This morning I received an email from Shane, a private EMT in Ireland who’s providing medical cover for a sponsored bike ride through Belarus. He’s asked me to point you guys towards www.bike2belarus.com to find out a little more and see if you can’t help out with their costs towards running the event.

Take a look, certainly seems a worthy event to be supporting!

The paperwork poetry competition of last week seems to have been well received, with literally six entries being sent to me. They are listed below for your perusal. Poems seems to be popular, but there are two images that made me laugh a lot.

Major credit to all poets and painters, I deliberately didn’t share details of the crash and you’ve all been most inventive! Personally, I would’ve liked to have seen more dragons or elephants involved in the crashes you came up with, but I guess I can’t have everything….

I know I said I would be the judge, but I kinda fancy entering you all in a Eurovision Stylee judging face-off.

So:

First up we have the entry from Fee, a long-time reader at Trauma Queen:

I was driving my big ambo-taxi
The one with the flashing blue lights
An eedjit impeded my journey
And caused me to skidmark my tights

I found that I hurted my shoulder
And moving it still makes me wan
I’ll also be needing new undies
Size “large” in American Tan

I look like a frog in a blender
When my exercises I do
The physio says that I have to
In order to fix my boo-boo

So please, kind insurance person
Cough up for the bumper and such
I cannot afford the repair job
Cos the SAS sure don’t pay much

Thankyou, Fee.

Next on stage we have Arwen, who brings us this Haiku inspired piece:

Lights on, sirens wailing
He must’ve not seen me. CRASH!
trufax - honest guv

The third poem comes from Aarayan of Caketastrophe who, not content with just writing a poem, has decided to construct a storyline and saga.

Good friends, you’ll know From days of old
The tales of heros, strong and bold
who rode their steeds into the night
To rescue weak from pain and plight.
But here I have for all of you
such danger, drama, derring-do
the like to make your blood run cold
so, listen, as this story’s told…

The wind was strong; the night was dark;
the rain, more wicked than a shark
with lasers, guns and PMT,
drove cruelly horizontally.
It lashed and whipped to blind the eyes
to sting the cheeks and soak the thighs
of fools who wandered from their fires
to risk a soaking truly dire.

No man would venture out unless
he had no choice; was under duress
and being tortured by a moaning wife;
was forced to risk his limb and life;
was thirsty as a desert drought,
or on fire and needing putting out.

Yet one man (or maybe more than 10,
let’s give fair credit to those men
and women, but then forget them if you can
as we speak specifically of just this man
as he’s the one who owns this site
and it’s just for him I sit and write)

So, just ONE man prepared himself
and packed his motor, checked the shelves,
stocked up on gauze and BM kits,
and drugs and intubation bits
and pieces so he, as quick as a flash,
could to an injured person dash
and give them aid and medical succour:
just who is this altruistic fucker?

You demand to know and tell you I shall:
The hero of this story’s Kal
A parademic, strong and brave
with only thoughts of how to save
the sick, the dying and the smelly;
the junky slumped before the telly;
the teenage girl too pished to walk;
the floppy child, too weak to talk;
the whale-like woman with palpatations;
the lonely old lady demanding patience;
the father of two who’s heart wont beat;
the 4-car pileup down the street.

That night somebody, (who knows just why;
perhaps they thought they just might die),
had called for help and the job came through:
“set sirens to loud and lights to blue”,
So Kal and partner raced away
into the night to save the day.
They drove as fast as they safely could
down rain slicked streets that surely would
have proved a challenge for most of us
but Kal and his partner made no fuss.

Through the storm they fought grimly
before spotting before them, shaped like a ‘T’
a junction with a queue of cars
preventing them from getting past.
So Kal, a driver highly trained
pulled out into the right-hand lane
Keeping to the extreme far right
to save oncoming cars from fright.

He saw the lights change up ahead
and for his road they changed to red.
He slowed right down to just fifteen
placed correctly to be seen
by any driver turning right:
his bright lights strobing in the night
and sirens set to yelp and wail
it seems to me that none could fail
to spot him coming in their way
but then, I’m often wrong, they say.

