Blood, Sweat Tea | Page 6

in pain.
Every time I have a bad day, or feel fed up at work I think back to this list, and soon start to feel better - although I no longer get paid more than the nurses I meet.
Death and What Follows
There are some people, who despite being lovely people, you dread working with; one such person is Nobby (not his real name). He is what is known in the trade as a 'trauma magnet'. He's one of those people who will get the cardiac arrests, car crashes, shootings and stabbings; by contrast I am a 'shit magnet', meaning I only seem to pick up people who don't need an ambulance. Other than having to do some real work for a change I really enjoy working with him.
I was working with him a little time ago and we got called to a suspended (basically this is someone whose heart isn't beating and they have stopped breathing). It's one of those jobs that require us to work hard trying to save the punter's life. We got to the address and found relatives performing CPR on their granny. You might have seen it on TV as a 'Cardiac Arrest'.
(Let me correct a few ideas you might have about resuscitation. First, it rarely works, 'Casualty' and 'ER' have led people to believe that you often save people; I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who have survived an arrest and most of them arrested while I was watching them in hospital. Second, it isn't pretty, when someone arrests there is often vomit, faeces, urine and blood covering them and the area around them. Finally, people never suspend where you can reach them, if there is an awkward hole, or they can find someway to collapse under a wardrobe they will do so.)
This poor woman was covered in body fluids and was properly dead; there was no way we were going to save her. One of our protocols says that we can recognize someone as beyond hope and not even commence a resuscitation attempt. Unfortunately, we couldn't do it this time as the relatives had been doing CPR (which is the right thing to do) and so we had to make an attempt.
Nobby and I got to work and tried to resuscitate the patient for 30minutes. Our protocol goes on to say that if we are unsuccessful after attempting a resuscitation for 'a specified time' we can end it and recognise death, which is what we did.
However, during our resuscitation attempt it seemed that the entire extended family had arrived and there were well over 20 people in this little terrace house with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. It's always hard to tell someone that their mother had died, but it has to be done, and if you can manage it well you can answer some of their questions and hopefully provide some healing for them.
The GP (general practitioner) was informed, as were the police (a formality in sudden deaths). The family had called a priest and he was there before the police arrived, while the GP was going to 'phone the family'; what he expected to be able to do over the phone confused me.
We tided up and went on to another job.
Two weeks later, Nobby was called to a chest pain. He turns up and finds himself in the middle of a wake, surrounded by twenty familiar-looking people.
Can you guess who the wake was for? Its a funny old world...
I worked with Nobby again for the first time in 2years. He still remembered the job, and what happened after it. I told 'Nobby' that he'd be included in this book but he wasn't happy with his pseudonym and told me that he would prefer to be referred to as 'George Clooney'. I refused.
I Do Like Some Drivers...
Although I often moan about the idiocy of other peoples' driving when faced with a big white van with blue flashing lights on top; I am sometimes pleasantly surprised at the lengths some people will go to in order to get out of the way. For example, yesterday we had people nearly grounding their cars on roundabouts and roadside verges, squeezing into parking spots I wouldn't be able to fit a Mini Cooper in and swearing at other drivers who wouldn't move out of the way. I've had workmen stand in the middle of the road and stop traffic, lollypop ladies fence off crossings with their 'lollypops' and van drivers who I have clipped while squeezing past them wave me on and tell me, 'don't worry about a little damage'.
Yesterday we had all the above on one call (except hitting a van driver), it was like the Red Sea parting before us. It was a beautiful thing to behold;