So there I was, minding my own business, when the sector controller from the North desk came along and waved an ambulance call receipt in front of my nose.
“Remember this one, Mark?”
I racked my brains. A call I’d taken around an hour ago. 24 Fortress Road, N23. 17 year old female having a panic attack. Bells started ringing somewhere in the back of my mind. Oh yes, I remembered it now.
“Do you remember anything out of the ordinary about it?” asked the sector controller.
“Um,” I said, scratching my head. “Well, the caller was a bit of an idiot, but nothing unusual, no.”
The call had gone something like this:
Me: …
Caller: Yes! Right! We need an ambulance here now!
Me: What’s…
Caller: She’s having one of her attacks!
Patient in background: Aargh, ooh, help me!
Me: What kind of attack?
Caller: It’s a panic attack.
Me: And what’s the address?
Caller: 24 Fortress Road, N23. Look man, never mind all this, just get here quick!
Patient in background: I’m dying, I’m dying!
Me: Okay, I need to ask you a few questions, but…
Caller: I ain’t got time! Just send the ambulance!
Me: If you could let me finish… I was going to say that I need to ask you questions, help will be arranged while I’m talking to you.
Caller: She’s dying, she’s dying.
Me: Please try to calm down. She’s having a panic attack, she isn’t dying.
These were the words that would come back to haunt me.
The rest of the call proceeded in much the same manner. I managed to extract the relevant information: she was seventeen, conscious and breathing, and the call was triaged as a category A because the patient was hyperventilating, in other words, not breathing normally. This is usually the way with panic attacks and I have always thought it was a bit of a waste of an ambulance because there is nothing an ambulance can do to help other than be nice and calm the patient down, which is something anyone can do. Still, off it went and I gave it no further thought. Until…
“So go on…” I asked the sector controller. “What was strange about it?”
“We’ve just blued a fifty-five year old female from that address,” the sector controller explained. “Suspended.”
“Oh my god!” I exclaimed, clapping a hand over my mouth. “I’ve killed her!”
“I’m sure it’s not your fault,” said the sector controller. “What did they say on the phone?”
I told him and he looked as confused as I felt.
I spent an anxious hour watching the movements of the ambulance that conveyed the patient, and as soon as they arrived back on station, I gave them a call.
“You know that suspended you just did…” I ventured.
“Oh god, what now?” said the ambulance man, alarmed.
“No, nothing!” I said. “I took the call and I just wondered how on earth a 17 year old having a panic attack turned into a 55 year old suspended?”
“God knows!” he said. “It was a madhouse in there, and we came in to find her lying in the hallway, looking pretty dead, so we didn’t stop to ask questions. But there were definitely no panicking 17 year olds there. There was just her and a man, they’d both been on the drink and there was evidence of drug taking too, so I think that’s what did it. Her lungs were full of fluid; even with the suction we couldn’t get anywhere.”
“I’m really worried that I messed up the call,” I told him.
“I don’t think it’s your fault; he wasn’t on this planet” he said. “We’ve left him with the police.”
“How is the patient?” I ventured.
“Dead,” said the ambulance man solemnly.
Despite the unfavourable outcome for the patient, I did feel rather better after speaking to the crew. It’s obvious there was a lot more to this call than what met the eye, and nothing which could have been guessed from the call.
I tell you what, though — that’s the last time I tell a patient that they’re not dying!
