We had a week of horrible, nasty, gory and scary deaths last week. It’s all my fault, I think, for complaining that people call us about rubbish all the time. These calls were the antithesis of rubbish; in fact, it was like being caught up in a cross between a Ruth Rendell murder mystery and the Casualty Christmas special.
As well as the “normal” spate of cold weather related deaths of elderly people and several people dying or being seriously injured in horrible ice-induced road traffic accidents, we took the following:
1) Brother breaks into his sister’s (age 30) house not having heard from her for a few days and finds her dead, surrounded by empty pill bottles.
2) Man watches his partner (age 40) die of a heroin overdose. Crew are unable to save her.
3) Woman (age 40) found dead in bath by her parents. Circumstances somewhat suspicious. Police to scene.
4) Man finds his son (21) dead in his bed. He has no health conditions other than asthma. Caller is so calm that I have to get him to repeat “dead” twice because I can’t believe I have heard him right. Police again.
5) Woman enters flat and finds partner (34) dead on the floor for no apparent reason. Her screams can be heard across the control room.
Runner up for horrid call of the week also wins prize for most bizarre call. A man had just been discharged from hospital, and had made his way home to his flat on the 10th floor of a council box. Opening the door, he quickly realises something is wrong — the house is completely bare. Burglars have broken in and taken all of his personal belongings, including furniture. Inspecting the devastation, he goes into the bedroom, and there he finds what appears to be a dead body. Needless to say, he does not stick around to check the body for signs of life before running away as fast as his feet could carry him and calling us and the police from a safe distance.
The body was confirmed to be dead soon after. No one could shed any light on who he was, or how he’d got there.
After dealing with this incident, you’d have thought things couldn’t get any worse, but early on Friday morning we got a message from the police saying they had been called by a hysterical woman saying her three-year-old daughter was dead. We sent an ambulance straight away, and one of the dispatchers called back the origin number. Sure enough, the phone was answered by a hysterical woman who was screaming that her three-old-daughter was dead. Our dispatcher tried to start resuscitation, but the woman was far too upset to listen. She was telling him that she’d found the little girl face down on her bed, and there were boxes of some kind on top of her, preventing her from moving her, and to add to the pandemonium there was a small baby crying, and the woman herself was eight months pregnant. In short, we had no idea what was going on, and as the scene was only two minutes away from the nearest ambulance station we did not get to find out before the crew and police burst in.
We sat and speculated as to what was going on for the next ten minutes. Perhaps the girl wasn’t dead? The woman was too hysterical to know for sure, and perhaps she’d just had a fit. A lot of people think their children are dying when they have fits. Three years is a bit old for it to be cot death. Perhaps it’s nothing. The child probably has the flu, and the woman is just a little anxious. Yes, I’m sure it won’t be as bad as it sounds. We all like false alarms…
The ambulance crew came up on the radio.
“This is K603 blue to Oldchurch, with a three-year-old female suspended, CPR in progress, no further details, eta 2 mins”.
So it wasn’t a false alarm.
Normally when ambulance crews come up on the radio with their blue calls, they sound quite impassive, and describe the horrible things they are bringing in a clinical manner. Because they see a lot of horrible things and dying people, they get quite “gallows humour” about it all and most calls are water off a duck’s back to them. They’re usually chatty and unfazed after bringing in a suspended patient, and I often wonder how they do it, although I suppose in some ways it’s only the same as me taking a suspended on the phone one minute going on to take another call seconds later. This time, though, it was different - the crew member that I spoke to sounded really stressed and upset, and as soon as they had finished at the hospital, their DSO (manager) rang us to say that they were being taken off the road for the rest of the shift.
I wouldn’t have liked to have seen what they saw.
January 30th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Oh…
Wow…
What can I say? Well done to youse in the control room and the crews for managing to deal with it all.
January 30th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Just prior to reading this post, a co-worker told me about how her son’s daycare caregiver died of Meningitis - 20 weeks pregnant.
Week of Horrors Indeed.
January 30th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
WOW - thats a week and a half! All the best to the crew members and staff involved - and i thought my day was bad to start with a 15yof suspend call??!
The bad will somehow be evened out by good somewhere in time
xx
January 31st, 2007 at 12:04 am
A nasty week indeed. Kudos to you, the call takers and the crews that attended for being able to do such work.
