British summertime

I like this time of year, it means that we are now officially into the start of the lighter evenings of summer, it is also a nice feeling to be sitting at work and suddenly seeing that you only now have 5 hours left to work because you have suddenly jumped an hour because at 1am this morning, it suddenly became 2am (well we had to move the clocks forward ourselves). I hate this when you are working day shift, as you loose an hour sleep, but on nights it is probably one of the best feelings you can have.

Life.....

It is amazing to think that someone who is clinically dead can have a pulse and be making breathing efforts some 30 minutes after they collapse, this happened to me last night. I was working with a paramedic and we had a call for a female who was unconscious and having difficulty breathing, as we sped along the country roads with lights flashing and sirens sounding we were updated by the EMDC (Control room) that the patient was now in cardiac arrest and CPR was ongoing. (Now any of you who have red my blog will know I have a kill to save rate of 100% kill so you can imagine what is going through my head) Upon our arrival we are met by the patient's brother who is relatively calm for the situation, we are shown into the house to see the patient's husband bouncing up and down on her chest and blowing air into her mouth whilst talking to someone on the phone in the EMDC to receive further guidance (Telephone CPR instructions is a standard protocol within the EMDC and all staff are trained to give these types of instructions out as and when required). We quickly take over and do our checks, Airway? Clear, Breathing? No, Circulation...? No, I take over at the head and secure her airway with an OP airway and start breathing for the patient using a bag and mask (anyone who has seen ER and Casualty will know what I mean) and doing chest compressions whilst my colleagues connects up our defib, the machine shows PEA so I continue doing CPR whilst my paramedic colleague gains IV (Intra Venous) access for a drug route. We give the woman 1mg of Epinephrine and swap places, my colleague then secures the patient's airway with an ET tube and continues to ventilate the patient whilst I do CPR, I listen to make sure that he has placed the tube in the correct place and I hear bilateral breath sounds and I get him to stop for a moment, he looks at me with that "Oh shit I have not got the tube in correct" face, but I tell him it is in and I can also hear a heart beat, we check for a pulse and yes it is true there is one to be felt. I get the brother to help me collect some more equipment from the vehicle and go back into the house, we get the patient onto our stretcher, secure her and make sure the ET tube is well secured and begin our tricky exit (up a flight of stairs, along a dark path, up another steep hill incline to avoid the second set of tight steps and then into the Ambulance) all whilst breathing for the patient. Once we have her in the vehicle, we check the ET tube again to make sure it has not dislodged and prepare for moving off. The patient's husband and daughter are in the back of the vehicle with my colleague and I request the A&E department resuscitation team be standing by to accept the patient. We arrive and the family are shown the door to A&E for public, my colleague and I take the patient into the Resuscitation room where we are met by the team (2 Doctors, 1 Operating Department Practitioner , 2 Nurses and 1 Senior Nurse) who accept the patient into their care and take our handover. My colleague and I then return to our vehicle and start the task of clearing up and completing all the necessary paperwork. Once this is done we return to the station for our meal break and celebrate with Pepsi and chocolate bars (imagining them to be alcohol and expensive take aways!!!) We checked on the patient some 10 hours later and found out that she had been transferred to the ITU and was still making some efforts to breathe on her own.....

Death Nil Scotsmedicman and paramedic partner 1

British Justice

Well I was supposed to be attending a court case today as a witness (a guy tried to assault me and a colleague whilst we were dealing with a pregnant female in December), so as per normal instructions, I called the court to see if I was still required to attend, fully expecting them to say that I was......to my delight I was told by the nice lady on the phone that I am not required as the person had pleaded guilty on Friday YIPEE!!!!!! now you may wonder why I am happy about this, but I was totally terrified about going to court, I don't really know why, but my b/f was very supportive and gave me lots of good advice last night when he could have just told me to relax. Oh well I suppose I had better get ready for some real work now!

Snow

I woke at 4:30am this morning and looked out the window, it was damp outside, but clear, I thought to myself I have another hour in bed before I need to get ready for work. I got back up at 5:30am and got shaved, showered and dressed thinking to myself it would be a 5 minute drive to work at this time of the day.......Oh was I wrong!!!

