Tom Reynolds - More Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea

That was the plan at least.

Instead, we just gave him enough strength to start fighting us, his wife and the betting-shop lady who threatened to ban him if he didn’t do what the ‘nice’ ambulance people told him to do.

In an effort to get him into the ambulance, we ended up wrestling with him in the street. It was a bit strange to be physically restraining a pensioner while trying to (a) not hurt him, and (b) not look like a bully, even though he was a good couple of inches taller than me.

Then a police car drove past us.

It did a U-turn in the middle of the road and pulled up in front of our ambulance.

A couple of police officers got out and helped us persuade the patient to get into the ambulance where we could finally get him to drink the can of Coke we gave him. Sometimes it just needs a couple of big men in black and white uniforms to get a patient to do what you want.

This is one of many reasons why we like the police.

What didn’t help was the wife who would alternately berate her husband for poorly controlling his diabetes, and then spend time telling us that she was a devout Christian.

Thankfully the Coke did the trick and the patient made a full recovery—we left him and his wife in the nearby café getting something more substantial than a can of Coke and a Mars Bar.

Two good jobs, and not a trace of drink or drugs on them.

Makes a nice change.

Last night was a bit strange, which for a change had nothing to do with the patients I was seeing.

Newham hospital was packed to the gills with patients, there were no beds available there, so a lot of my workmates ended up transferring patients from Newham to other hospitals around the area. At one point it got so bad that for two hours Newham ‘diverted’, or closed to non-‘blue light’ ambulance jobs. Hospitals don’t like doing this as they get fined for restricting their services, but when the situation is dangerous it’s actually in the best interests of the patients.

But my crewmate and I had to be that little bit different.

We had managed to return to station for three minutes when the phone went. Control wanted us to transfer a patient from a hospital out of our area to another one on the other side of London. We were told that there were no ambulances available in the originating hospital’s sector.

The patient was a young lady who might have been in premature labour with a pregnancy of 30 weeks. The nearest SCBU (specialist care baby unit) with an empty bed was in Hammersmith. Hammersmith is on the other side of London. I suppose we should have counted ourselves lucky that it wasn’t in Brighton.

So I drove through our sector, into another sector to pick up the patient and the midwife. We then drove 30 miles through the centre of London to get her to Hammersmith hospital. I don’t drive through London very often—I don’t need to, London Underground is cheaper and easier than trying to find a parking space. Thankfully all our ambulances now have GPS navigation systems installed—so it’s a simple case of following the arrows on the little screen and avoiding the cars that insist on trying to crash into you. I had a strange feeling of pride that I managed to find the hospital without getting lost or crashing. I then cruised around the hospital looking for the maternity entrance, and managed to find it by sheer luck and good fortune.

The hospital itself was completely different from the hospitals in our area—it was clean, it had comfy chairs, and the doctor who met the patient showed us the staff kitchen so we could get a cup of tea.

The only thing the same as the hospitals ‘back home’ was the angry glare from the midwife as we entered the unit.

On our way back to Newham we managed to get a job.

‘Aha!’ we thought, ‘this might be an interesting one.’

But no—it was exactly the same sort of patient/job that we get in Newham: an elderly Bangladeshi gentleman with all over body ache and a heavy head.

Still, he was a very pleasant man so we didn’t mind.

This patient went to St Mary’s hospital by request, and I’ll admit that on my first attempt at getting him to the hospital I drove past the obviously well-hidden entrance ramp. So I had to enter the one-way system, adding an extra mile on our journey. St Mary’s have a ‘welcome mat’ outside their A&E department. You don’t get welcome mats at Newham. At Newham you have to force open the ambulance bay doors…

Any time where a patient actually needs an ambulance.

People having an acute flare-up of a chronic condition (diabetes, asthma, heart disease)

People who can’t walk, but who live on the ground floor.

People who make an effort towards managing their chronic conditions.

Maternal emergencies.

Nice people.

Old people.

Children who don’t cry.

Any time a patient, or their relative, says a simple ‘Thank you’ at the end of their trip.

Runny noses, coughs and colds. Verrucas.

People who have had an argument with a family member.

People who can’t walk, but live at the top of a block of flats with no lifts. And are heavy.

People who abuse their bodies with drink or drugs.

5 a.m. matern-a-taxis.

Gangsters crying because they have been stabbed for dealing drugs on the wrong street.

Awful nursing homes.

Parents who weep over their child’s cut finger causing them to have hysterical screaming.

Mr ‘I know my rights’.

First off…

…Bah humbug.

(It’s not just for Christmas.)

I’ve just finished with a job that makes me question this whole ‘love’ idea.

I had been sent to an alcoholic who had just had an epileptic fit and I arrived to find his fiancée looking very worried.

She told me, ‘I’ve known him for ten months and I’ve only seen him fit once, so I’m afraid I got scared and called for an ambulance.’

I reassured her that this wasn’t a problem and that she had done the right thing.

I looked after the patient, it was an easy job, and I spent some time waiting for the ambulance to arrive. (I was ‘single’, so I had been asked to work on the FRU again; the alternative was to work out of Waterloo station.)

I looked around the room they were staying in. It was not what you would call ‘homely’; it was the typical house of a young alcoholic (he was the same age as me). Cans of cheap cider were lying around the place, there was no furniture apart from a settee and a TV, empty cigarette packets littered the floor and the pictures hadn’t been mounted on the walls.

There was an axe leaning against the fireplace.

His fiancée was young and not obviously unattractive, she didn’t seem particularly stupid and she didn’t look like a fellow alcoholic. So I was confused as to why she would want to marry an alcoholic.

I’m afraid it just befuddles me as to how you can love someone who loves their next drink more than you. In any partnership you will come second to an open bottle of cider.

I just don’t understand.

We help the people of Newham.

One of these people has seen fit to ‘tag’ one of our ambulances with graffiti.

This means that the ambulance will be taken off the road so that it can be cleaned.

This will cost money.

It will also remove an ambulance from the road.

This means an ambulance might get delayed coming to a call.

I hope it is a call to the ‘tagger’, and I hope that they are in a great deal of pain.