Carley with the news she had been waiting for… Where we were going to be moving to. It was of particular importance to her as she would be the one with the crappy job of packing our life into a variety of cardboard boxes and moving it all down to Thurrock. Of course she would have to get her arse down their first though and have a snout a round for something we could afford to rent.

If only I knew then what i know now! I could have kept my mouth shut, hung out for any one of the northern stations and then who knows what? It’s entirely possible we wouldn’t even have had to move. I could have commuted. Alas, these things were not to be. That fork I came across in the road was massive and yet I stumbled blindly past.

I can see all the little turns after that now. I can see how everything that was to occur over the next few months most likely would not have happened had I been thinking clearly in the first place. Amazing thing that hindsight thingy.

That’s how many times this guy had tried to end his own life.

Now normally most paramedics would roll their eyes when they get a call to a suicidal man, or someone who had taken an overdose. It’s an involuntary response. Theres not a whole lot we can do and its usually a cry for help anyway.

Then again, every so often one comes along who gets under your skin. Let’s call him Mack, and go back in time a bit.

Mack had a good job. He taught secondary science and math. He was being considered for head of year. Then one day he came home early from work as he had forgotten his lunch. He found his fourteen year old daughter in bed with her boyfriend who is sixteen. He went apeshit. Things were said and he ended up slapping his daughter.

His daughter called the police.

Mack is now being charged with assault, he is suspended from work and he is not allowed to see either of his other two young children. His wife doesn’t understand and has taken the children to her mothers.

Now here in the present, Mack has lost his job. His daughter does not understand the consequences of what she has done and hates him for hitting her.

I wonder how this could get any worse?

Mack cannot afford the mortgage. The bank aren’t paying his employment protection. He can’t find another job that pays enough. He’s only qualified to teach.

Mack’s wife is becoming ill. Things were stale anyway. Now the family home is threatened, the family is split and Mack’s turned to drink. Guess what?

She walked out last night.

This is where I come in. I have been called because Mack’s parents have turned up at his home and found him unconscious. He has overdosed. He’s taken maybe four hundred paracetamol, a shit load of diazepam and a bucket full of booze. He may survive. If he does I suspect his liver won’t be hanging around for much longer and will most likely leave Mack too.

Incidently Mack has on awesome song playing on his stereo on repeat. Its called ‘Alright’ and its from the movie Death Sentence. An awesome movie about a man (Kevin Bacon) who loses everything to gang of evil bastards.

None of us knew how to turn the damn stereo off and so I had to breathe for Mack for ten minutes while I waited for my backup listening to that very awesome and very apt song.
A very surreal experience. Normally if I was doing this on an ‘overdose’ it would be because of heroine and I’d be squatting over a pile of hyperdermics in dank alleyway somewhere. Not here, in a beautiful well kept family home.

His suicide note was the hardest thing I have ever read. It’s really hard not to crack up when you have a combination of emotive music and a sad situation. Still, I’ve done this before so I’ll deal with it.

I think he wrote that note for his wife. He clearly loved her dearly and blamed himself for everything. I wonder if she will ever get to read it. I know I will never forget it, or him. Some people really are dealt the shittest hand, and if there is an after life and I meet him I’ll tell him so. I’ll tell him he was not too blame and millions would have felt the way he did.

He clings on yet though. I won’t be going to see him. I may spare a thought from time to time but its does no good to think to long on things such as this for those in my profession. My role here is done. Nothing more I can do but watch from the side lines and hope he pulls through.

M.

God only knows what the public must think. If you were to drive about the town at any one time during the day your bound to see either an ambulance or a car sitting in a car park of some fast food establishment. Fast food has nothing to do with the choice of location – it’s simply the fact that those establishments are normally built near major roads. So if you see one sitting at such a place I can assure you it’s not for the food. I bet if you look hard enough you’ll see the crew looking mighty hacked off, bored shitless or perhaps even asleep. So what to do whilst on standby? Well I always ensure I have a good book or two. I sometimes play on my phone if I’m in a wifi area or I might do as I am doing today. People watching.

Places like McDonalds are fascinating places to be in the late evening/early hours. You see all sorts. Right now I have an A4 piece of paper on my clip board and I’m keeping a tally of how many of the people going through the drive thru are (in my opinion) overweight. I have, let’s see now, counted seventy odd people going through. My ‘fat’ column looks like it’s doing very well indeed. You could say its swollen even as I’m running out of space.

Across the car park are about four or five ‘Garry’ cars. Cars that are for example driven by chavs. Cars that are nine times out of ten a Citroen saxo or some other heap – a massive exhaust and alloy rims are the upgrades of choice. Some even sport a body kit. How they can afford these cars and drive them around all night is something I will never understand. I can only assume that they have little else to spend their McDonalds wages on. Certainly not clothes if what they are wearing now is anything to go by.