I opened the door to be confronted by the blizzard which was blowing outside, the same blizzard that had covered my car with about 1/4 of a tonne of snow!!!

Now don't get me wrong, I like snow, I like walking in snow, I like the look of snow on the hills, but I bloody hate snow on roads that have not seen a gritter for days! It makes everyone drive like a blood idiot as well. The first job of the morning was a 30 yes 30 car accident on the M8, we (my colleague and I) were stood down as we were not required, but having arrived back on station and checked the vehicle we were taking for the day (we had taken a spare as our vehicle was not back for our start of shift) we were sent out to an emergency for a 72 year old female who had chest pains, now she lived about 7 minutes away from the station in normal driving conditions, but it took us nearly 25 minutes to get to her because the other drivers on the road did not understand that we could not magically orb past them and that they would have to give us some space in the snow bound roads.

Oh it is amazing how a bit of snow can cause so much chaos to the central belt of Scotland.

Valentine's Day

Well I unfortunately had to work on Valentine's day so I was not able to shower my man with the love and affection that he deserves. I will probably not get a chance to see him until later in the week, so I want to say publicly........

Kal,I LOVE YOU and you mean the world to me and I am so lucky to have you as a friend and lover.

XXXXX

The wonder of narcan!

Whilst working over the weekend I managed to see narcan being used after an overdose. I have dealt with two patients who have taken heroin and both been very close to the big white gates, however, my paramedic colleagues were able to administer the necessary dose of narcan and reverse the OD quickly. I even managed to avoid being vomited on (unlike my colleague who was standing in front of the patient at the time)

British workmen

Well it is getting close to that time when the gas man is coming to service the cooker, he is arriving on Friday, yes at last, we have only been waiting for 5 weeks with no oven......It may not sound that bad, but when you have a flat mate who bakes the most amaizing cakes in the world, then it is a "TRAGEDY" I am forever hopeful that the engineer (used in loose terms) will arrive on time and fix the cooker without too much hassle. He did arrive last week and after the usual sucking in deeply of breath, said that the cooker was older than he assumed and would not be able to fix it and would need a part, now how difficult is it to fix a cooker that was bought less than 1 year ago?????

Daytime TV

Ok I have noticed that daytime TV, regardless of how many channels you have, is on the whole full of adverts for "Had an Accident that wasn't your fault.......Let's sue someone!" or "You have been really stupid with your credit cards, let us give you a loan for the next 50 years so that you can pay off you cards now!". Some of the programmes that are on as well are repeats of repeats, yes there are some which are classics, but on the whole I have decided that the TV producers must know that they have the captive audience of single mothers, the unemployed and elderly sitting at home all day so why should they bother with trying to create new programmes for anyone when there is a whole abundance of re-runs available to them!!!

Weekend life

Well you are supposed to relax and enjoy your weekend off, I however managed to get landed with being on call for work this weekend for the division which I have now technically left. This basically means that should something nasty happen to the people of Scotland I will be one of a specialized team of individuals to be called out to help get things sorted! I also managed to land the honour of being the TEAM LEADER!!!! for the whole weekend, so should anyone have any questions of queries about the team they contact me. I was planning to have a quiet relaxing weekend with a couple of friends (Mr R Bull and Mr P Smirnoff) but because of the "On-call" I couldn't, I did however manage to see my bf this weekend and it was lovely, we had a nice chinese take away, chilled out with my flat mate and her friend and spent a lovely relaxing Sunday afternoon going for walks and drives in the country and then finishing the day off with a lovely coffee and cake moment in a very nice, modern bar/restaurant/hotel. The only thing I hate about weekends is that they finish so quickly, especially a Sunday, it reminds me of being at school and thinking "Yes it is Friday, time to party", then suddenly wakening up and finding out it is Sunday and you have not done anything you had planned and were due back at school the next day and had not even looked at your books/homework etc etc Oh well at least I am on nights tomorrow so I get a longish lie in bed (unless the bloody mobile phone goes for a callout!)

