Reddit, reddit, reddit.
Thanks Heather.

Sunday morning, 0900, I’ve been up for three hours, one of which I’ve spent squatting on a breeze block in a construction site in Leith docks. “You’ll be working at a water station” they said, dropping me and my partner off, “The marshalls will be along soon to set up the tables and water.”

We sat and sat and eventually, popping our heads around the corner, found some lovely volunteers from Marie Curie; “We’re more of a cheering station than a water station…pom-pom?

Time passed and subsequently 4000 runners did too, we entertained ourselves by muttering bitchy comments about runners under our breaths “Oooh, time to buy a tighter sports bra”.

We called control a number of times, complaining that we had no water to hand out and within a few minutes a marshall arrived on the back of a motorcycle.

”Why aren’t you setting out water?” he demanded.We theatrically looked around, there was nothing but a surfeit of pompoms to be seen.

He sped off down the road and within seconds was back “It’s all been dropped off round the corner.” He snapped, with barely concealed disgust.

We ran like hell, threw up the folding tables that were by the roadside and began frantically shifting and unwrapping the hundreds of crates of bottled water that were stacked on the verge.

It’s a skill, handing out bottles to runners as they run by and one I’ve developed over the years. Don’t try and hand it to them, let them take it, keep your wrist slack, move your forearm at the same rate they’re running and don’t, regardless of how efficient you think it’ll make you, be tempted to hold bottles by hooking your fingers down inside the mouth, you will break them as their snatched away.

Suddenly we get a message from a runner as he jogs past “Guy…collapsed…busstop…back there.”

It’s a funny thing, the word ‘collapse’. In medical terminology we use collapse to mean a sudden inability to stand, often accompanied by unconciousness or a corresponding medical difficulty (epilepsy, diabetes, hypotension). Your average punter and, irritatingly, security guards in particular, tends to use the word to mean “a person was standing up and now isn’t”. I’ve attended ‘collapse’ shouts and found people sitting down because they’ve got a headache.

However, it’s never worth risking it, so I took off running back against the flow of the runners. Bear in mind that I’m dressed for a day of standing sedately at a water station, running hadn’t been on my planned agenda.

I was wrapped up well, poloshirt, sweatshirt, fleece, padded hi-vis Jack et, big boots and heavy kit belt. Hardly the duds for athleticism.

Around the corner I find a classic Oh Shit Huddle, one on the floor, two crouching beside, three motorcycle cops standing around, their aggressive leathers and screaming sirens signifying nothing.

Getting closer my patient is foetal on the deck, his head under the bench of a bus shelter, sheet white, sweating profusely, visibly trembling and grunting animally with every exhalation. His lips are smeared with orange granules which I wipe away with my gloved fingers.

“I gave him the glucose,” said bystander A.
“Oh right, is he your mate?”
“Nope.”
“But you know he’s diabetic?”
“Nope.”
“And you gave him glucose because…”

He doesn’t answer, shuffles forward until he’s the closest person to the patient, he leans over, runs his hands along the line of the patient’s jugular, I realise that, on the edge of his peripheral vision, I’m just another hivis clad figure to him. Time to flex my scene management muscle; I rotate my torso so my title, badge and shoulder emblems are clearly visible to him. He ignores them, so I catch his eye.

“Thanks for your help, mate.” I say with an air of conclusion…he continues to faff with the twitching runner.
“Sorry, are you a medic?” I ask.
“Hmm?”
“Doctor? Paramedic?”
“No.”
“Right…I’ll take it from here.” I set him eye to eye. “Thankyou.”

He slopes off and I turn my attention to the patient. A quick head to toe finds no medi-alert tags, nothing to suggest any pre-existing conditions. His pulse thumps along, absent at the radius, present at the jugular, blood pressure in his boots. His breathing comes fast and shallow, responding vaguely to commands but with no real purpose and certainly not in a verbal fashion.