Brave Kal, as he approached the turn
felt his mouth go dry and stomach churn
for there a car, driving too fast,
turned right, and sadly saw Kal last.
The car and motor did collide
The car’s front bumper hitting passenger side
of the giant, heavy ambulance.
Our hero never had a chance:
to his right a barrier wall
which stopped him swerving right at all
and to his left a queue of cars
stopped along the rain-slicked tar.

Already going very slow
and with no option where to go
they hit head on, the car rolled back
quite some distance since it lacked
the mass of a full ambulance,
so at a stop and in a trance
Kal told his partner to go and see
if the driver had any injuries.

Needing help, kal radioed
and very promptly help did show:
Policemen wrote down what had happened,
took pictures of the bumper: “flattened”.
The other driver seemed just fine
and made his own way home in time.

Kal travelled to the R.I.E.
where his colleagues gave him strong, sweet tea;
took x-rays of his chest and neck
and declared him fracture-free once checked.
His shoulder hurt, so pills were prescribed
and as he’s our hero, he never once cried.

Our protagonist, though sore and shaken
was in a taxi homeward taken,
to rest and heal and ring his mum
as every injured hero’s done.
Though he’s sore he’d be the first
to say it could have been much worse.
With physio, codeine and on sick-pay
Kal lives to treat another day.

Whew…I think I need a cuppa after that. Thankfully, Emily from BlueBladedStar has another ditty to calm us down.

An emergency call came through
To our vehicle yesterday
We switched on the lights and sirens
And then we were on our way

The traffic was fairly light
No trouble at all for the van
But in the distance a blue car,
BMW and driven by a man

We would have been gone in seconds
All he had to do was wait
But no, he was impatient
And pulled out to overtake

The disbelief and horror
On the overtakee’s face said it all
To avoid just a few seconds of waiting
How on earth did he have the gall?

Did he think himself more important
Than my patient, alone on the floor?
But now he was almost upon us
No time to think anymore!

Brake pedal flat to the carpet
Steering wheel tight in my grip
We’re stopping but he can’t hold it
The tyres on his car lose grip

The car starts to slide as it turns
Desperate to get back on track
But you just can’t stop the inevitable
Two long seconds later….*SMACK*

The screech of metal on metal
My shoulder thuds into the door
And in the brief seconds of stopping
I think “fuck that’s gonna be sore!”

But now no more thinking of me
As I turn to check my crew-mate
We exchange nervous looks and peer down
To see the other driver’s fate

It sounded worse than it looks
A couple of dents and a scrape
The driver is conscious but bleeding
It looks like his nose has a break

A call to control for some backup
From neenaw, plod and fire
And also to vehicle recovery
Because of the mangled tyre

And now, well here comes the silly bit
You’re all going to laugh, I’m sure
I try to get out but the side’s dented in
And I smack my face into the door

A few more choice swears later
And contortions within the cab
I finally spill out the other side
And go to get the grab-bag

We make our way round to the driver
Who’s already on the phone
Sounds like he’s called his insurance
And already is having a moan

The driver refuses our treatment
And claims we’re a reckless lot
The police pull up just then
So we let them know what’s what

A few hours later we’re back
On station with a nice cup of tea
And we toss a coin for the paperwork
Guess who loses? Yup, me!

We now move onto the Tony Hart part of our competition -
there were only two graphical representations

of my accident, but I think they stand well on their own.

“Untitled” By Paul

“It Came Off In My Hand,Guv.” By Blippie.

So here’s how the scoring works:

There are six entrants: Fee, Arwen, Aarayan, Emily, Paul and Blippie.
You may assign three points to one artist, two points to another and one point to a third.
Yes, this means you only give points to your favourite three.

Please, in the comments, mark the competitor’s name and the number of points you wish to give them, including snarky comments or fan-boy gushing. We’ll tally it all up at the end of the week and announce the winner.

Get voting, peeps!

The day gets better and better from then on.

On the occasional stretches of tarmac we drive to cut corners off the rally route and catch up with the pack, we play “Name that tune” by blasting Ipods into the two-way radios between the vehicles. We stop for lunch and the driver of the lead car opens the bonnet to reveal a half dozen chicken and mushroom pies, wrapped in tin foil, that have been baking in the engine compartment all morning. They’re boiling hot and delicious and I scoff mine with relish, turning my body against the wind to avoid the sprinkling of sand the desert offers as garnish.

