Wednesday night started almost as soon as we booked on, Tepic was attending for the first half of the night and our second job was to a grunting baby only a couple of hours old, the midwife had delivered the baby who was not breathing and needed immediate resuscitation, they told us baby was down for about 5 minutes!! on our arrival the baby girl was doing ok but was still grunting. Not another paediatric job!! The midwifes parting words as I shut the back doors were, " you know how to do neonatal resus do you?"
As I turned to answer, We are trained you know and as it happens we did a paediatric resus a week back, crossed my mind, I just replied "of course!" needless to say that was quite a fast trip into hospital.
We deposited Mother and baby safely into the labour ward before going off to our next job.
Our other job of note was much later on in the shift, I was by now attending, we were called out to an RTC, which there had been multiple calls to but no one had stayed around to flag us down so it took a good 15 minutes extra to actually find the job. Did we know it when we found it!
Tepic said "fatal then!"
As we took stock of the scene, a black car no one would have been able to tell what make, not even the manufacturer, was literally wrapped around a tree.
(the car was facing north, the drivers side was towards us the bonnet and front panels were about 20 feet west of the car, the complete engine was 10 feet north of the front of the car but the front passenger side of the car was almost touching the rear passenger side where the front passenger could have been was the trunk of the tree, no window had glass in it and no panels were uncreased)
We walked over to the car to see what the situation was and to our and the police officer who had also arrived's shock the driver was alive, he told us his name and that he only had pain in his left leg. Tepic took control of his head, keeping it in line and stopping him from moving, while I walked around the other side to see where his legs were. Because of the position he was in I couldn't clearly see his legs but it looked as if he had amputated it just below the knee.
I went back to the ambulance and got a collar long board and some other bits and arrived back at the patient at the same time as the fire service, a local crew we all knew each other by name. After putting the collar on him I cut up his trouser leg to see exactly what we were working with, A once open fracture now with no bone protrusion, tib and fib fracture, because of his position back towards the side of the car legs wrapped around it, we couldn't immobilise his leg in situ, it was all hands on deck, with us the firefighters and police inching him up the long board.
Once he was out we got him into the ambulance where Bob a car responder paramedic, cannulated and gave him some morphine for the pain, we cut down to skin to see what other injuries he may have, a broken nose, some muscle or bone damage to his right arm and a ?fractured clavicle. We prioritized him into the hospital resus unit and set off.
Once back at base we got our second meal break, by now it was 4:30am.
As I left the station to go home I remembered to take all my kit with me, as my next 3 shifts are at a different station 20 miles further away from home!
I decided not to go to bed as I would be sleeping in my own bed but as we had been so busy I just dosed on the sofa, only to be woken by one of my crew mates offering to do two of my shifts at the other station as she lives 5 minutes from it, I agree, the only catch is I have to do her night shift tonight! I went straight upstairs to try and get some more sleep but to no avail, I hope its a quiet night !
As it happened the night wasn't too bad, quite a lot of cover, but only two patients. Not too bad a night really.
I do have photo's of the car, for my portfolio but not to be published on here.
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