His eyes flash open and closed, he focuses on me and just as quickly glazes over, a colleague of his arrives, gives me a name, we guess an age, no, he doesn’t have any conditions as far as we’re aware.

Save for recording his breathing, heartrate and bloodpressure there’s nothing I can do for the guy. I’d love to stab his finger and record the sugar in his blood, view his heart rhythms. I’d like to know what level of oxygen his jerky, grasping breaths are supplying him with, I’d especially like to clamp a plastic mask over his face and pour cool, clean, life-giving oxygen into him.

In each case I lack either the insurance, qualification or equipment, I resort to the oldest trick in the book, I hold his hand and wait. A colleague of mine joins me.

Some minutes later a vehicle pulls up and I find myself squinting up at a back-lit Technician, he takes my handover, looks the patient up and down with an experienced eye and says “I’ll get a chair,” my colleague takes over my role and I stand up, stretching the kinks out of my spine.

“Want a hand, mate?”
“Aye, no bother, come on over.”

I approach the back of the vehicle and get a carry-chair thrust into my hands, I wave vaguely at the trolley.
“Blanket?”

It follows, airborne. It would appear that the ‘hand’ I’m offering this technician takes the form of “Getting on with it.”

I start to walk away and remember my manners, I turn back.
“I’m Kal, by the way.”

He looks up from the trolley.
“Jack, pleased to know you.”

My colleague and I package the patient, roll him into the back of the vehicle and the technician gives him a shake.

“Right, come on pal, onto the trolley.”
The patient doesn’t respond, Jack gives me a look.
“Can you lift?”
“You mean am I strong enough? Or have I been trained.”
“Both.”
“Strong, yes, trained, no.”

He takes a minute to show me where to put my hands, how to bend my legs and a moment later, the patient is sprawled on the trolley, head lolling back.

“Wanna Hudson?”He looks at me quizzically, then shrugs.
“Sure, if you’re happy to do that.”

I rifle through the response bag on the floor and come up with the oxygen mask, rip it’s cellophane packaging away and assemble it, filling it’s reservoir bag with O2 before strapping it to the patient’s face, it flaps ridiculously in front his chin like a huge proboscis.

Jack wraps a BP cuff around the patient’s upper arm and goes to reach around me to plug it into the Lifepac, the huge cardiac monitor/defibrillator that sits ominously in the corner. I take it from his hand and plug it in.

“Ready?”
”Yeah.”
“Cool.”

I hit ‘NiBP’ on the Lifepac, the cuff tightens, Jack takes blood to test for sugar.

“You got an SpO2 probe here?” I ask, digging in the right hand pocket of the Lifepac. “Right hand side.” He replies and after a quick rummage I come up with the grey rubber envelope, sliding it onto the patient’s finger, plugging the other end into the machine.

We wait for the machine to work its magic and the results come in, BP 90/50 (a little low), Blood sugar 9.3 (nothing to worry about), SpO2 is just about to come up with a result when the patient rips it from his hand and flings it across the vehicle.

Just then, the rear doors open, a cop stands in the frame.
“We’ve got another one.”

Jack hops down the steps and catches my eye, “You ok in here?”
“Yeah, no bother, you want me to run a four lead on him?”
He double takes.”You guys can do those?”
“Well…I can.”
“Sure, go for it.”
“Black neutral to the right leg, right?”
“Right.”
And with that, he vanished.

Honestly, ECGs aren’t as complicated as they’re cracked up to be. Piece of piss, plug in the cable, put wee sticky pads on the patient’s wrists and ankles, put the right cable to the right pad and watch the magic screen.

Thing is, the last time I did one of these was on a static, dry, 89y/o whose airway was clogged with liquid chicken. I’m now trying to fix the pads and cables onto a sweat-soaked, agitated young man, muscles trembling, eyes rolling, wrenching his oxygen mask from his face, ripping off the SpO2 probe, slapping my arms and chest as I encourage him to lie back.

I manage to get two pads on his wrists, those on his ankles slide on a film of sweat and mud into his socks, the cables slither away onto the floor. This is not the slickest piece of treatment I’ve ever performed. The back doors open.

