OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

For some inexplicable reason, the entire station is on a high. The sun beats down, people sing, dance and high-five each other in the vehicle yard.

Maybe it’s something in the water, maybe it’s the onset of early summer, maybe its something else entirely.

But I’ve suddenly been reminded of how much I love my job. It’s been a while since I’ve been this excited to be at work.

(Edit. I’m going to turn comments off on this one.  Because I’m sure everyone else is feeling very happy too.  But I wouldn’t want to spoil the happiness.  Let’s all just bask in it.)

 ”I know she’s dead…I know it.  She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Yes.  I’m afraid she is.”

There’s a sound people make that I’ve only heard in two places, one was in the public gallery of courtrooms when folk were sentenced.  Their mothers would let out a wail that would cut the dusty atmosphere, a truly human noise in a stuffily administrative space.  It’s like grief punching a noise from your chest, your last cognizant exhalation before you fill your lungs with air to cry with.

The kid makes the noise before his forehead hits his knees, his hands wrapped around the back of his neck, feet lifting from the carpet.  Suddenly foetal in the face of his mother’s demise.  His name is tattooed on his chest; adolescent immortality and independence Hancocked across his pectoral.

Across the room, his father rubs a hand through thinning hair over and over.  He questions me, demands answers and retribution, forgiveness and clarification.

They both rise, clasp each other in a hug, and break away to pace the room around me.  I have nothing appropriate to say, so I parade-rest in the centre of them, the nucleus of their splitting familial atom.   There is nothing else to do but listen to their hopes and plans and routines crumble from their mouths.  They’ll have to move house, to cancel her work commitments and anniversary party. 

The laddie is taken next door by a neighbour.

Slowly the husband unloads his emotions out onto the table in front of him.  Methodically and carefully he moves through shock, grief, anger, denial, bargaining and acceptance. 

“I’m ten years older than her…she was meant to bury me.”

He’s a wee jakey, jumped over a wall yesterday and pinged his Achille’s tendon right up his calf.  There’s something weirdly alien about the back of his ankle, its soft and squishy without its normal structure.

The conversation quickly turns to the local football team and in minutes I’m left behind, Pally and patient descend into a quickfire sharing of jargon and players’ names I’ve never heard of.

I’m meant to be attending, but they’re getting on so well (and I really don’t want to sit and talk football) that I nudge Pally as he passes me.

“I’ve no chat for this boy.  Gimme the keys.”

He laughs and relinquishes his seat in the front for the drive to hospital.

A week passes and we find ourselves sat in the back of the motor with a young, flamboyant gentleman of the confirmed bachelor persuasion.  There’s a great argument going on as to whether he stabbed himself, or his boyfriend did him in.  The argument is punctuated with Ricki Lake style wrist waving, finger pointing and the occasional readjustment of his perfectly coiffured hair.

The police are discussing the situation with the patient when Pally leans over to me.

“Remember the boy with the knackered ankle last week?  How you drove?”

“Aye.”

“Gimme the keys.”

Fair enough.

I’ve been invited to a Video Games themed fancy dress party and need some inspiration, both for a cool subject and for ideas as to how to implement a costume.

Anyone suggesting I go as Zangief, as Giles did, will not be asked back.

Back on the road with Pally, semi-permanently as well; his normal partner is seconded to the RRU for the foreseeable future.

I’m just back from the College and on with an experienced hand with training skills.

Yes mate.

We’re already into a routine, a Sun for him, Herald for me, coffee from the Swedish deli in the middle of town.  Park up in the sunshine of the Meadows and watch the world go by.  It’s amazing how my stress levels diminish when I’m not spending every day supervising junior colleagues - I’ve been reading back over TQ this morning, what an unhappy little bunny I was before Christmas.  Now I am marshmallows and twinkles and lovely.

Look at that.  I’m so chilled about things I can’t even write.

We were approached this week by a member of the transiently accommodated fraternity.

“Will you boys be here for a while?”

“Sure, unless we get a job.  Why?”

“I’m off to get my cunt kicked in.”

Everyone needs a hobby, I guess….

We’re granted a lie in, but when my alarm goes off, the extra half hour’s sleep doesn’t seem to have done me much good. I stagger about my bedroom, turning the temperature down on the shower trying to wake myself up into the rootin’-tootin’ health care professional I’m meant to be.

I shave and fix my hair and survey the damage…do I look like a highly skilled paramedic?

Nope.

I look like a pale faced laddie with a hangover from hell.

Oops.

Breakfast is a delicate operation, I tentatively sip tea and nibble on lightly buttered toast, risking an egg and a slice of bacon only once I’m confident they’ll stay down.

