Back to work

My first two shifts back at work were from opposite ends of the spectrum! I was third manning this week as I have been off work for two months! Third manning is when you work with a full crew, I was lucky to be working with two really lovely people for my first shift back, we decided to split the shift into three four hour segments, for the first four hours I was just an observer, I would have helped but we actually didn't have a job! the second four hours I was to be attending, we had a couple of jobs but neither of them were difficult, one we left where she was as she didn't require hospital the other was a fractured neck of femur so we took him in. When my four hours attending were up I drove till the end of the shift, I think we had another job but everyone was saying how quiet the day was... a nice way to come back to work! The second day however was totally different! Again we split the shift three ways, we had cover move after cover move interspersed with the odd job, our first (and only)meal break was at three pm after a two hour resus, after a busy afternoon we then managed to get a late job!! Well, I thought we were being led into a barn! It turned out to be the front room. The rubbish and food and paper and "stuff" was piled from floor to ceiling with just a walkway through to the bedroom and two doors that were shut, they had suffered two house fires but just left the burned walls bare electrical wires, and holes in the ceiling, which led to the roof space as this was a bungalow, the cobwebs and dust were so thick, we were coughing. Our patient was in the bedroom on the bed, I don't want to comment on this room as it makes my skin crawl! Our patient had suffered a CVA (stroke) and we needed to get her into hospital as fast as we could, the problem was our carry chair wouldn't fit through the walkway, in the end we called the fire service who issued us all with masks, as the dust was even worse once they began to move everything. We eventually got our patient out and shipped off to hospital. One hour and twenty minutes past our finish time we arrived back in base to hand over to the night crew. After my first shift back I had to drive straight to aikido, so I was glad not to have had an overtime job then!