“Right, she’s fine…”
He stops, staring at the mess I’ve made of the back of his motor and laughs.
“You’ve not done so well, have you?”

I glare back, tap my shoulder emblems pointedly, I’m not getting paid to be as good as he.
“Hi! Bugger off! Volunteer, mate, thankyou!”

A head shake and eye roll from him and it’s all back to business.
“Well, I reckon we should run this guy straight up to the Western General.”

I chance my arm, “Want me to attend in the back while you drive?”

Now, it would be well within this guy’s rights to laugh in my face, call me a jumped up little shit of a first aider and send me on my way, but he’s apparently an open minded chap.
“That’d be grand, if you don’t mind.”

“No bother, let me contact my control and let them know.”
Challenge number two, what will my duty officer say when I let him know I’ve dumped my partner at a water station and am now gallivanting around town in a big truck, wiff flashin’ lights?
“Red15,15, Red Control?”
“Go ahead 15.”
“Control, am enroute to Western General Hospital in a SAS vehicle, will be in touch once I’m back.”
“All received 15, seeya!”
!?
Is that it!?
Awesome!

In seconds we’re bluelighting through along Edinburgh’s waterfront, I’m dodging flying bits of kit as the patient rips them from his body, hanging from the handles in the ceiling, contorting my hips to twist away from the vomit that pours from his mouth on occasion.

He suddenly stops vomiting, slumps back onto the trolley, eyes roll back, lids slam shut, I shake him.

“Hey, HEY! Wake up! Open your eyes.”
I push his head backwards, lift his chin and wait for his mouth to flop open. It stays rigidly shut, the muscles in his neck and jaw pop to the surface. Dropping my ear to his face I hear the slightest, fastest breathing I’ve ever heard, he’s barely moving air through his nose and some kind of muscle spasm has locked his jaw.

I poke my head into the cab. “Mate, he’s hardly shifting air, you want him bagged?”
”Is he breathing?”
“Just.”
“Right!”
The brakes come on, I catch myself on the grab-handles and hear Jack bellowing out the window, moments later a paramedic I’ve worked with previously, Sue, jumps in. She grins “Alright Kal? Busy?” and sets to work.

Minutes later the patient is cannulated, the windows are opened (I hadn’t realised how hot I was until the breeze comes in, I instantly strip off layers) and both Sue and I are kneeling on the floor by the trolley holding the patient still while he tries to pull the needle out of his arm.

Later, having dropped the patient off at the doctor’s tent, Jack catches up with me.
“Nicely handled, by the way.”
”Aye, right then.”
”No, no, I mean it, he was really awkward, you dealt with him really well.”

“Oh, well, thanks very much mate, fancy being my reference?”
”Reference?”
”I’ve applied to the service, had an interview on Friday, just waiting to hear.”
He smiles, shakes my hand, feeds me a line about “dead calm in a crisis” and assures me he has no doubts about my chances of success.

And you know what?

He was right.

Can I get a “Fuck Yeah?”

THat’s what they say, right?

I was interviewing for the Ambulance Service on Friday morning, pressed shirt, shined (well, resurrected) shoes courtesy of SMM, sharp tie, suit cleaned and creased to within an inch of its life. I’ve seen duller edges on Stanley knives, my trousers wouldn’t have been allowed on a plane, I was looking *fine*.

Except…the night before I’d been helping SMM’s first aid group with their annual competitions. A simple scenario; an epileptic seizure with associated bang on the head. Time and again I lay on my face, fitting away, smacking my head on the floor if the first aiders didn’t support or pad it.

I sat up after a scene and the first aiders said “That makeup’s brilliant.”
“Thanks a lot” I replied, brushing my fingers against the fig-purple bruise I’d manufactured on my temple.

“No, no, not the bruise…those abrasions on your forehead.”
“I don’t have any abrasions on my forehead.”

The adjudicator leaned over and smirked “You do now…in fact, they look a lot like carpet burns.”