Family Gatherings

Well there I was, stressing about my parents forthcoming 40th Wedding Anniversary as it was going to be the first time that my bf had met most of my extended family. Well the night before the party I was going out for a meal with my bf and some of his work colleagues, but prior to this I was to pick up some of my dad's side of the family and deposit them at my folks house. I collected my bf and then swung past the hotel where the relatives were staying and collected them, only to be met by this wee woman saying that she was expecting my father to have collected them and thought that both my parents would be going to the hotel for a drink, so they had just gone to the bar to buy a round of drinks...."Oh god" I thought I only have 25 minutes to get you to my parents house and then back into town with my bf to meet up with his colleagues. I explained that I was going to move the car so I was not blocking the entrance, came back out and said to my bf that there may be a slight delay and could we go in. After managing to get the relatives out of the bar we sped (keeping to the limit) to my parents house so that I could introduce my sister and her family to my bf along with my uncle and his wife who were already at my parents place. It was an interesting conversation en route to my folks house and then again once we had arrived. We said our hello's and hi's and then headed back into town and I promised to be back early the next day to collect my sister and auntie to help with the shopping and decorating of the hall for the party that evening. The meal with my bf and his colleagues was lovely, it was a nice little Thai restaurant just off cockburn street, everyone was pleasant and friendly and we all enjoyed ourselves.

The next morning the chaos started, I collected my sister and we went to pick up the cake, when we arrived it was still not ready, so we went and did some other shopping and then returned for the cake, we then swung past my aunt's and collected her and headed into the hall to look at what decorations were going to be required, once we had decided what we were doing in the hall we then had to go and track down the necessary decorations, which we eventually managed to do, only to find that once we had blown up the last balloon it said "Happy 60th Anniversary"....Unfortunately it was my parent's 40th Anniversary, so we all had a moment of blind panic checking all the other balloons, but it must have been a rogue balloon as the rest all had 40th on them to our relief. After we had finished decorating the hall (which was only scheduled to take 2hrs maximum) 4 1/2hrs later we headed back to my aunt's to drop her off and collect some of the other gifts for my parent's I then dropped my sister off so that she could start getting her 3 sons ready for the evening along with her husband, herself and both my parent's I was glad I was going home to get ready even if they do have two toilets in the house!!

I sped back to my flat to collect my kilt and then headed back to my bf's to meet him and get ready, this was nice, it was relaxed and calm in his house, I almost felt like I could fall asleep, but I knew I didn't have time, we were both ready in record time and kited out in our kilts headed out the door. Upon arrival at the hotel, which I had only left 90 minutes previously, I was slightly disappointed that my parent's had arrived before us, as I wanted to make sure that they sat in the correct place etc (which they had anyway). The hall slowly started filling up with family, friends and colleagues of my parent's and the place started to have more of an atmosphere, I introduced my bf to as many people as I could during the evening, making sure that I kept him updated with who is related to who etc etc, I think at one stage he was ready just to sit in a corner and cry as it was something like this: This is SH and S, they are the son and daughter of R and B, SH is going out with D and S is married to F, now D and SA are expected soon and they are the cousins of SH and S and me, their parent's are D and S, S is the sister of my mum and R, and R is only 3yrs older than L, you got that so far??? Good right now L is married to ST, and they have 3 sons called D, M and J and it went on. God only knows how he survived, but he did and I was so happy to see that he was getting on with the people that I thought he would and relaxing as the night went on, at one stage he even managed to get me to fall for a trick played by one of my nephew's.

The evening was in my opinion a success and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. I just hope that the next lot of gatherings goes as well (of which there are a few this year, my 30th, my uncle's 50th, my Dad's 60th and my sister's 40th).

Oh how I love a good party! Especially if they play cha cha slide :)

Weather

It is amazing how a little bit of snow can suddenly cause so much chaos on the roads, I am sitting here listening to the radio road reports, and it seems that ever single road in and around Edinburgh is either heavily congested or blocked by the sudden change in weather conditions, as I look out on my kitchen window all I see is white, yes it has snowed quite heavily, but with some care and attention it should still be relatively easy to get around, but oh no, not the people of east central scotland, we only have to see snow and we panic, I was chatting to my bf this morning as he is preparing to go to work (I have the day off ha ha ha) and he was slightly worried about driving in, now he comes from the Highlands and he said that if there was snow like this in his village, then the higher ground would be thicker and deeper, making driving hazardous, but this is not the Highlands, in fact, I am higher up than his work so it should be easier for him to get to work, but the rest of the people out there will probably make his journey into Edinburgh interesting.