Driving along the rally route we get stuck.

A lot.

Several times my driver’s vehicle grounds on the ridge of a dune and we have to get towed off by our companions. On two occasions the drivers drop down into hollows and crash into shrubs and bushes, the branches tangling in the wheels, tying the trucks to the floor.

We’re winding down for the end of the day, cruising along dirt trails, matching the pace of the last few riders on our final approach to Abu Dhabi and the race finish when a message comes over the radio from the last car in our convoy.

“Boy on a bike here wants to talk to the medic.”

We pull over and the motorcyclist catches up with us, barely manages to dismount on shaking legs and sits down heavily in the sand.

“Have you any salt?”

He’s made a serious error in his rehydration plan, drinking nothing but water all day is all well and good but doesn’t replace the salts, sugar and electrolytes the body sweats and pisses out through the day. His metabolism is shot, despite drinking enough water to float a battleship.

It’s the end of the event and I can’t see that I’ll have any use for them back in Scotland, so I skip the Dioralyte in the medical bag and instead mix him up a sachet of the raspberry isotonic energy drinks I brought over. Each day I’ve mixed a canteen of this stuff and chucked it in my bag in case I became dehydrated, each night I’ve drunk the remainder over dinner. It doesn’t taste bad, like very sweet, faintly salty juice.

I’ve been mixing mine in a litre canteen. This rider gets a whole sachet in a 300ml bottle. The drink is so thick and pink by the time the granules have dissolved that it makes my teeth itch to look at it, but I press it into his hands and encourage him to drink, chasing it down with another litre or so of chilled water from the cooler in the back of our vehicle.

In minutes he’s standing, smiling, laughing.

“How do you feel?”
“Amazing! Fantastic! Thankyou!”

We’re chuckling at his miracle cure when one of the sweep drivers pulls me aside.

“I’ve had a call from Rally Control, they’re shutting the event down, he’s too late to finish. They say we’re to pull him, load his bike and transport him to the finish line.”

“But why? He’s not medically unfit, he’s fine.”

“It’s an ops thing, they want him pulled off the course, he’s the last racer of the pack.”

“But he’s nearly finished, there’s only another 20k to go”

“I know. Ahhh, fuck it.”

The driver calls Rally Control back and explains that he’s not prepared to pull the rider, they agree that the rider can travel to the next check point and they’ll review the situation on his arrival. The racer, number 40, jumps back on his bike and burns off into the distance. We smile at his dust cloud and make our own way to the third and final check point before the finish line, 40 only visible as a grimy smudge of exhaust fumes and kicked up dirt on the dunes ahead.

At the checkpoint , number 40’s bike is up on its kickstand by the official’s desk, we spot him walking across the sand towards a helicopter touched down in the distance. I jog after him and Christina, Laura and I check him out comprehensively.

He’s fine. The figure of health, a professional racer raring to finish his job.

The officials still insist that he is to stop racing. He’s now 12 kilometres from the finish. It’s just not fair.

As a group, we three medics contact Patch and argue 40’s case, he’s not unwell, he’s capable and competent and he’s been working at this race for the past four days. Pulling him from the event here is inhumane.

Patch agrees, pulls strings in the background and a few minutes later a checkpoint official grudgingly approaches us; the message has come through. 40 can finish his race.

We’re all beaming; never mind saving lives, saving someone’s race is just as satisfying. 40 high-fives the three of us in turn and once again takes off into the distance. We all mount up into trucks and choppers and make for the finish.

Another five kilometres pass and we happen upon the Kamaz, that beautiful behemoth we’ve been lusting over all week. Technical difficulties have crippled the vehicle, her Italian crew stamping up and down the sand alongside, spitting and swearing.

We speak almost no Italian, they no English, but we all bump along together in French. There’s no way we can tow the Kamaz out over the sand, it’s far too big; their support team are en route in another Kamaz to pull them to safety. We leave them with the leftovers of our breakfast and lunch and a crate of water, as we drive away the three crew members are hungrily decimating cold bacon sandwiches and woody apples in the cab.

We’re minutes from the finish line when my mobile bleeps, a message from Gus at Rally Control with a message that makes me shiver.