Yes folks, I’d managed to give myself 6 perfectly parallel, inch long, diagonal stripes across my forehead by dunting myself against the cheapy nylon institutional carpet on the floor. I looked like a Harry Potter wannabe.

“What the fuck am I going to *do*?” I keened to SMM later on in bed, having survived a merciless ribbing in the pub. I’d sat and smiled over my pint, while behind my grin I wanted to rush home and experiment with concealer and make-up or bury my face in my pillow and cry.

“Look” he started, the voice of wisdom, “At least it’ll be an ice-breaker.”

I went to bed and by the next day was in the Ambulance Divisional HQ, suited, booted and looking like my hobbies could be listed as “Sniffing George Foreman grills.”

“Kal?” Conveniently, the guy who took me for my driving test six months ago was standing at the door, we’d got on well when we met previously. “We’re ready for you, would you like to come through?”

Rumours had been flying in the waiting area about which officers were running the interview and I was dismayed to see that I’d gone into the room I *hadn’t* wanted.
Driving examiner I knew a little, in the corner was a bloke I didn’t know from Adam and in the centre an officer who I’ve worked with previously.
He’s a friendly enough guy, but dry and taciturn with it, a difficult character to unravel and interpret, I’m never sure if we get on well.

I shake hands with the first two before sitting down and turn to do the same to number three. He grasps my hand firmly, looks my bang in the eye and asks the first question of my interview.

“Kal, what the hell did you do to your face?”

I giggle, look at my shoes and explain, they openly laugh at me.
“Carpet burns?”
“Yup.”
“On your forehead?”
“Uh-huh”
“From being a casualty?”
“That’s right.”
“And that’s your story is it?”
“Sure is.”

The four of us crack up lauging, I settle back into my seat, relax and spend a thoroughly enjoyable half hour shooting the shit with the three of them.

I may get a job, I may not. Frankly, even if I don’t, it was such a brilliant interview, I’ll just hang onto the memory of it and try again.

Cos if you didn’t, you’d sue, and I can’t afford a lawyer.

You may not know (and most of you won’t, because I didn’t tell you), but in the summer of 2005 Giles and I had a kitchen disaster.

While attempting to light the stove, I asked Giles to throw me a lighter and I failed in the most glorious way to catch it. Instead, the lighter bounced off the palm of my hand, pinwheeled through the air onto the stovetop, skittered off the bars and performed a graceful swandive into the vent at the back of the stove, lying cheerfully at the back of our oven.

Our oven now had a butane lighter in it. This can also be expressed mathematically as R.Oven=Bomb.

We phoned our letting agency immediately and explained, they were helpful as ever.
“Right, right, well, we’d suggest you don’t use it in the meantime.”
Oh, you reckon? Thank fuck you’re here…
“We’ll get an engineer to call you and make an appointment to pop round, I should warn you that you’ll be liable for charges though, as this won’t count as a standard call-out.”
We were happy with this, we just wanted our oven fixed.

The engineers never came, disillusioned with our letting agency we just stopped using the oven, we boiled, grilled, fried and microwaved. We didn’t bake, roast or casserole.

On occasion we’d forget, I once skipped home with a fresh steak pie from the butchers and only remembered the situation when I opened the oven door. I could have wept. Thankfully, the nice lady on the ground floor absolutely loves us and thinks we’re “Just a nice couple of lads.” and adores saving our arses, so she cooked it for us, but still.

Fastforward to Saturday past and I receive a letter from the agency.
“Find enclosed an invoice from Capital Heating Engineers for the removal of a lighter from your oven, as we have already paid the workmen involved we would appreciate your settling this account as soon as possible.”
Attached was an invoice; dated from the 12th of August.

We have a deal with our agency that if we request maintenance work they can give the workmen keys to our flat in our abscence.
It would appear that’s exactly what they’ve done, ever resourceful and efficient, they got the job done.

They just didn’t tell us.

