I want to be a pirate!

When I grow up I think I want to be a pirate!
For the last two days I have been at my new job with the Harbour Conservancy and I absolutely love it, out on the water in a RIB all day, I mean whats not to like.
The sun shone and the air was warm, it was lovely. The people I work with are really nice and the time went so quickly I could have done another three or four hours, that said I was shattered by the time I had got home. I do realise that when its cold and wet things will be different but until that time, a pirates life for me, Arr pass the rum!

Blackout Friday!

A post with this title should really only have a one word body... DON'T!

This is the night that Ambulance services across the country (World maybe, who knows) get totally crippled by people who :-

Can't hold their drink,

Think of nothing but themselves,

Spend a week or more's wages on alcohol in one night,

Embarrass themselves in front of their co workers, friends and possibly family

Kill someone or cause them suffering. Yes I did mean to write that. When someone gets so drunk that they become unconscious or their "Friends" (Inverted commas as real friends wouldn't let them get that bad!) are worried because someone has had their drink spiked!!! or isn't responding properly due to the amount of alcohol consumed, an ambulance gets called, an ambulance which will then be tied up for an hour or so dealing with some stupid person who has caused their own situation by stupidity, when it could be attending to someone who has life threatening condition and needs an ambulance through no fault of their own!

This is the night which sees Ambulance service and Police personnel assaulted  in the line of duty due to intoxicated people.

Is it OK to go out of control when so much is at stake?

One last thing... DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE, STAY ALIVE, And let everyone have a Happy Christmas!

Image from The Telegraph.

Hail Mary...

Father forgive me its been 10 months since my last post!
A lot has happened in those months too!
But I shall say my Hail Mary's and move on without dwelling on them.
Suffice to say I am back with a Lowland Search and Rescue team, less the dog who now has dementia to go with her deafness, it doesn't make her any less lovely though!
I have also changed my job, I have become a vampire again...!

A dirty job but someone has to do it.

During my years with the ambulance service I was both verbally and physically abused by our service users. Some would do it because they were ill, others because they were either high on drugs or drunk. Others still just because they wanted to, maybe they were just bored.
So taking all this into consideration why should one "customer" coming into my place of work now, throwing her weight around cause such a bad feeling?  I am due back tomorrow and for the first time since starting work there, I actually don't want to go in!

Resignation

Today I posted my resignation. I don't have a job to go to but I know I can no longer do the job I am doing at the moment!

STRIKE! Part Deux.

I wonder what my boss would say if I went in to work an hour and a half late and said "Sorry I'm late my life had an over run", I can put money on him not being as accepting as my husband, when almost every shift I call him or text him and say "Going to be late home, sorry, I have another over run!" I'm just not feeling the love right now! The reason for all the over runs is people calling an ambulance for ridiculous things, ever heard of pharmacists and GPs? Well have you? And a lack of staff!
There is another strike on Monday morning, Ambulance staff have not had a pay rise for over 4 years, the Politicians get one every year amounting to 10% per year I believe, or there about! They set unrealistic goals for us to attain, but take away the money required to be able to reach those goals. Is it any wonder Paramedics, Technicians and ECA's are jumping from the sinking ship? (That was a rhetorical question, the answer is blatantly obvious!) Some of the best Para's and Tech's I have worked with have either gone or are going. The government is succeeding in its challenge to break the service if not the whole NHS.
Very sad!

Slacker....(or writers block)

Father forgive me for I have sinned... it has been months since my last blog update!
I must try harder!
Today I have mainly spent in the warm snugglyness of my bed I am not sick, and I don't consider myself lazy...I just had a hellish night shift. I was always under the impression you could only have one job at a time in the ambulance service! Multiple casualties yes but just one job. Sadly people this is not the case as last night I was given (together with my crewmate...) two genuine jobs. We have six jobs stacking and no vehicle to send sorry! Well what can I say.. Chaos ( utter confusion.utterly without order. Formless welter of matter conceived as preceding creation.....the choice is yours!) An hour and fifteen minutes overtime, well thanks but after the night I just had I would have prefered to finish on time!
Still a fried egg sandwich three cups of tea and three hours sleep later I think I'm good to go!
So the battle plan is this... feed hay water muck out the horse, walk the dog, cook and eat dinner then and only then shall I be off out for a drink with one of my friends... and a well deserved drink it will be too!
Amen.

Amazing Grace! No no I mean Amazing Cake!

It will shortly be my Birthday, I happened to mention to one of my work mates that I had not been made a birthday cake in years! Yesterday she brought a cake in that she had made, for my Birthday... Is this not the most amazing cake??

Blood

Blood blood blood! The story of my day!

Un Happy Feet!

