It’s not a good time of year to work for the ambulance service. Either it’s the cold weather killing people off or it is the festive spirits going to people’s heads and making people call ambulances for extremely silly reasons. Either way, there is about twice the volume of calls there were two months ago, which means as soon as you hang up from one caller, there’s another waiting, and a lot of these are irate at being put on hold. After twelve hours of non-stop talking and shouting and being shouted at and not listened to I feel completely drained. Roll on April. No-one calls ambulances in April.
Offices everywhere are winding down their activities for Christmas but accidents and illnesses have no sense of seasonal timing. There was an awful dead person call the other day. I get a lot of dead person calls, they’re never nice, but they don’t usually upset me — this one, however, was really harrowing. The caller had gone to his mother’s house and found her “not moving, I can’t wake her up” which is caller-speak for “dead”. (They never say “dead”, as if saying the word will make matters worse). This wasn’t an old woman; she was fifty one. My world class CPR instructions were duly adminstered and I could hear clearly what was going on. A child entered the scene and started screaming and screaming. Anyway, it wasn’t any of this that I found upsetting but the fact that the son put the phone down near to what must have been a stereo speaker that was blasting out Christmas Carols. The whole thing was like some hideous pastiche job and if it had been on the Casualty Christmas episode we would have said it was far too cheesy.
I shall never be able to listen to Christmas Carols again.
I also took a call last weekend about a man who had been hit over the head with a Christmas tree as he walked home. Talk about killing the spirit of Christmas!
December 17th, 2005 at 12:50 am
Dear God. What a word picture. And I didn’t care for most of the over-played carols before this.
December 17th, 2005 at 7:09 am
people think that if someone comes down with something that it, they wont see christmas and us ambu-cabs people area the only people that can help.
thats why the calls, after new years it dont matter anymore.
December 18th, 2005 at 5:06 am
I laughed so hard I snorted tea up the wrong way. Don’t which is funnier, the pastiche or the picture of a Christmas tree used as an assault wepaon.
How come April is so quiet?
December 18th, 2005 at 8:56 pm
File on 4 link I thought you might be interested in:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/file_on_4/4524686.stm
December 19th, 2005 at 12:22 am
G’day Mate.
Nice weblog, i really enjoy reading it.
I’ve but a link to your website on my weblog, i hope that’s okay.
By the way, please take as much calls as you can upcoming week ‘caus i’m coming to London to go on a ride a long (as an foreign EMT) with the LAS, so please keep us bussy
Greetings,
Dutchmedic
December 19th, 2005 at 2:28 am
You’ll be busy, no fear on that one!! Where you riding out??
December 19th, 2005 at 7:58 am
You are in today’s Independent (monday). I would email but am away from computer where I have your address
December 19th, 2005 at 2:10 pm
How exciting! They didn’t tell me, though. My email is blog [at] neenaw.co.uk…
December 19th, 2005 at 2:43 pm
[quote]You’ll be busy, no fear on that one!! Where you riding out?? [/quote]
From the HQ at waterloo.
Thuesday with an ambulance and wednesday with a fast respond unit.
December 19th, 2005 at 6:09 pm
Well done mark,8/10 in the Independent!!
December 19th, 2005 at 8:34 pm
I had the misfortune of being at someone else’s house on Sunday and they where watching Eastenders (yawn). At the end of the program one of the characters had died. This I found extremly distressing as my Mum died on Christmas Day, two years ago. I don’t enjoy carol’s and if I see an Xmas tree thats wonky it’s upsetting, my Mum had managed to put her tree up after suffering a TIA and as you could imagine it wasn’t the straightest of tree’s. I had to go outside and get a breath of fresh air to compose myself.
December 20th, 2005 at 5:33 pm
Hello,
Has there been any assessment yet of increased workload due to the new law on drinking hours? It would be fascinating to know. I notice the issue seems to have dropped off the mainstream media’s agenda, but seeing as they have the attention span of tadpoles, that doesn’t mean a great deal.
December 20th, 2005 at 5:43 pm
Nothing official, and it’s hard to tell as it’s so busy this time of year anyway. I suspect we’ll notice the difference (if there is one) in January. Apparently call rates are just about average for this time of year at the moment.
If they had gone up, I suspect the media would have been all over the story!
December 22nd, 2005 at 8:06 pm
Happy Christmas from a regular reader - I hope you get some time off over the holidays ..
December 23rd, 2005 at 8:56 pm
I remember being in the back of an ambulance being driven to the local hospital as the paramedic worked on the patient. Having no medical knowledge, I can’t describe what went on, but I was aware that the patient was more or less brought back to life. The crew were celebrating. The gent lost the fight just as we got the the hospital. I still remember the quiet despondency of the paramedics.
I don’t know how you do it. Be safe this Christmas.
December 23rd, 2005 at 10:04 pm
Mark,
I cannot imagine how these calls affect you - but please remember all of the people whose lives are helped because of your colleagues and yourself.. You are doing something that requires a special type of person.
A few weeks ago I was in a local chhemist shop getting some pain killers - the pharmacist called an ambulance for me, it turned out that I had a pulmonary embolism - I’m now back at work, looking forward to the seasonal holiday even though I do not actually celebrate and *very* thankful that the ambulance was available.
January 30th, 2006 at 9:49 pm
I’d imagine people don’t say ‘dead’ because if they did, they’d have to mentally face up to the whole thing all at once and they probably wouldn’t be much use to you on the phone after that. I know when my gran went into hospital with a split heart vein (there’s a proper way of saying that, but I don’t remember it), I thought she’d died and went to get a nurse to check and I couldn’t say ‘I think she’s dead’, because if I had, I’d have been utterly incoherant halfway through the ‘D’.
As it turns out, she always slept in an apparantly non-breathing fashion =P