Third Manning

Hi all, sorry it has been a while, been far too busy at work!

So as the title suggests, I went out "Third Manning" with an ambulance crew at my local station... The day started with me arriving at 07:30hrs, ready for the 08:00hrs start, I was preparing myself for the 12 hour shift ahead of me...

My mentors for the day were Terry (Paramedic for a long time) and Danny (Technician of 3yrs)... Now these two don't usually work together as a crew, but as operational demands, demand they were put as a crew!

So off to the van for today... It wasn't one of the brand-spanking new ambo's, but one step behind... Still bright yellow, but with the addition of the tail lift (for stretchers)... I was given a tour of the van, saw all of the drugs, all of the interesting stuff for saving lives!

So the day got off to a quiet start, we was placed on standby down by the local pier at about 09:40hrs - quite a pleasant spot, tide just in, 1 guy fishing... (few jokes made) we was there until about 11:50 then we was asked to return back to station, no sooner did we go to the loo and made a drink did the radio go off, asking us to go to an Age Concern centre - The call came in as unconscious/fall - Not knowing what to expect we ran on blues and two's took us about 3 minutes, we was there so fast that control didn't even give us an update! How’s that for the government target!!!! Poor man, he was 97yrs old, didn’t look a day over 67! He was as fit as a fiddle, spritely young chappy, having a good old laugh in the back of the van... He was showing us photo's of him when he was in the army, and the only thing he was more worried about was not his injuries - oh no, but his dinner and getting back to Age Concern in time for some food!!!! Off he goes up to the local A+E...

We then had a couple more calls - Not awfully interesting, just a few little jobs (all ran on blues and two's)... We had one guy with COPD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_obstructive_pulmonary_disease) took him on board and up to the local Hospital... One old lady with a P.R Bleed (http://www.gpnotebook.co.uk/simplepage.cfm?ID=1100611624) again boarded the van and off to A+E... One guy who had passed out, simply taken to A+E for tests... We then had a call to a man who was diabetic whom was hypoglycaemic (Low blood sugars) when we got there his Blood Reading was 0.1 - Normally between 4+7... he was given some IV Glucose and ate some sandwiches, tested his blood again and it was slowly creeping up to 4.2 when we left the poor chappy...

The last call of the day was to a gent with breathing problems - A first responder was en-route also, he arrived, put the gent on high flow O2, we then arrived, put him in our chair, boarded him onto the ambulance, took an ECG and it was showing that he was having a huge heart-attack (Inferior infarction - http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.medscape.com/content/1999/00/41/09/410950/art-mc0504.01.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.journal.medscape.com/viewarticle/410950_print&usg=__FgMTTjJvd_87T0nc-YjEW1bdDwc=&h=395&w=702&sz=75&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=FLILMR4WVc1VWM:&tbnh=79&tbnw=140&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dinferior%2Binfarction%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1) We gave him aspirin (300mg) a spray of GTN (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyceryl_trinitrate_(pharmacology) and pre-alerted the hospital to our arrival - we took him in and ran further ECG, and the nurse confirmed that he was having a heart attack... But we caught it in time (Hopefully)

So there you go, end of my Third Manning shift - only finished 25 Minutes late... But hey who cares, i had an awesome day!!!!!

Will let you know how the next one goes, hope to go this weekend!!!

Bye for now!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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