This morning I left for work at the usual time, but instead of going into the department I work in, I went instead to the clinical training rooms, where I was to have a phlebotomy course.
There were fifteen of us all from different departments in the hospital. The course was really well run, we had plenty of time to ask questions, the instructor was fun and approachable and we got the job done. (And not a flea in sight!)
We gave up our breaks in favour of finishing early and getting out into the sunshine, which meant I was able to get home and see my husband before he leaves for his night shift this evening.
Mouse was supposed to have her feet done this evening, but my farrier managed to give me the wrong date, he's coming tomorrow! Doh!

No Thanks!

And I don't mean no thank you! I mean no thanks.
I find myself in a job where the line managers do not see the bigger picture. Since I started working here I think I have been told once that I did a good job, and I can probably count on my fingers the amount of times I have heard my work colleagues praised. Its not that I expect it but I have seen the people I work with pull off some really epic tasks and nothing was said. In a recent staff meeting we were all told we would be taking on more work, we were told off for laughing and for some errors that had been made. We were told that some staff who left would not be replaced. Not once in the whole meeting did anyone say "Thanks you do a good job"
Today we were told that we can't have any food or drink in our office any more, yet today at lunch time I saw people eating in the managers offices.
Morale is low. Staff are getting moody....in fact the staff are revolting ( hehe)

Fail!

10 Years

Almost ten years ago I joined the Ambulance service, since then I have had my fair share of laughs, and tears.. most of these events have been done with my regular crewmate. Today we spent our last shift as crewmates, if I get the bank position I hoped for I may get another shift with him, but if not that will be the last time we work together, I have to admit I cried when I left the station. When you go through some of the things that we have been through there is a bond of friendship which can't be broken. He has saved my skin on more than one occasion, either by dragging me out of harms way or intervening when something is about to "kick off".
Tomorrow I start my new job working in a maternity unit, I am anxious that I have perhapse not made the right decision but I think that at the moment I am still emotional from leaving Tepic and the others who I have been working with, lets face it ten years is a long time and it hasn't been all bad jobs!
Tepic, I raise my glass to you, I hope you get a crewmate who is fun and will have your back no matter what, thank you for being the best crewmate I could have possibly had. x

New Beginnings... or, Have I done the right thing!

This will be my last week as a full time Ambulance person. I have decided to dip my toe into maternity and see if I like the temperature!
I shall, all being well still do some work for the ambulance service, it will be bank work although as yet I have not had any of the promised paperwork!
My last shift is Sunday, my first shift is Monday, no point hanging around!
To date I have delivered about 9 babies, okay then, one of those all we did was fish it out the toilet and wrap it in a towel, he was a whopping 9 pounder too!
Looking back over the last 10  years there have been some funny moments... being dragged backwards down a garden path by Tepic who was shouting "Time to go" being one of them, he had seen a crazy lady with a rather large kitchen knife running at us we tried to lock ourselves in the truck but the locks didnt work!!
Another time one of my crewmates was being seen back in the ambulance by a police man who managed to make her reverse into the dog handlers police car!!!
We have seen people cut their wrists with an open dog food tin, knives, razors and glass. I've had people OD on the most random tablets and some very sad times too, with Paediatric resuses, seriously ill babies and children, to the most shocking RTA's and sad family situations.
The one thing that has been the same all the way through is the support of my crewmates... the station I work out of is one in a million, it went from being sleepy hollow to one of the busiest in the service practically over night, but the staff who work there are the best. The station is small with just the one ambulance and a rota of twelve staff, although at the moment we only have ten. Most of the time we all get on and share the laughs and sadness between ourselves.
I will be sorry to go, and leave my crewmates. I just hope I haven't made the wrong decision!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...

Just to add insult to injury, as well as having an out of control daughter, my work has decided that my contract is wrong and that it needs to be dramatically changed, well, they are saying that what I requested last year and was agreed hasn't been put in place properly so I have to re submit it which makes me a new contract and oh yes, all new part time contracts don't keep their line or their crewmate. This is so not helpful, I will now have to do the shifts that they can't cover anywhere within the seven stations in my locale.

This is how they define family friendly..........

Farrier

Today the farrier came to the museum to shoe the three shires, they were caked in mud when we got them in from the field, yesterdays rain has made the gateway an absolute quagmire!

Having got them in and given each of them a hay net we started the heavy task of hosing the mud off their legs and grooming it all off the rest of them, strangely they all seem to like to roll in the mud!

As they all have long feathers (they are shires after all) we have to put tubigrip round their legs, A) to stop the hair catching fire and B) so the farrier can see what he is doing!

The youngster decided today that he would not pick his feet up no matter what we did, and its not easy picking a tonne of unwilling horse up. Eventually they were all ready and the farrier started the heavy task of shoeing. Assisted periodically by a chicken or our resident cockerel Sid.