“Racer 40 now stationary, no distress call received”

The message is followed by a bewildering GPS coordinate that leaves me scratching my non-military head. I text back:

“Locus in laymans, please?”

I can see Gus shaking his head at me and laughing back at Control, but he replies in my language.

“Four clicks from you now, helo to over-fly as backup. Keep us up to date.”

We floor it, bumping and bouncing through the sand. The fact that 40 hasn’t hit his panic button or contacted Rally Control worries me - has he collapsed? Come off? Is he unconscious? Crippled?

Is 40, our rehydrated, race-finishing champion, now lying in the dirt staring at the clouds?

A few minutes later we come across him, sitting in the dirt, his bike lying silently on its side.

He’s sobbing, his face in his hands, he looks up as we approach.

“Fuel pump. Can you believe it? Fuel pump.”

His bike has given in before he has. We’re two kilometres from the finish line.

Two.

We help him into the back of our truck, the sweep team load his bike onto the trailer and we’re about to set off when the helicopter swoops overhead. I cross my arms over my head and as they swoop lower make a big “OK” with my fingers before waving them on. The pilot gives me a thumbs up, turns the helo in the air, the thudding of the blade turn from treble to bass as they push away and they leave us to it.

We drive 40 to the finish line where his support team are awaiting his triumphant arrival, having heard he’s being allowed to finish. They are equally crushed to see his bike jacked up on the trailer, to see him slump from the back seat of the truck.

The whole team rendezvous in Abu-Dhabi, at the same club where the event started five days ago. Each rider is brought up onto a podium for photos with their vehicle, to shake the hands of the organisers and receive their awards.

The bikes celebrate by wheelying off the podium and down the avenue of adoring spectators.

There’s a party atmosphere at the club, but we’re all beat - we hail cabs, hijack Patch and Gus’s cars and drive in a slow convoy back to the hotel.

We are not the clientele the Crown Plaza in Abu-Dhabi are used to. Grimy and sweaty, wearing camo gear and boots that shed little piles of sand with every step, we slump at the reception desk while the staff cock up our bookings.

Everyone just wants a shower, a bath, a seat, some coffee, maybe a half hour of shit telly.

Home comforts are only missed when they’re so close and yet denied. Gus, calm and exact as a Stanley blade talks the hotel staff through their own booking system, he seems to be restraining himself from grabbing the ledger off the lassie and doing it all himself.

There’s a gala dinner planned for this evening, the rota was swung so that only male staff worked on the sweep vehicles and the women flew in choppers today, the thinking being that they’d have more time to get glammed up in the hotel.

Right now the thought of a shower I don’t have to wear flip flops in or a bed that doesn’t fill up with sand if you do something revolutionary like, say, turning over in your sleep sound like some form of cosmic orgasmic nirvana.

Rolf and I are sharing a room and we trudge the length of the corridor. Rolf enters first and I’m still struggling with my bag when I shout out to him.

“Is the room ok? Are we happy?”

He laughs his big keg Swedish laugh at me.

“I think you’ll like it.”

I find myself standing in the lobby of my hotel room.

From here I walk into the living/dining room. Then on into the hall (with bath and shower off) and through into the master bedroom with its king size bed crowned in cool, crisp linen.

But only one of them.

I shout through to Rolf.

“Ummmm…mate? I think we may have a bed problem…”

But he’s way ahead of me.

“I’m not staying. My flight home is tonight, I’m leaving straight after the party.”

“So why did you check in?”

“I registered my Platinum card at the desk for any expenses, I knew if they THOUGHT I had money they’d upgrade me and I thought you deserved the treat. We don’t have a bed problem. Welcome to your hotel suite.”

Whattaguy. Seriously. Whattaguy.

Day eight and I’m back on sweep, my heart sulking, kicking piles of dust around inside my chest; my last day in the desert and I’m to spend it sweating and dozing, sidelined and surplus.

I pack up breakfast for the sweep team, flatbreads, sausages, bacon and pots of honey, fruit and juice, crammed into sweaty polystyrene packets. Baz drives me back to the rest-house and I find my team, shuffle into their ranks, kicked-dog head down, apologising for myself and my presence.

These guys are, in general, much nicer than the last lot. Friendly and welcoming, packing me into a four by four, laughing at my tales of the last sweep I did.

