Blood, Sweat Tea

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The following pages contain the complete, unabridged text of Tom Reynold's debut book, Blood, Sweat & Tea: real life stories from the London Ambulance Service. The book is based on Tom's award-winning blog: http://randomreality.blogspot.com
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Enjoy the book!
The Friday Project
***
BLOOD,
SWEAT
& TEA
Creative Commons Edition
Tom Reynolds
Published by The Friday Project http://www.thefridsyproject.co.uk
***
Too Young
Yesterday started well, we had the only new 'yellow' vehicle on the complex, and it really is an improvement on the old motors. But then we got a job that should have been routine, but unfortunately was not.
We were given a '34-year-old male, seizure' at a nearby football pitch in the middle of a park. Also leaving from our station was the FRU (a fast car designed to get to a scene before the ambulance). As we had a new motor, we were able to keep up with the FRU.
Arriving at the top of the street, we were met and directed by some of the patients football team-mates. Unfortunately, the patient was 200yards into the park, and there was no way we were going to get the ambulance onto the field - the council had built a little moat around the park to stop joyriders tearing up the grass in their stolen cars.
The FRU paramedic had reached the patient first and I ran across the field to get to the patient as the Paramedic looked worried, and this isn't someone who normally worries.
As I reached the patient, carrying the scoop which we would use to move the patient the paramedic asked me if I thought the patient was breathing.
The patient was Nigerian, and it is not racist to say that sometimes detecting signs of life on a black person is harder than if the patient is Caucasian. White people tend to look dead; black people often just look unconscious. Also, a windy playing field in dusk is not the ideal circumstance to assess a patient.
'He's not breathing' I told the paramedic, just as my crewmate reached us. 'Shit' replied the paramedic, 'I left the FR2'* in my car'.
I had to run 200yards back to our ambulance to get this, now vital, piece of kit.
*An FR2 is a defibrillation machine, which is used to shock a heart back into a normal rhythm, in the UK emergency medical technicians (EMTs) are allowed to use this piece of equipment, and rapid defib' shocks are essential in certain forms of cardiac arrest.
Returning to the patient my colleagues had started to 'bag' the patient (this means using equipment to 'breathe for' the patient and performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR), which is the procedure to keep blood flowing around the body in the absence of a pulse. Attaching the defib' pads I saw that the patient was in 'fine VF' (ventricular fibrillation) - this is a heart rhythm which means the heart is 'quivering' rather than pumping blood around the body to the brain and other vital organs. Technically, the patient is dead and without immediate treatment, the patient will remain dead.
We 'shocked' the patient once and his heart rhythm changed. It changed to asystole (this means that the heart is not moving at all, and it is much more difficult to restore life to the patient with this form of rhythm). We decided to 'scoop and run' to the nearest hospital. The paramedic secured the patients airway by passing a tube down the windpipe, and we got the patient onto