They usually arrive two cars at a time. They’ll park up next to each other and then either blast their stereo for a while or pop the hood and gather round admiring the holes they have recently poked through their air box. Every driver does of course have at least one token bitch in tow. A young hussy from the local estate no doubt.

They’ll stay here in the car park for anything up to an hour. After that they’ll burn around the local ring road a few times and return to the car park.

Immediately to my left is a very odd looking man. He has been here at least forty minutes and I have not seen him eat anything from the takeaway. He has however stared at the kgarry’ crowd almost non-stop, occassionly sipping a coffee. A few possibilities are presenting themselves to me. He may be an undercover copper. He may be sad old man with nothing else to do. Or maybe he is a writer of some kind in seek of inspiration. Or, it may be more sinister. He looks quite odd, quite intense. In fact he’s just clocked me now. The fact that he’s decided to drive away is ringing alarms bells now. I wonder what he was up to? Is he a parent perhaps? Have one of those chav idiots pissed him of somehow?

Who knows? Anyway, its time for me to leave. I have been called up and asked if I would like to return to base for refreshment. Too bloody right I would!

Ta Ta for now.

.
M;-)

This is one of their escalation states whereby they are basically saying their departments and wards (usually A&E) are becoming unsafe. They make a declaration that has two key effects. Firstly, we the ambulance service are advised to re-direct our patients to other hospitals unless their problem is immediately life threatening. Secondly, certain members of staff in the hospital, the bedsite managers for example can start shifting beds around with that bit more authorize weight behind them. It’s hard for a ward manager to defy the will of the mighty bedsite at the best of times. Its harder still when the hospital escalates.

A little while ago I was standing in A&E with my patient who had chest pain. This virtually guarantees a bed your patient a bed. If there is a bed available that is. I was standing in a cue of six ambulance crews. Lets put that into perspective. Its a night shift. Ipswich has three night crews. Felixstowe has one. Saxmundham has one. Stowemarket has one. Sudbury is pulling up outside. Thats all the cover from Sudbury all the way up to Beccles… gone. There are three fast response cars sitting on patients screaming for backup. There is no backup, and there isn’t going to be any unless the hospital can make some room. There are simply more people coming in through the front door than there are leaving through the back. We are anticipating a two hour delay before we can even off load our patient ont to a hospital bed. That means that the patient will have been in the hospital for two hours before they are even seen by a nurse let alone a doctor. Bad eh?

We are all nervously looking at each other. One big car crash now and thats it all over. We’ll have nothing to send from Suffolk. There is a policeman here too. He is saying that they currently have one car currently covering all of Ipswich. Another is stuck babysitting a drunk in the cells, and then theres this one stuck at A&E. So lets assume it’s not a big car crash that comes in but maybe a stabbing instead. That would be police and ambulance wiped out and unable to respond.

One of my favourite questions to ask the general public is ‘How many ambulances do you think cover the town at any one time?’ Their answers vary widely but I’ll tell you this…  Not one of them is even remotely close. The lowest figure I had been given was twelve. Twelve!! My god we’d be laughing! The true figure is much different. We have six ambulances during the day. Three at night. We have begged and pleaded for more but the answer is always the same. No money in the pot. This is so frustrating. The population of our town is increasing all the time. We even have a university now. Yet in the five years I have been here I have seen no increase in the number of resources we have. I have seen many new managers though. When I started here we had two covering the whole of East Suffolk. Now we have five in Ipswich alone. Its madness.

Let me tell you how effective our manager was tonight. Control rang him up to say that crews were spending a long time in A&E and that nothing seemed to be moving. Could he please investigate? So manager screams round there in his brand new state of the art fast response car. He quickly establishes that the hospital has run out of beds. He approaches the A&E coordinator. He is told that there is no beds, we are doing the best we can. He then approaches the bedsite manager. He is told there is no beds, we are doing the best we can. Manager rings our control up and says that there are no beds and that we are all doing the best we can. Manager stands around with his hands in his pockets. Manager suddenly becomes aware of a crew that have been standing in one place in the corridor for nearly two hours. He walks over and offers the hospital’s tea facilities. Crew smiles and says thank you. Manager smiles and reports to control. He says he has secured refreshments for the crews. Manager leaves and returns to base. Crews continue to wait in A&E for beds to become available, drinking tea they have already been offered by nursing staff.

Now how pointless is that? That manager gets paid a hell of a lot to basically go around stating the obvious.

I think I’ll go have a cup of tea.

M:-)