My first “proper” day back at work, working with my new crewmate on a proper truck.
I shouldn't have mentioned that all I'm going to be seeing is little old ladies with medical problems…

The first job was a 66 year old male who had been fixing tiles on his shed roof and had fallen off the ladder, probably around 10ft. He was shut behind his front door and all I could hear through his letterbox was “I've broken my leg”. The police are much better than me at getting into locked premises (last time I tried I fell on my arse in front of a crowd of 20 people) so we waited for them to arrive and use their specialised equipment (screwdriver/size 12 boot) to force open the door. Gaining access to our customer it was pretty obvious that he had fractured his femur (thighbone) as it had a new bendy section just above the knee. The pulse was good in his foot and didn't complain of pain anywhere else in his body. This brave man had crawled, with this fracture, from his garden; through his kitchen to the living room where he kept his phone. All throughout he didn't complain once. We splinted his leg and “collared and boarded” him from the house (a fall of 10ft can easily break your neck, and the pain from his leg could easily distract him from a neck injury). We could have set traction on his leg, but we were only five minutes from the hospital; so we “blued” him into Newham where he was “attacked” by the local trauma team.

The next job we got was a dinner lady at a local primary school who had dropped a knife on her foot. There was a tiny cut to the foot, and after cleaning, dressing and checking her tetanus status left her at work. What depressed us was that there were no scraps of food left we could have.

Driving back from the last job we saw three men chasing another who ducked into the local mosque – we ignored this until we got a call to the area the men had run from – apparently a man had been assaulted with a Car-lock”. HEMS (our helicopter service) had been activated and were going to make their way to the scene. When we did a quick U-turn and rolled up to scene it soon became obvious that HEMS was not needed so we cancelled them down. The man had been clamping an illegally parked car when the owner and his wife returned. The owner then pulled a large aerosol can from his boot and hit our patient around the back of the neck, causing a short period of unconsciousness. His wife had also put up a fight, but the owner of the car had run (into the aforementioned mosque) leaving his wife behind. (What a gent!). At one point we thought it was going to turn into a riot as 30 youths from the mosque were adamant that the four workmen doing the chasing weren't going to set foot in the mosque.

Again, we had to collar and board him, and lift him onto our stretcher – which wasn't fun as the man weighed at least 20 stone. Subsequent treatment at hospital showed no serious injuries.

Final job (after having to get our nice, new, shiny ambulance fixed – a problem with the side-door) was a 60 year old female collapsed at a bus station with slurred speech and “not drunk”. Remember that, “not drunk”, it's important. What could it be? Could it be a stroke? Could it be hypoglycemia? Could it be cardiac related? So we turned up to find “Mary” having fallen over, smelling strongly of alcohol and with a 5/6ths empty bottle of whiskey in her purse.

“Not drunk” – why did the callmaker say that? It's bloody obvious she is pissed as a fart. I'd guess it was the bus station staff who wanted her gone and was afraid we wouldn't turn up if we knew she was drunk. Still it was an easy last job of the shift, even if she did keep grabbing at my balls and kissing my (thankfully) gloved hand.

This counts as a good day.

Now I'm off for some endorphin-releasing Baileys ice-cream.