Blood

Well that's another tour done, two days and two nights! Quite interesting they were too, on my first day I had to have a meeting regarding the amount of time off sick I have had, it makes me laugh really, to ensure I could be at work I just took the days off I needed for all the tests I was having before Christmas, which meant I had been off sick on seven separate occasions!
The service I work for is the most uncaring caring profession I have ever known, but I am not going to rant on about all its miss givings today I might store them up for a later date, Suffice to say that if I am ever ill again and require tests the service will get one massive block of sickness off as I will ensure I am booked off for the whole lot as this seems to be what the service wants!
Other than that we did have some very interesting jobs, and I seem to have done the full rounds going to pretty much every hospital in our area (and a couple of others besides) Our jobs ranged from a four month old baby with testicular torsion, which had to be blue lighted into a large London hospital, an elderly gentleman who had a circulation problem in his leg due to a hip problem, to an epistaxis (nosebleed) which I had to prioritise into the receiving hospital due to the fact he was on Warfarin and had lost so much blood.
On my last night shift I also went to a blood loss job, in fact I think it may have been the worse blood loss I have ever seen on an alive patient! He was a self harmer, he had decided to cut through his arm and managed to hit an artery, the clots and blood were everywhere and we really didn't want to put the kit down or touch anything. His blood pressure was in his boots and for the third time that night we found ourselves prioritising our patient into hospital. I think the theme of this tour could either be Blood loss or nose bleeds, as I think I responded to three nose bleeds and saw at least another two crews bringing patients in that clearly had also had them.
As for Friday night I think the theme was police, as every job we did we either required them or they had called us, including one where two teenagers had absconded from a children's home, one had managed to badly cut her face, (possible self harm, taking the rest of her face and arms into the equation) they both absconded from the hospital before they had been assessed let alone treated, I think they may have realised that we had called the police, because some of the things they were telling us just didn't add up!
Even on our way back to base we required the police as we were following a car which was so obviously driven by someone who was over the limit it was laughable! She had trouble keeping it on the road let alone on her side of it!! Needless to say we kept behind at a good distance, as we didn't want her hitting us.