I swapped a shift the other so I could get a day off in a couple of weeks, in order to go to a wedding. This allowed me to work with a friend and excellent paramedic on the ambulance once again - the fellow who taught me the ropes, who I was teamed up with for the first two months of my on road experience.
And it was excellent.
No whinging about calls, no silence in the cab, always chatting to each other, to patients, to members of the public. A very smooth operator. And great in tricky and time critical situations too. What more would you want?
We had a good shift: Started off slow, which allowed us time for some food, a chat to the staff and a drive around our local area (which I was unfamiliar to). A chest pain then came up on our screen, and on came the lights, down went the accelerator. Chest pains are a fairly standard call for us, this one was a bit difficult due to poor details of patient history (our patient had learning disabilities). But nonetheless a job we mastered - especially since I was shown how to do modified chest leads (9 lead ECG) with our 3 leads monitor. Another skill that is excellent.
A transfer next which stretched my partners communication skills to the max...40 minutes and hundreds of bad jokes, singing competitions, stories of the homeland, anecdotes about past jobs and generally made up fairy tales later we arrived at our destination, with a patient with a bleeding ear and a partner with a bleeding mouth :-)
Next up, we got a call where I don't want to go in to any detail at all, due to the fact that the police are heavily involved, and matters may go to court. No space for stuff like this in a public forum, sorry guys (I know you are reading this now with an intense dislike of yours truly growing bigger by the second..."why does this bastard have to tell us that he won't tell us?" Hahaha, curiosity getting to y'all?)
What I will tell you is that it tied up nicely with one of my current uni subjects. Maybe more to come about that job further down the track.
That job only took about 3 1/2 hours all in all, including police statements, standing in the pouring rain, a bit of medical treatment and trying to kill some time in the early hours of the morning. So we grabbed a sausage roll and some choc milk, had a debrief about what happened, and headed back to station for a kip.
Rounding up the day was another transfer with a sedated patient but a chatty nurse, easy enough. I had to head to uni after shift, so on the way back to the depot from hospital I popped myself in the stretcher, buckled up and caught up on some sleep.
Sweet dreams!