“Well, maybe you can show me a better day?” I enquire, hoping to make some friends. I am met with a dead pan glare from the driver of the lead car.

“We’re not here to show you a good time, we’re here to work.”

Once again I realise I’m back to being the new boy, having spent the week proving myself, fitting in, earning my spurs, now I’m just another passenger in their team.

My work starts over.

My driver is fantastic, instantly gets me to work, involved and explaining everything as we deflate the tires on the vehicle - “You can be the tire bitch for the day…” We head off in convoy, dipping and swinging through the dunes like last time, but this time with happy banter over the radio, my driver throwing me a race chart, explaining the features and navigational points by which we’re meant to make our way through the sand.

It may be the same trick as getting a bored kid to count yellow cars on a long journey, but it engages me and suddenly I understand what the rally drivers are doing, how they progress along the route, spotting dunes and berms, barrels and posts along the road side. The race chart even describes the types of sand we’re rumbling over, I begin to appreciate the differences, realising the skill and presence of mind it takes to drive in this environment.

Our vehicle being lower slung than the lead car, my driver spends some time picking routes around sand bowls and over dune lips, not wishing to ground himself unnecessarily. We lose sight of the lead car behind a dune but are called back into convoy with a terse message on the radio.

“We need the medic. Get Nursey up here. Now.”

My driver floors it up and over the dune. Punching through the arrete we see the lead truck parked beside a floored bike, the sand around it mashed and thrown apart. As we drive closer I spot the rider sitting on the lead truck’s trailer, his helmet off, staring into the middle distance. I hop out of the my motor and make my way over.

“Hi there mate, I’m Kal, one of the medics. What’s your name?”

“Ashram.”

“Hi Ashram, can you tell me what happened?”

He looks at the bike in the sand, tries to peer around at the surrounding dunes, but is stopped by my hands on his temples.

“Just look straight ahead at me, please Ashram, try not to move your head. You were going to tell me what happened?”

He furrows his brow.

“I think I came off my bike.”

You think?

“Do you know how fast you were going?”

He looks down at the hard packed sand on the ground, kicks it with his toe.

“I’m not sure…On this? Fast. I would be fast.”

“How fast?”

“Maybe about a hundred?”

I don’t understand the metric system, but I’m aware that a hundred KPH equals roughly 70mph. I think.

Fuck it, even if my calculations are off? This is a man whose job it is to drive over the desert quicker than everyone else and he described himself as driving “fast”.

Good enough for me.

I gesture at his jacket and neck brace; every motorcycle crash I’ve ever attended in Edinburgh has been played out against a background of grousing about leathers.

Bikers hate having their jackets cut, they whine bitterly when we try to, opting instead to thrash their necks and backs around as they writhe out of their clothes on the floor. Clearly, given the option between paying for a new jacket or having a knackered cervical spine, the latter is the more attractive option.

The racers out here have no such hang-ups; possibly because they’re all sponsored up the wazoo - a new jacket won’t make a dent in your racing budget if an oil company has paid for you to be here in the first place. Ashram smiles and shrugs as I unclip his neck brace and slide his jacket down his shoulders.

“If you need, you can cut…” he begins, but I’m down to his neck without breaking out my shears. I walk my fingers down his spine.

“Any pain here? Or here? Or here?”

“No, no, no.” He answers without a shred of impatience or irritation, he seems genuinely glad to be looked after, a refreshing change from home.

The only injury I can find on Ashram is a deep purple bruise on his forehead, just over his left eye. I’m a little concerned as to where that’s come from, considering that he had a helmet on.

More concerning to me is the fact that he can’t remember hitting his head off anything, but then, he can’t remember coming off his bike either. Memory gaps in head injuries are a bad sign, this guy’s going to hospital. Hell, at home, I’d be crashing him into resus based on the indicent history alone.

I wrap a collar around his neck, leave my hands on his temples, tell him to keep staring straight ahead and call over my shoulder to the sweep team.

“Could one of you shout up for a chopper, please?”

There’s a pregnant pause before they laugh at me, one of them grins in a way that can only signify “Aye, good one, Kal.”

I stare for a moment.

“Guys? Can you call for an aircraft.”

They blink back at me.

“What do you want a helicopter for?”

I would have thought that was obvious.