Childrens TV programmes......

I have just received an email from a friend, it was all about childrens tv programmes of the past, check out the site, especially if you remember Rainbow
Remember to have your sound on!

Observers

I have just experienced two shifts with observers. It is common place that when you get an observer out with you the calls you attend are normally easy to handle, trivial and sometimes down right c**p.

Well this is not the case for me, on both shifts we were kept going constantly, on the second occasion with the observer, we had 10 calls in the space of 12 hrs, yes I know it is not a lot, but they were all jobs that required full focus on the patient and their situation. The night started out relatively slowly, but built up to an almost constant case of clearing and going for the next call. We were called to one of the local night clubs twice, back to back, it was interesting to see the observer becoming more confident and relaxed when arriving on scene at incidents. We then had the call that makes every observer think "YES this is the one for me" an RTA with 4 patients after a car left the road and rolled down an embankment. Upon our arrival, all 4 patients were out of the car and had relatively minor injuries compared to the mechanisms of the incident. I loved seeing the observers both thinking to themselves, wow, this is not how I imagined it would be in this division. I would be happy to have either of the two out with me observing again, especially if I am attending, as they may get to be more hands on!

Hogmanay 2004

I sit here recovering still from the Edinburgh street party. I am not long out of bed after celebrating my very own 2004 Hogmanay with one of my friends.

I was working on the 31st of December at the Street party with various other dedicated volunteers from St. Andrew's Ambulance, British Red Cross and even St. John Ambulance providing part of the event medical services to the people who had chosen to come to Edinburgh to celebrate the New Year. I had a pleasant evening in one of the 4 first aid posts for the event, and to make it even more special, I was working (not planned) with my BF (He had been designated the Social Work Vehicle First Aid Escort for my post). The evening started out quite slowly, but gradually the workload increased as did the amount of alcohol people were consuming on the streets, we had a few interesting patients, but the majority were under the influence of alcohol and suffering badly, some were even at the stage that they were found sitting in their own vomit..... :( Our job as first aiders that evening was to clean them up, patch them up and ship them out to either the event, home, hospital or pass on their care to Social Services. I often ask myself why I still volunteer when I work in the Ambulance Service, the answer is easy, I love the feeling of knowing that you have helped someone. If anyone is reading this and thinks that they could volunteer some time then go ahead and give some time, go on you will love it!

My trip North

Well I was working over Christmas, but on the 27th I was due to travel North to meet my boyfriend's parents. I made sure that the car was running ok and that I had packed enough clothes (including the emergency shirt, which my commented on) and my camera etc. I set out eventually at 12 mid day, expecting the roads to be quite bad because of the recent weather, I had an audio copy of the new Ian Rankin book to listen to whilst driving. I arrived 3 1/2 hrs later safely in Cromarty where I met my bf and his folks, now I had already met his mother, she is lovely and puts you at ease as soon as you meet here, but I was a bit worried about meeting his dad. I got out the car and thought to myself "I hope I am at the correct address" when two lads cycled passed and called out "Hi J" and I thought , yup I must be at the correct place as they think I am my bf (apparently we look quite similar....god help him!) I knocked on the door and felt my stomach twisting when it opened, I really just wanted to run away, but I missed my man so much as well. The door was answered by my bf and he invited me in and I spotted his mum immediately and strangely felt a bit more relaxed, then his dad came through and introduced himself, he is a really pleasant guy, I was not sure what I was expecting but I was made to feel at ease very quickly, The rest of the time up north I was "Dragged" around to meet various friends, some who I took to more than others. I enjoyed my time up north, it was a beautiful place to be, nice crisp weather, fresh air and stunning views, I did have a moment of panic however, we were visiting some of my bf's friends and they were discussing various things and I heard "Yeah but you would have to move back here, you couldn't do it in Edinburgh" I thought to myself "Oh my god I am loosing him already, we have not even had a fight and he is thinking about moving north and leaving me!!!!" Oh well I will have to wait and see if it comes true... I hope not :(

Festive Period

To everyone who reads my blog, I just want to say have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, I hope 2005 brings you all your wishes and is filled with happiness.