January 31st, 2007 at 1:20 am
I hope you get a week of nice non timewastery with nothing more serious than a little old lady needing a hand up jobs. I’m thinking positive thoughts for you, the effected families and crews. Especially that last job
On a lighter note you are not meant to be calling ‘Queens’ hospital “Oldchurch”. I think the trust has tried to bury all the bad press associated with that name. Unfourtunatly the new name has no meaning (although I want to start a public subscription for a large gold statue of Freddie for the lobby).
January 31st, 2007 at 8:57 am
That sucks Mark. I hope things quiet down a bit at your end. Maybe you need to go out for a few beers with your mates, to help dispel the horrible week.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:35 am
You cant say anything, really. Good on the Man for taking the crew off the road, this does not happen often enough after jobs like this.
Sounds like you could do with a break too after all that.
It sucks when it’s all time wasters and sometimes it just really sucks.
January 31st, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Wow, quite a week. I hope you and all the crews involved are OK.
January 31st, 2007 at 4:27 pm
rudestlink, I said Oldchurch because it doesn’t exist any more so people know I’m not using the real hospital name - patient confidentiality and all that!
January 31st, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Credit needs to go to DSO’s with a heart…. a rarity these days.
I was sent home after a horrific job yesterday morning. Like most frontline staff, it’s not the sights that upset you, it’s the circumstances that go with it. The day I don’t feel upset, is the day I decide to move on.
January 31st, 2007 at 10:13 pm
That sounds like a hell of a nasty week!! I was wondering why you’d not posted for a while. I understand why now…hope you’re OK.
January 31st, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Do paramedics/EMTs get offered counselling after traumatic jobs? I got offered counselling after my teacher committed suicide when I was 15, and I didn’t even see the body, so I can’t imagine how hard it would be to find dead bodies, especially when they’re as young as 3. Respect to all of you!
January 31st, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Mark, what sort of procedures do you have up at LAS for Control staff debriefs?
As the first point of contact in the ambulance service, Control are often involved in the first few moments of these horrorible situations and can be very distressing…..especially as we get no “closure”
February 1st, 2007 at 1:14 am
Emma
After really nasty jobs, we do tend to get stood down for the rest of the shift. Counselling is available through our mates in the messroom, but also through an internal counselling (but completely confidential) service, and we also have access to external councellors should the need be felt.
I remember I went to a 9 month old suspended. The baby sadly died, despite extensive resuscitation efforts from both ourselves and the hospital. Due to a breakdown in communication, which I did follow up, but won’t go into here, we weren’t stood down for the rest of the shift.
To be fair, we both felt ok after we’d had an hour or two on station and three or four cups of strong coffee later, but when I had to seriously stop myself from shouting and screaming at some bloke who’d called us for a simple headache that he hadn’t taken any pain killers for, I knew we should have been stood down - we neither of us had the normal patience than we normally do for the “crap” calls.
February 1st, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Dullahan 999 - if we take a traumatic call in control, the supervisor sends us out for a tea break afterwards. We can see the counsellors like the crews, talk to our colleagues and/or go and listen to the tape. Personally, I find it best just to press on after a harrowing call — the sooner you’re thinking about something else, the better.
February 1st, 2007 at 6:11 pm
How awful. Did the little girl die? I’m a bit confused about the boxes on top of her though. Did you ever find out properly what had happened?
February 1st, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Yes, she died — it sounded like she was beyond any help before we got there, but it’s protocol to attempt resuscitation on children whatever the circumstances. We never found out what had happened or what exactly was going on with the boxes. Perhaps something had fallen on her? I don’t know.
February 4th, 2007 at 11:35 am
As Trauma Queen posted in this post: http://traumaqueen.blogspot.com/2006/12/twas-night-before-night-before.html, “You have an infant with an airway problem, do the bare minimum and run like fuck.”
And it’s true. I had one the other day, and those words reverberated round my head as I drove to hospital POST FUCKING HASTE. God bless the DSO and God bless you & your colleagues Mark. You’re doing a grand job and sometimes we forget just how hard it can be on us. We always think of other people.
February 5th, 2007 at 10:48 am
I’ve been reading your blog for a while, but this is the first time I’ve been inspired sufficiently to post a comment.
I wish I could say something more insightful than thankful for the wonderful job that you and your colleagues in Control do. I’ve done a number of shifts with St John Ambulance for my local ambulance service, and the ladies (predominately Control is made up of ladies in my County) are as nice as pie to us.
So thank you, and I hope your incredibly shitty weeks aren’t repeated too often.
Sincerest regards
Nick
http://nickhough.blogspot.com
February 5th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
First Laura’s blog- now yours.
I haven’t cried so much over blogs in ages.
I don’t know how you all do it.
Respect to you all.