We gather in the classroom. Stingray dozes with his head on the desk, Bulk looks ghastly. I’ve resuscitated healthier looking folk.

Uzi and Benito stride in, banging the door against its frame. Seven headaches chorus in response.

“Owwww…..”

This pair excel at keeping a straight face, there are no clues from either of them as to how we’ve done. They’re just as smiley, yet business like as they’ve been through the whole course.

There’s a brief chat and we’re sent for early coffee while they arrange the tutorial room.

And on our return Uzi starts calling us in.

One of us doesn’t make it. They slipped on a practical. As they come back in the room and tell us the bad news it deflates and terrifies us all.

I’m third in.

Benito and Uzi sit in a tiny wee room across the corridor from our classroom, just yesterday I was dealing with the delivery from hell on this very table.

There is no fucking around.

Benito beams and shakes my hand. Uzi does similar. They pass me my grades. They’re good, and my midwife examiner has highly complimentary notes written on my exam.

I’m frustrated to spot my grade from my paediatric practical, it’s the weakest practical mark I’ve had through the whole course. Seems churlish to gripe about it, since I’ve just passed with praise ringing in my ear, but the irony pisses me off.

Not enough to stop me grinning like an idiot and dancing around the classroom when I return, hugging Granny and Midge, bouncing up and down on my heels as nervous elation burns off.

Everyone else returns from their tutorials in much the same fashion, bouncy elation and smiles.

We gather for a group photo (thanks, Vatican), since Midge and I had spent an enjoyable half hour in the trainers office laughing at old photos of Benito, Vatican and NorthCunt passing out from their paramedic exams. It seems important to have a memento of the people whose pockets you lived in for a month and a half. Immediate friends and colleagues without question.

And then…nothing.

An anti-climactic hour where we lounge about on sofas, complete paperwork minutiae and drink more coffee. There is no ticker tape parade, no fireworks or dancing girls. We’ve driven ourselves as hard as we can to this point and found that there is nothing but an absence of study.

I only really grin when I phone the parents and hear my Mum enthusing down the phone that my news is “Bloody BRILLIANT!”

It’s at that point that it hits me.

Yeah, you’re right. It is.

For all our celebrations, hand shakes and shoulder slappings, there’s nothing left to do but bid farewell to everyone as they slide away in their cars, back to normal life and daily routines. Stingray, Midge and I loiter in the car park, hug and step away. I’ll miss everyone, but I made two really good friends in those two.

There’s another month of training waiting for me before I can apply to the HPC for my Paramedic Registration. It’s all based in hospital, with a couple of weeks in operating theatres, a week in coronary care and a week in A&E adding the practical finesse required to do the job well.

Until that’s arranged (and it’ll take a long time) I’m on the road with Pally for the foreseeable future, watching, listening and learning.

My name’s Kal…I’m 27…and I’m going to be a paramedic.

(Photo published with kind permission of all subjects. Back row from left, Sensei, Kal, Bulk, Stingray, Granny Chan. Front row from left, Kappa, Benito, Uzi, Midge.)

I have gin.

I take no responsibility for the quality of this shot, but it makes me grin, so fuck it.

I’m publishing it.

Hurry up and wait. Practical scenarios are done and done.

We’re sitting drinking coffee, filling in time before lunch when I mention the pick-up from Aarayan a few nights before. We’d stolen her Wii and arranged a conference suite in which to have a wee party to ourselves. Aramus overhears our conversation.

“Have a word with the hotel staff, they’ll plug it into the projector for you.”

Duly noted I bring the console down from my room, hand it over at reception and within half an hour it’s ready to roll.

Wii Tennis rocks.

Wii Tennis at twelve foot across on a proper screen rocks harder.

Tied to our contracts as we are, we’re officially on the clock until 1715, so a quick game of doubles wasn’t on the cards, Midge and I head for a walk and later I fill in time by having a snooze and taking photographs. There’s a great calm about having reached the end of the course, regardless of the results of our exams (which are kept firm secrets until Friday morning).

After dinner I head down to the suite, turn on the Wii and am surprised to find the game inside has changed.

Someone’s been playing with my Wii.

I collar the ACAs and one of them sheepishly hands over his mobile phone. There on the screen is a ten second video of Vatican playing Sonic and Mario Olympics. He’s beaming like the sunshine in Teletubbies, running up and down on the spot like a rabid pixie. I laugh until it hurts.

The evening passes convivially, much gin is drunk, many tennis and boxing matches are played out, Uzi joins us for a few jars, as do most of the ACAs.

I crawl up to bed at 1am, curse the room for spinning round so fast and collapse in a drunken, slumbering heap.