“Because I want to cas-evac him and we can’t do that in our trucks.”

“But he’s alright.”

“We don’t know that. Can you just make the call, please?”

“But what do you want to fly him out for? He’s not hurt. Look at him.”

Communication is everything, Kal. There is no situation that can’t be overcome with education and mutual understanding. .

“He’s come off his bike at a hundred plus KPH, his head was travelling at the speed and has hit something, we don’t know what, and now he has unexplained head injuries and a history of unconsciousness. He’s getting immobilised and flown out.”

“Are you kidding me? I’ve had worse than this on my bike and ridden home.”

Fuck’s sake, even bams on Leith Walk will call an ambulance for you if you ask them….I silently count to ten and am disappointed with its calming effects.

Why are we discussing this? More to the point, why the fuck are we discussing it in front of the patient?

Fizzing, I weigh up my options and faced elect to pull rank.

“Who’s the medic, mate?”

“You are”

“Thankyou. Call a helicopter, please.”

Grumbling, he heads back to his vehicle, calls up to Patch and relays the message via the iridium satellite comms system that all the vehicles carry.

I slide a cannula into Ashram’s wrist and am debating the pros and cons of fluid therapy for him (dehydration vs increasing blood pressure on a closed head injury) when I’m interrupted by a steady whupping noise over the horizon.

Behind me, coming out of the sun like a benevolent orange angel comes the 412. It lands a hundred yards away and Hurls, Laura and Christina jump out, hurrying over. I bring them up to speed and together we secure Ashram onto a spinal board before lifting him over the sand and into the belly of the aircraft.

I’m walking back towards the sweep vehicles when I realise with a start that Ashram is leaving with my first-response kit’s one wide-bore IV in his arm - what if I need to get access on another patient later today? I have to restock.

Waving my hands above my head to attract the pilot’s attention I point towards myself, then the doors of the aircraft. He nods, throttles down and sits the chopper a little more securely on the sand while I run up to the side door. Laura peers at me out of the window, clouds of dust and sand whipping around me. I sling the side door open and bellow over the blades.

“Need another IV set!”

She nods, digs in her kit and replens me, I’m about to leave when Christina shouts something that I miss. I lean into the cabin and she puts her mouth next to my ear and yells.

“Great job, kiddo!”

I’m ducking my head as I run from the helicopter, just as I’ve been trained, but I’m walking a foot taller inside.

The sweep team and I saddle up, one of the drivers moans that I’ve “dripped blood all over the sand”, but the tone has changed. I’ve shown them I know my stuff and together we head off into the dunes.

Editing shots from Berlin while at Amber’s. I want to rerun this in black and white, but my presets are all at home. Colour will have to do in the meantime.

Stuart alerted me to the fact that I’d missed lots of photos out! I’m a bad person.

There are another 20 or so pictures I added to the set today. They include the brilliant tiger vs dragon on a sky scraper tattoo and a portrait of Frankie Valley (yes, really)

Go look!

YOU guys can do paperwork.

Today I sat down with the “Scottish Ambulance Service Road Traffic Accident & Vehicle Damage Report Form”, an eight page behemoth that wrings cold fear from the souls of the most grizzled, street hardened green suit.

I’ve filled the form out a couple of times before. Once I backed into a stationary taxi (broke the ambulance, not the taxi); another time I took a corner too tightly and drove through the brances of an over hanging tree. Nobody got hurt, nothing bad happened. In fact, on each of those occasions, completing the paperwork was the most traumatic aspect of the incident.

You sit down with the form, fill in your professional details, your level of driver training, your time in the job, your home station. Then we come to the road conditions at the time of the crash - was it wet? windy? slippery?

Were you on the open road or moving through a junction? Or on private land? Were you attending an emergency?

Did you have lights on? Blue lights? Red rear flashers (not as rude as it sounds!)? Siren running?

How far from the kerb were you at the point of contact? Was anyone else involved? Was anyone injured? Did the police attend? Did they caution you?

What this all boils down to is:

Are you going to get charged?
Are we going to get sued?
Are you going to get fired?

When I broke twigs off a tree and scraped the paintwork, I worried that I’d get told off. When I backed into the taxi, I worried that I’d get told off.

If you get told off enough, there’s a chance you’ll get shipped back to College to resit your driving exams. You don’t want to be doing that.

