Hello all, just thought I’d pop in to give you a bit of a perspective of what we as a service are dealing with and how we are coping.
I was lucky enough to have a few weeks off over Christmas and missed the start of the chaos. To be honest I needed it as was feeling burnt out, emotional and my MH was at rock bottom. I’d had a couple of horrible weeks that involved 3 cardiac arrests, a bloke who had been stabbed 15 times with a key, another who had been hacked to pieces (literally) with a machete (I got cancelled on that one thank ****) and finally a hanging (my first proper one).
I’ve now been back for one weekend of nights and sadly it’s only getting worse. Approximately 80% of our jobs are COVID related, and many of these patients are in real difficulty.....O2 sats of below 90% and really struggling. Of course you have those who simply can’t look after themselves and really need to man up, however most are genuinely sick. An interesting thing we have noted a few times is ‘silent hypoxia’, where the patient isn’t struggling for breath, looks ok but when you check their Oxygen levels they can be running at 85% or so. Many times I’ve checked my equipment thinking it had gone wrong, only to find it really is working fine.
Most of these, if not all, hit our criteria for going to hospital and there is where the ‘log jam’ occurs. We can wait for anything up to 9 hours to handover at hospital (so I’ve been told, however I was lucky and only had a maximum of 1 hour to offload). Adding to that the ambulance has to be cleaned after for IPC, it turns what could of been a 30 minute turnaround into a 2 hour turnaround....leading of course to no ambulances being on the road. There have been anything up to 650 calls holding at anyone time and the claps have definitely been replaced by the ‘Where the **** have you been ?’
Of course the bullshit calls are still coming in and there is nothing more frustrating than dealing with crap when they are having to GB Cardiac arrests...totally does my head in. For example this weekend i had a patient who complained of having chest pain, who had locked himself out of his flat....miraculously this chest pain vanished after I had climbed through is window and let him in.....funny that !!!
So where do we go from here ? I’m being totally pessimistic and feel the end really is in sight. With the vaccine finally being dished out I honestly think this is the endgame and things will at sometime soon be returning to some kind of ‘normal’.
I had my first dose of vaccine this morning and was amazed at how easy the process was....it must be a gigantic task and all credit due to the massive army of students and volunteers who are getting on with it. I made no secret a while back that I was totally against the first ‘lockdown’ as I felt, and still feel, it was a case of ‘kicking the can down the road’ and just hoping for the best. However with the vaccine now here, I’d be saying that a lockdown probably is for the best....it’s hopefully only a few months and many, many more people will be vaccinated thus leading to normality.
I also think, and it is only my logical opinion, that it probably is best for most people to get one dose and the second dose be delayed, except for the most vulnerable. Surely it’s better to have 20 million people 80% protected rather than 10 million people 90% protected ?
Anyway, if you got to the end of this then well done. I hope you are all well and that life is good. I personally still have my ups and downs, have my anger and MH issues and probably best I stay off the board....wishing harm and violence on someone really isn’t a good look and there would only be one person who looked like a **** (yep, that would be me.
I still mostly love the job and nothing can beat the buzz of driving at 70 mph on blue lights, through traffic, playing ‘Firestarter’ by the Prodigy at full blast....it has its good points and I get paid for it, though sometimes I feel like Nicolas Cage in ‘Bringing out the Dead’.
Besides if it gets too much I could soon go delivering shopping for Tesco......my choice.
The good thing is that having Charlie back has really reignited my passion in our team again and him scoring last night has given me a massive buzz....long may the feeling last
Bella Ciao Comrades
Stainsey
