Following the biking trip, I knew I wanted to learn more about First Aid.
I spoke to my older brother, a Consultant in A&E, who gave me a few contacts. Then he suggested I spoke to my local Community First Responder Group.
I made the call and arranged a meeting with my village’s co-ordinator. We met in one of the local pubs, though I should point out that the beer he plied me with held no sway in me signing up there and then.
Whilst waiting for the relevant documentation to be authorised, I was put through a Basic Life Support class. The trainer was a Paramedic with some 20 years experience.
At the end of the course the Paramedic offered to take me out on shift, as a 3rd man observer. I think I almost bit his hand off as he offered me a night shift.
Laura thought it was a great idea. She prepared me bag full of treats to take with me. Cakes, sweets, sacks, soup…I was the most popular Observer the station had ever entertained.
I remember our first visit was quite some way out. To transfer a patient a Team Leader was already on scene with. The patient was a guy my age. He had been discharged from the hospital that afternoon following a below knee amputation to his left leg a few days prior. His lower leg had been removed following vascular complications borne from his poor management of Diabetes.
When we got to the address, we found him knocking back the oramorph (a liquid I understood to have a foul taste). A dirty tea towel cover his newly formed stump a small blood soaked patch dripped fresh blood onto the linoleum of the kitchen.
I knew amputation through Diabetes was common in older people, but not people of my age. He obviously read the confusion on my face, as he pointed out the Olde Sweet Shoppe next door. “I can’t resist their Cinder Toffee” he said beaming.
He explained that he had returned home from the hospital and fell asleep in his arm chair. The phantom pains, in the now missing foot, had disturbed his sleep so he decided to get up for a ‘strong sweet cuppa’. He had temporarily forgotten about his disability and had crashed to the floor as he took his first step, landing on the stump.
There wasn’t that much blood, the relevant vessels having all remaining intact. The skin flap had torn from, resulting in the slow bleed.
It amazed me hot the end of the stump looked like a ham. ‘Would you mind taking a photo of that for me, my girlfriend would love it’ he said. ‘No, you’re alright mate, I’m no David Bailey. I’d probably make a right hash of it.’ I replied, the comment confusing him. He didn’t ask again.
He needed to be taken back to the hospital, to get the wound cleaned and the skin flap stapled once more.
We got him on a stretcher and loaded him onto the back of the ambulance. The whole time he was asking anyone who was listening to make him a cuppa nice and sweet with 6 sugars.
We later found out that his other foot was also scheduled for removal, the Charcot arthropathy too severe to be reversed.
We made 14 more visits that night. Chest pains. Confusion. A finger de-gloved in a door. A RTC which included a careful extrication out of an Austin Mini. (She was a big girl, and the Mini is a small car. I’ll leave that one to your imagination).
There was also the attempted suicide.
A troubled woman, in her early twenties, had walked out onto a local flyover. She had climbed over the railings and jumped…or maybe slipped…only she knows the real answer.
If she had walked out to the middle of the flyover, before climbing over the railings, she would have fallen some 100ft into the middle of the city’s busiest dual carriageway.
She hadn’t walked out that far, and she had fallen, about 12ft onto the embankment, into a patch of stinging nettles. Her ranting and swearing could have been heard for miles.
The younger technician and I went down to fetch her. The older and wiser Paramedic stayed with the vehicle, enjoying the show.
Our jumper had sprained her ankle and picked up more than a few stings, but was basically OK. As we struggled up the embankment, a dirty old face popped out from the space between the embankment and where it met the road bridge. ‘Good riddance, get rid of the noisy cow!’ I nearly dropped the patient and filled my boxers at the same time.
Our Paramedic was in stitches. ‘Don’t worry about old Harry. He lives under the bridge most of the year. Has it quite nicely set up too.’ Thanks for the warning, mate.
Needless to say, I was hooked. I couldn’t sleep when I got home; Laura smiled as she listened to my tales. She gently tried to beckon me off to bed as she left to go and ride her horses. There was no way I was sleeping, I was on too much of a high.
That’s when it happened. When my world first started to implode.
Laura had left for the stables. I decided to take a shower and had gone to get undressed in the bedroom.
I was just walking into the en-suite when I heard a mobile phone, alerting it’s owner to a text message. It wasn’t my phone. It wasn’t Laura’s, not unless she had changed the alert tone.
It took a little finding but eventually I found the phone, behind my bedside drawers. I was confused, I didn’t recognise the phone. It was heavy and chunky and old.
I opened the incoming message. “Thanks for last night. I’m listening to Yellow. That’s our song now. Luv u L xxx”.
I don’t know how long I sat there. How long I stared at the phone.
I can’t remember putting the phone back where I had found it. I can’t remember getting into the shower. I just know that when I came too, I had scrubbed the skin on my arms and chest raw.
To be continued.
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