This crash? There was another vehicle involved. I was running on lights and sirens. I was claiming road traffic exemptions. I was injured.

This has all the potential to be more than a telling off.

So this morning, filling in the form, I took painstaking effort over the details. There were witness names and numbers, police shoulder numbers, insurance documents and exact locations.

Tell the truth but don’t write anything that incriminates anyone. Let management decide who’s at fault and what to do about it.

The crowning moment of any of these forms is the “sketch plan of accident” - a freehand, aerial view of what happened, showing direction of travel of all vehicles involved, their distance from the kerb, any junctions, road signs, traffic signals that were in play at the time.

When I drove into a tree? It looked a bit like a kid’s drawing. There was a curvy road, a box for the ambulance with “Ambulance” written on it and a splodgy shape with “tree” on it.

This one’s a bit more serious, all ruler lines and dimensions.

Pewari proposed I use “lots and lots of red crayon” in my drawing, to make it more dramatic. Tim suggested I write my statement in verse. I replied that I *like* my job.

He was insistent that there should be more *fun* in a document that potentially has career crushing results and suggested a competition.

And I have to agree.

Now I’ve got the real one done and dusted and handed into Sarge, I open the floor to you guys.

Over this week, I want you to write a poem or draw a picture illustrating my genius ambulance/car interface moment. The one that is “best” (by my own arbitrary judgment) or that makes me laugh enough to incite incontinence wins a signed and mounted print of any photo (within reason!) in my Flickr photostream.

Entries close on Sunday 24th of May, at 23:59 my time, send them in to kalATtraumaqueenDOTnet

Go! Go! Go! Go!

Right there.

Photos from Abu-Dhabi and Dubai, photos of helicopters and medics dressed as pirates. They’re quite good fun, really.

Dear Executive Board.

I would like one of these in my stocking, please.

Kthxby.

Kal

More here

With apologies to pretty much everyone. I’ve spent the past three days with Kiri’s daughter, Jana, who is pushing five and finds poo, pee and bogeys hysterically funny.
And you know what?
So do I.

-

‘Twas a Saturday nightshift,
much like any other.
I’d just reunited
a drunk teen and her mother.

We’d stopped at the hospital.
(Second home, the ED)
To restock our blankets,
have a cuppa and pee.

Before returning to town,
to see what they’d wrought.
Those drinkers and clubbers
who’d drunk, clubbed and fought.

And shattered their cheekbones.
And mashed up their lips.
And dumped their drunk buddies
Into grit-bins and skips.

We backed up the police,
Those brave guys and gels.
Their charges were sutured
And sent to the cells.

There were lassies in high heels
(And high skirts and high bras).
Who refused to get in
To their family’s cars.

Though they’d had a great time
And drunk what they’d liked.
They were sure they were puking,
Cos their last pint was spiked.

So the Cowgate was hellish,
And the Grassmarket jumping.
But…no-one’s apneic,
And all hearts were pumping.

And we drove just as fast,
And the blood’s just as red.
But it’s Saturday nightshift,
And hey, no-one’s dead.

Friends, the scene is now set.
(Please excuse the digression)
I know you’re aware,
Of the drink and aggression,

That goes with my job,
I’ve told you before.
Nightshift has a backdrop,
Of drunks vs law.

Collecting my blankets,
A thought came to me.
And I took a quick sojourn,
From exams to HD.

Just to guage the department.
To see how they’re doing.
To see if a bed crisis,
Might just be brewing.

If the hospital’s hoaching,
I’ll leave you chez vous.
See your GP tomorrow,
I’m sure that will do.

Course, that’s just for the minors.
If you’re fatally bleeding,
I’ll still take you in.
(That’s ^ lest Sarge is reading.)

Reception was swollen,
With family and friends.
Ina wheelchair, an auld yin,
had pissed her Depends.

Exams had a waiting list,
Way up the wazoo.
Xray? It was flooded,
With bones split in two.

The psych room was monitored,
By three aging guards.
Who were using their stab vests,
To try and look hard.

IC were in trouble,
With NOFs and collapses.
And a CVA severing
Some poor cunt’s synapses.

And HD was swarming.
All spinals and chest pain,
And a triage list stubbornly
Refusing to wain.