This is ResusciF. This is the most PG-13 angle I can find of her. Alternative viewpoints are not pretty, even for the most hetero of medics; ladies should not have press studs with which to attach their magical flower gardens.

Miss F was the model for our obstetrics final. I’d love to say she was as technologically advanced as our trauma dummies, but she’s not. She’s a big lump of rubber with a spine, two stumpy thighs, a floppy Tiny Tears with a press stud belly button and a hole through which to pass him.

Cutting edge she is not.

I’m second up for the obstetrics skill station, as I enter our midwife lecturer throws me into the depths.

“This is a 39 year old woman who was at the cinema this evening when she went to the toilet and felt a large gush of fluid come away from her.  It wasn’t pee.”

“What’s her name?”

“Susan.”

“Alright, let’s get her off the toilet pan and have a chat. Has she had any children before?”

“Yep, she’s got eight kids already.”

“Ok, and how pregnant is she this time?”

“She thinks about 36 weeks.”

“She thinks? What’s her due date?”

“She doesn’t have one.”

“Eh?”

“She says she couldn’t be bothered with any ante-natal classes, so she hasn’t had any check-ups.”

“Great. So we’ve no idea if there are any problems with this baby?”

“Nope.”

“Has she had any bleeding recently? Or been unwell?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“K. And how frequent are her contractions?”

“One in one, she really feels the need to push now.”

“Alright, let’s pop her jeans off, block the bathroom door and have a wee look at what’s going on.”

Downstairs I can see the crown of the baby’s head pressing against the vulva, a wee tuft of moulded rubber hair keeking out.

But the head’s not progressing as far as I’d hope and as every ‘contraction’ (the assessor shoves the baby against the inside of the dummy) ends it recedes back to its original position.

“Right. The baby’s head isn’t coming forwards, so I’m assuming some form of obstructed labour, most likely shoulder dystocia.”

“And what are you going to do about that?”

I talk her through changing the mum’s posture, pulling her thighs up against her belly to flatten out her lower abdomen as she contracts.

“That’s not helped.”

And so I push my hands down on the baby’s shoulder through the woman’s belly, pushing then rocking the trapped limb under the mother’s pelvis. With my final shove the head delivers completely.

“Right, that’s the head out, let’s check for cord.”

I run my fingers around the baby’s neck, the cord is tight up against his hairline.

“And there it is, is it loose enough to loop over his head?”

She tugs it tighter against the kid’s throat from inside the uterus.

“That’ll be a no, then. Right, we’ll clamp and cut it here.”

Once cut the baby delivers at a frightening rate.

“He’s really floppy and white.”

She grabs the rubber ‘delivery doll’ out of my hands and thrusts a resusci-baby into them and I swing into the skills taught on the neo-natal resus course. Lots of heat and light, a quick time check, slap a hat on the wee one and scrub the fuck out of him with a towel. A few minutes of infant resus later and she grabs the baby back off me.

“Right, right, that’s all fine. Now, Mum says she’s feeling the need to push again.”

“Ok, I’ll give baby to Dad.”

“Yeah, fine, whatever. He’s fine. Mum’s really sore.”

I line Mum up with some more pain relief and have another look at the business end of things; the placenta has delivered totally.

“Ooooohhh, but there’s loads of blood now.”

“How much blood?”

“About six hundred ml.”

“That’s a serious post-partum haemhorrage.”

“Is that bad?”

“Yeah, it can be. Let’s deal with this nice and quick.”

This lecturer was all about fast, aggressive treatment. As I start describing my plan she all but bounced up and down, beaming at me.

“Right, I’ll get my partner to drop her head down, we’ll have high flow O2, bilateral large bore cannulae and aggressive fluid therapy running through wide open.”

“That’s great. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to massage her uterus.”

“Her uterus tightens up, but she’s still bleeding.”

“I’ll check for perineal tears.”

“She has two.”

“Pressure dressings on those.”

“And now she’s bleeding again, her uterus has softened again.”

“Bi-manual compression, then. One fist at the bottom of her abdomen, an open hand at the top and constant pressure.”

“She’s stopped bleeding. And now she’s arrested.”

(Are you fucking kidding me?!)

“Well, I can’t take my hands from this position, so my partner will have to intubates.”

“He can’t. The anatomical and physiological changes are too great.”

“Ok.”

“Can you describe those changes to me?”

“Ummm…short fat neck, full dentition, engorged breasts, airway oedema, relaxed cardiac sphyncter, slower gastric emptying, higher gastric pressure.”

“Right, he’s managed to get the tube, he’s doing CPR and we’re on our way to hospital.”

We both straighten up from the rubber dummy on the table.

She shakes my hand.

And I leave.