first night

First of the nightshifts in this set of four saw me in the drivers seat again. The weather had been somewhat rainy, resulting in a couple of prangs (car accidents). This is what was flung at us:

Car vs tree: 

• If you drive a ute, chances are that you are young, male, and don't like slow cars in front of you.
• If you are a ute, chances are that you don't have much weight on the back wheels.
• If you are a wet road, chances are you won't offer an accelerating rear wheeled drive ute much traction, thus causing said vehicle to spin 180 degrees and land in a tree, backwards.
• If you are the driver of the above mentioned car, chances also are that you will be embarrassed by your mother turning up at the scene and picking you up.
• If you happen to be the nice ambulance people that turn up, chances are they don't want to play in the pouring rain, and are more than happy to oblige to your decline of any emergency treatment. Next job please!

Car vs pedestrian:

• According to witnesses (we never really got to see the offending person), someone was running in and out of traffic, and got hit by a car. Someone called 000 for an ambulance. By the time we arrive, he has waddled off. Area search, no trace. Next job please!

Altered state of mind, incontinent

• Yum, fecal incontinence. A first for me, and hooray to the heavens above that I was not attending that night. Gave patient a quick shower, I practiced the art of mouth breathing, and a fresh pateint emerged and was loaded in to our ambulance. Easy.

Altered conscious state, post collapse

• Female possibly, most likely having a stroke. Patient not overly responsive, so we weren't overly fussed about red lights on the way to hospital, and turned on our funky disco-get out of jail free-get out of my way lights.

Female, 70's, pain to elbow and hip post fall

• possibly fractured femur. Ouch. Lots of pain relief, some splinting, a gentle transport to hospital and were off. No more jobs please, it's 1 am and I would like a nap.

Female, mid twenties, contractions 4 mins apart

• Here we go again...I am getting too many of these jobs. This one had its own flavour though, she was suffering from a strong bout of tachysaviourism, a quite vocal condition where the patient repeatedly and loudly starts praying to our apparent saviour Mr J. Christ. Anyway, our patient walked on to the ambulance. Because we didn't want to stay and play, and would rather have a midwife or two helping out in such a scenario, we did a runner to hospital, and left her in the capable hands of the maternity ward. No more jobs please.

Some kind of job, can't remember

• You know when you are at a traffic intersection in your own car, waiting at a red light, and an ambulance pulls up beside you? and then after 10 seconds, said vehicle apparently can't be bothered waiting for another few minutes for the lights to change? Well, that was us, getting a priority one, hitting the sights and lirens and leaving our poor onlookers to stay stuck in traffic...

Car vs Car

• Last job of the day, and a near perfect circle. Ute, wet roads, young male driver. This time with some added spice, such as alcohol and hitting another car, whose driver turned out to be our patient. I won't go on about road rules, but allowing young drivers to drive seriously unbalanced (remember, no weight on the back wheels) high powered cars (360 horsepower) is just plain wrong and dangerous.

We got to the accident scene all right due to our funky blue red and white lights, but getting to hospital took ages in peak hour traffic. We ended up back at station two hours after official knock off time. And started 15 mins early. Which makes for a 16 1/4 hour shift.

Last night (post coming soon) we didn't get any sleep. Doing an extra night shift tonight, and it's friday night. Expect some teabags under my eyes. Earl Grey or English Breakfast, the choice is yours.