Take a moment to think about the less fortunate of us who have to work over Christmas / New Year!

Have a good one whatever you are doing.

Exams

Well I survived the terrors of the Assessment, yes for those of you who understand the stresses of this type of assessment, then you will sympathise with me when I say that I have just finished a 3 hour written assessment after a previous on the road assessment this week with my Training Officer. All I can say is YEAH!!!!!!!!! I PASSED, I PASSED, I PASSED :)

Christmas Shopping

Why is it that when you have a day off and you think to yourself "Oh I will go and do some shopping for prezzies whilst it is still quiet" you get to the shops and everyone else in the world has the same idea. You stand for ages trying to get to the counters to pay for the goods, stand in line waiting to find the items you are going to purchase only to be pushed, pulled and shoved all over the place by some mad woman with a SCREAMING child clinging to her!!!! Then when you think you have successfully got what you need and get to the tills to pay, the pre-pubecent teenage chewing gum machine behind the till is too busy talking to her colleague to take notice of the fact that if she does not remove her finger from her a** and do some work the queue that is forming will probably cause a crush within the tiny area in front of the counter which is surrounded by items stacked so high you cannot actually reach anything on top to buy it without causing yourself some injury. OH I hate Christmas shopping!!!! Don't get me wrong I like shopping, I like looking at things and thinking yeah that would be nice for ..... but not when the whole bloody world has gone MAD and no one actually wants to serve you in the shop!!!!!!

Anyway I am now fully de-stressed at the minute, just finished wrapping some of the items I actually did manage to purchase today, but now studying for a 2 1/2hrs written exam tomorrow before I start my night shift. Oh god how I have a great life!

p.s. if my boyfriend is reading this, your prezzies are hidden at my folks... :P

Death

I know that it is still a taboo subject in some peoples eyes, I have recently experienced my first "Cot Death". It was a strange surreal experience, which, not withstanding the emotional aspects left me thinking about what had happened. I have spoken with some of my colleagues about the incident and when I got back to my boyfriend's flat I could not speak fully to him about it, even although I am sure he would have understood. The call was a typical call to start with, however, we were updated by the EMDC (Control) that it was a cardiac arrest of an infant, with CPR on going. It was then that it started to hit us, we were going to a baby (not long into this world) who had died. When we arrived on scene we went into auto-pilot and did what we had to do, we then transported the baby to the hospital and it was then that it started to hit us fully, seeing this baby, who looked so peaceful and doll like, lying on an adult resuscitation room bed, with the full resus team working in him. My partner left to complete her paperwork and I stayed in the room, willing the baby to start breathing, there was a moment when the team thought they had a pulse, but this was due to the CPR ongoing. After I went back to the vehicle and started to clear up with my colleague it finally hit us both, full on like a train traveling at 100mph striking us clean on in the face. We both cried, my colleague probably more than me as she has a young baby boy. We eventually cleared at the hospital and were returned to the station, where we sat and spoke about the incident with our other colleagues who were on the station. I felt so sorry for the parents, to have lost a child must be the worst thing that could ever happen. I hope I never find out how that feels.

Meeting the parents

Well it had to happen sooner or later, I met my boyfriend's mother the other evening for a meal. I had been stressing about it for a few days prior to it happening and it didn't help that he had told her "Everything" about us.......yeah I thought "EVERYTHING!!!!" OH MY GOD!!!! I am a dead man. Anyway the day arrived and I was working 7-7 dayshift so we had arranged to meet at 2015hrs in a little restaurant in Edinburgh (Very nice and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for good scottish food). I arrived dutifully at 2010hrs and saw their taxi pulling up, my stomach churned as I walked over to meet the both of them. We all stood outside the restaurant for a few moments exchanging plesantaries and went inside. Having taking our seats in the restaurant we chatted and I felt more relaxed and at ease, during the course of the evening the conversation moved from NHS changes, to IT issues, to my BF and his mother catching up on old times. The meal went well and I didn't even spill anything over myself, even although I was shaking inside. At the end of the evening we dropped off my BF's mother at her hotel and said our goodbye. I think the night went well and hope that when I meet her and the rest of the family in December it will goes just as well :)