There were trolleys backed up
In a queue out the door.
There were smackheads on methadone,
Screaming for more.

A man in a three-piece,
All twisted and mean,
Was yelling at nurses,
‘Bout the wait to be seen.

He’d been assaulted, you see.
Wasn’t hard to see why.
Given chance, I’d have loved
To punch his un-blackened eye.

Next door, in a cubicle,
An old lady (tumbled),
Had been through a war
And she never grumbled.

Just one thing was constant through
This Dantean hell.
A sulphurous, eye burning,
Malevolent smell.

It made my throat rankle.
It made my nose run.
It stank like old vomit,
Left out in the sun.

It was worse than dead horses
Or festering drains.
It was worse than the run-off
Of Creutzfeldt-filled brains.

It was worse than the stains
That are found in the Wrangler
jeans of devoted,
decrepit coarse anglers.

There are leprous feet that,
Compared with this smell.
You could’ve mistaken
For finest Chanel.

Most distressing of all,
I saw, with a shout.
Once inside your nostrils,
It wouldn’t get out.

But here’s the strange thing.
Not par for the course.
This olfactory terror
Had no obvious source.

The staff hadn’t farted,
(They hadn’t the gall).
There wasn’t a firework
Of puke up a wall.

We hadn’t mislaid
A patient, long dead.
Or lost a placenta
Down the side of a bed.

There was no anal seepage,
of blood, stool or bile.
We hadn’t admitted
A tramp, for a while.

Or a scary cat-lady.
Or a junkie with squits.
Or that woman with “chest pain”
And scrofulous tits.

And just as our search seemed to
Run out of juice.
My poor nose, still burning,
Led me to the sluice.

The sluice! Home of bedpans
And blankets with spew
In their fibres! A room where
We flush away poo!

Come now, my dear readers.
Where docs fear to tread.
Where we deal with the clean-up,
When you shit the bed.

An industrial wash-room.
A toilet so huge,
It’ll merrily swallow
Your poop, pee and spooge.

A machine in the corner,
With blades which to chew,
On disposable bedpans,
To make a poo-stew.

It was here in this room
Of mashing and flush.
That I halted, quite sharply,
In my smell-hunting rush.

For there, in the toilet,
‘Twixt the bars and the bowl,
Lay the terrible product
Of a cursed arsehole.

A jobbie, a toley,
An old Cleveland Steamer.
It was blacker than tarmac
And as thick as my femur.

A kaka, a poopie or
A U.S “B.M”.
It had mosaiced sides and
A lump at both ends.

I don’t mean to be vulgar.
I’m just not that type.
But think of delivering
That out your pipe.

Your sphincter would rupture!
Or tear, at the least.
While you struggled with passing
This coproloid beast.

You’d wind up bradycardic,
With absent BP.
Your vagus would sever
And hang by your knees.

On expulsion, would it cause,
(like gunshots) a vacuum?
Would your ring-piece just swallow
Other folk in the room?

As the negative pressure
Sucked them in, past your bum,
Would you empathize more
With the pain of your Mum?

(At this juncture, I report,
Like a graduate thesis.
You’ve just read fifty verses,
On another man’s faeces)

So we come to the issue
Of its presence and role.
Just why is this poo
Still sat in the bowl?

Was a nurse called away
In a terrible rush?
“A patient’s in resus,
Don’t bother to flush.”

Was the size of the poo
So monstrous that he
Went pale round the gills
And weak at the knees?

Did he syncope out?
Collapse from the fright?
Did my colleague arrest
At the sight of this shite?

Kal! Enough speculation!
You’ve patients to treat!
Won’t you flush it away
And lower the seat?

For the good of the patients,
Relieve them their pain.
Just step up to the bowl
And haul on the chain.

I flushed that damn toilet,
With all of my might.
But my opponent remained,
A resilient shite.

Too colossal to flush,
Too solid to break.
I studied my nemesis,
An intestinal snake.

It won’t disappear,
And it won’t flush as planned.
I’m fucked if I’m moving
That movement by hand.

So I just backed away
And returned to my motor.
Ashamed and defeated,
By a dirty great floater.

And by admitting defeat,
You may think me a slob.
But that jobbie’s no’ mine.
And it’s just not my job!