Seven months, SEVEN MONTHS I’ve been living under the belief that my oven was liable to blow me up, that’s seven months of no lasagne, shepherds pie, roast veggies, roast DINNERS.

If you need me, I’ll be weeping.

I have a cold, I’m all snottery. I’m a nice boy, though, and tend not to share this with people; I blow my nose discreetly, don’t sniff (too much!) in public.

This system failed spectacularly this morning while reading Dooce with a judge sitting just yards from me, I laughed and inhaled and a lump of snot that had been loitering at the front of my nasopharynx shot back into my throat. It must have been about the size of Arkansas and moved with a sound akin to a sleep-apneic pig downing tapioca shots.

I had to share, I chose to share with you.

Listening to “Electroshock Blues” by the Eels(go there, really, it’s brilliant, it has lots of music and videos and interesting writing, you never know, you might get turned onto a band you’d never otherwise consider listening to) this morning, forgetting how many gorgeous little chunks of words it has in it.

“Hate a lotta things.
But I love a few things.
And you
Are one
Of them.
Hard to believe,
After all of these years.
That you
Are one
Of them.”

“Life is funny, but not haha funny,
Peculiar I guess.
You think I got it all going my way?
So why am I such a fucking mess?”

“Standing in the dark outside the house,
Breathing in the cold and sterile air.
And I was thinking how it must feel,
To see that little light.
And watch it as it disappears
And fades into, and fades into the night.

So I know you’re going pretty soon.
Radiation sore throat’s caught your tongue.
Magic markers tattoo you and show them where to aim.
And strangers break their promises -
‘You won’t feel any…you won’t feel any pain.’”

Wandering around the Museum last week, we found the kids’ science centre, lots of lasers, mirrors and interesting drum machines to play with. It prompted discussion “I’m fairly certain we can’t go in here.”
“Why not?”
“It says ‘for children under the age of 12 and their families.’”
“Jana’s under the age of 12.”
“Jana’s seventeen months old and fast asleep.”
“Meh.”

We decided that it was OK when we realised that the curator in that area was passing the time by doing a bit of colouring in…

Just as we were leaving, Giles discovered the music table and, most importantly, a set of plastic tubes, cut to length and diameter appropriate to create tones. They were labeled with Doh-Re-Mi etc. and it seemed only right that we play a tune.

So here, my friends, is the evidence (as if any was needed) that we TOTALLY belonged in the kids’ part of the museum. Crank up your volume to hear the tune, unfortunately the video/audio appears to have fallen out of sync, but it just makes it funnier in my book.

From a piece by Charlotte Moore in the Guardian, on raising two teenagers with autism.

George wanted to go to Sainsbury’s, so I asked him to write a shopping list. First he wrote, “List”, and then he wrote, “I will see when I get there.”
When people ask me what the future holds for George and Sam, that’s the only answer I can honestly give.

When you’re sitting in a venue, drinking with a friend who’s a sound engineer at said venue and she receives a message from a colleague working upstairs that reads “Guys stripping up here, come see.” then, my friends, then it makes sense to be in with the right crowd.

And so it was that I found myself standing in the lighting/sound booth of a major Edinburgh venue saying “That one, the one whose jeans are slipping down and you can see all of his pants, yes, the one with “I love cock” written on his chest in magic marker.” and having a lovely, indulgent person manipulating the stage’s spotlights onto the target of your perving.

It was only on returning to our seats that my friend let me know that he, apparently, reads me.

So, “R”, thanks again mate, you brightened up my night no end.

Oh and overheard on the bus home, delivered in the twangiest Californian Valley Girl accent. “I mean, c’mon, how many ex-catwalk models are there sitting in their garage inventing a hovercraft that runs on fuel made up by scrap vegetables?”

Photos from last week, an afternoon spent in the Museum of Scotland with Kiri, Giles and Jana.

Click for bigness, and then subsequent clickness and snarkiness, highlights include yawning crocodiles, bored curators, turtle heads, geeky ducks and sprinkly fountains.