When they had all been done we let them back into the field to graze.

Stay awake.

When we do a night shift, my crew mates and I do a six hour stint at attending then swap over and do six hours of driving. Or vice verse of course.
Last night Tepic drove first and I attended, we were sent all over the place, mainly jobs but one or two cover moves, at half past midnight it was all change and my turn to drive, well for the two nights before this shift my husband was on nights, (hate it when our shifts collide and we see nothing of each other for a few days), anyway when ever he is on nights I don't sleep very well taking this into consideration together with the fact that our days were very busy I was absolutely exhausted and by three thirty the road had become not much more than a blurry haze in front of me, and I could feel sleep pulling my eyelids shut. No good! on our way to the cover point I pulled in at the first garage to get a can of Red bull, well they had an offer on which was too good to miss so I got two cans and decanted them into my empty water bottle. . . once at the cover point, then again after the next job I drank my way through 500mls of Red bull!! Yes!! it worked the road was a road again and I was wide awake and quite able to finish my shift in the knowledge that I wasn't going to crash the ambulance.
We finished on time and I drove home. Once there I began to feel fidgety and anxious it was a really uncomfortable feeling. I then remembered the same thing had happened when I had a can before, a long time ago whilst doing my EMT training. It took until about 1130-1200 before I started to feel normal again, I don't think Red bull agrees with me!

To be confused.

Well What a day it has been!

It started off at 615 when the alarm went off, so that is at least a 1 hour 30 minute lay-in but then having walked to the hospital that I do bank work at I found the ward and then my patient. (Today I am "Specialing" someone, which means I stay with just that one patient for the duration of my shift, I have done this before and don't (usually) mind it!)
Today I had a ninety one year old lady, well she may have been old and poorly but boy could she scratch bite pinch thump. All I could do was try and make sure my face and arms were out of reach, not easy when you are supposed to be washing dressing changing bed linen and doing observations on her.
I have battle wounds.
The other thing she did was to tell me how awful I was how mean I was and how I was keeping her there against her will she called me all sorts of names, even though I knew she had no understanding of what was going on, and that she was unwell its still not a nice thing to have to hear and all the time just keep smiling and trying to be nice, after all there was no point getting upset or cross as she wouldn't have understood that either.
Its quite sad really, if she got better and was shown a video of how she was behaving she would probably been absolutely mortified. Sadly she won't get better in that sense, but with any luck she will recover from her operation and be well enough to return to where she had lived before her op, where things are familiar and she can settle back into her normal routine.
Having finished work I then had to rush to the stables to have mouses feet trimmed by the farrier.
Now I am going to sink into a hot bubble bath and have an early night.

The Heart of the Matter

So there was this guy, he was 74 years old, bit over weight and having a massive MI (heart attack) and My crew mate and I had to transfer him from one hospital to a different one so that he could have stents fitted into his heart. To cut a long story short, he had suffered a stroke a while ago which meant he couldn't have the usual (blood) clot busting drugs as they may induce another stroke, . . . which as he is already in trouble with his heart wouldn't be the most sensible idea! So, . . here we are transporting him to another hospital. On arrival we take him through to the Cath lab where the procedure is to be performed, transfer him off the trolley onto the operating table (yes the team were scrubbed up and ready to roll) Then the Mr. in charge turns to us and said "Would you like to watch?" Good grief,! we went and sat behind the leaded glass and watched as he put local anaesthetic around the groin and then inserted a thin catheter up into a blood vessel straight into his heart! not only were we seeing it live but we had a view of the inside of the heart as the dye was pumped through, and could clearly see the blockage! The Mr. inflated a balloon in the area of the blockage then inserted a stent (small metal tube which looked like a roll of barbed wire!) this all took about 45 minutes then when the last lot of dye was pumped through we were able to see the whole hearts blood supply and no sign of the blockage at all. We were both amazed by the whole procedure, none the less because during the whole thing the Mr. had been talking to the patient who was completely awake....!! Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to view this life saving procedure and good luck Harry here's to a full recovery.

yin and yang

I was going to post a photo of my lovely flowers but I have decided to wait until they have opened out more.
Today I was working out of my normal station but with a different crew mate, our first job was a resus, (of course it was... we have worked together twice and our first job was the same that day too!) A middle aged lady passed away on a railway station. We did everything we could for her, there was a car and two double manned ambulances so we were well crewed up, sadly we were still unable to do enough. Sometimes, as sad as it inevitably is, it is just our time.
It was time of another sort in the late hours of last night. My second grandchild was born weighing 7lb 15oz he is a beautiful healthy boy named Jack and I can't wait to have a cuddle with him!
As one life passes another begins.. .. .. .. ..
yin yang