You know what it’s like when you have a new born baby to look after. You would do anything in your power to keep them safe from harm. One new mum took things a little bit far recently when she found a wasp’s nest in the family home.

A scaremongering friend panicked our new mum by saying that if the wasp went near her baby boy it could kill him. The same friend also helpfully offered a strategy for dealing with the creatures – unfortunately this strategy didn’t involve anything as sensible as contacting the local pest control company. No, this plan involved a lighter and can of hairspray!!! This was never going to go well, but thankfully it wasn’t as bad as it could have been – all things considered.

Fearing for her little one’s life when a lazy wasp took flight in the bedroom, our new mum rushed for the hairspray and lighter. Then with her home-made flame thrower directed at the wasp, things quickly took a turn for the worse. The curtains caught alight and smoke rapidly filled the room.

Luckily the baby was in the next room and mum was able to get them both out to safety. When I arrived the pair were seated safely in the fire-engine – mum was sobbing her heart out. Now, with the benefit of hind-sight, she couldn’t believe that she’d followed her friend’s stupid advice.

We took the pair of them to hospital for a check-up and thankfully the only harm done was to the fixtures and fittings so both were discharged home later that day. As for the wasp, well I have no idea how he did in all this!

Levitation, by theyoungthousands, on Flickr

Things aren’t always what they seem at first. When people are describing what has happened to them when they call 999 for help, it can be open to interpretation and even a small breakdown in communication can mean we find something completely different to what we were expecting when we arrive. Language barriers, third party callers and bad connections among other things may all contribute to the problem.

Let me give you an example ‘Male cut leg on food blender’ doesn’t sound too ominous does it? In fact maybe this patient should just take a painkiller, pop on a plaster and man up!

Well, when we arrived and found that actually this was rather more ‘Male cut leg on a great big, heavy, spinning, circular saw’ type of injury we realised quickly that a plaster and a couple of painkillers may not suffice. As we peeled off the two blood soaked sweat shirts to see what we were dealing with we discovered a deep wound that had reached the bone, it would certainly need some skilled surgical intervention. So, after we applied a pressure dressing and administered some serious painkillers through a cannula in to his arm we popped him to hospital ‘quick-as-you-like’.

Another patient was described with injuries thus ‘Female hurt foot when she dropped her drawers’ Oh come on, be honest, it instantly conjures up various possible scenarios in your mind, well it did for me! I was eager to see this woman, she sounded interesting…. Sadly, it would appear that this was nothing more than a common or garden injury sustained while putting together some IKEA furniture. This furniture was accidentally dropped on the aforementioned foot and caused some nasty bruising and swelling. I was quick to point out to her that although she had given me ample fodder for jokes at her expense with her unintentional double entendre, I had admirably refrained from doing so -  I am nothing if not professional and I think that she appreciated that.
Moving on in my assessment of her injury, I asked her if a she had taking any action to help herself deal with the pain and she replied;
“Well I’ve ‘levitated”
“‘Levitated’ you say?”I smiled encouragingly.
“Yes, since it happened, I’ve been levitating, you know?”
“Really? ‘Levitating’ excellent! Now I’d pay good money to see that, can you show me how you’ve been doing this ‘levitating’ please?” Promptly, she stuck her foot out in front of her.
“Ah – ‘elevating’ Well I’m sorry, but I’m not giving you any money for that!” I said, very disappointed.

Image courtesy Dr Xeno, on Flickr

I was working in a very busy Urgent Care Centre in the ‘triage’ room. I’d been there for four hours and the flow of patients never stopped. One chap with not much more wrong with him than a dose of ‘man flu’ left the room to sit and wait to see the doctor and asked “Do you know how long I’ll have to wait now?”

“Sorry no” I said  “I haven’t been out of this room since I started my shift, but the ladies at reception may be able to give you an idea”

“Just roughly….”

“Honestly, I don’t have a clue, I’ve been stuck in here for hours, I really don’t know what it’s like out there” I said again.

“Oh go on, just give me a clue, one hour, three hours, four hours, just roughly please?”

“Well I could say something but I’d be making it up” I reasoned.

“I don’t mind, just a rough idea will do”

“OK, well three hours, but remember I’m making it up!”

“Great cheers. I’ll have to put some more money on the car  then cos I only put in for two hours!” He trotted off with his imaginary time frame in mind perfectly happily.

A little later, when finally released from the triage room, I was able to see and treat my first patient; a wonderfully polite older man who been savaged by a squirrel!

The rat with a fluffy tail had gotten his head stuck in a bird feeder, and my patient had been nobly attempting to rescue the ungrateful animal. By way of a thank you for his efforts the pesky creature turned around and bit him on the hand. After treatment he left the department and I recounted the story to one of our GP trainees.

“I’ve never liked squirrels” she sneered, “They always look at you like you owe them something.”

“I’d never noticed that” I replied.

“Oh yes, they are the ‘delinquents’ of the animal kingdom” she added wisely “You can never trust a squirrel.”

Love it!

On a stunning early spring day recently, I was called by the police to a quiet street where a young man had been injured. The details were given as ’19 year old male, hurt himself on a fence.’

I was only a couple of minutes away in my car so I got there quickly and found the group waiting at the side of the road. My patient was sitting on the kerb, hand-cuffed. Apparently he had been in his car when he was stopped by the police for a minor traffic offence.

Few sensible people would try to out-run police dogs; however after he was stopped he unwisely decided to make a bolt for it. He ran towards nearby houses, clambered over some low walls then launched himself on to the fence of some neighbouring allotments. Unfortunately he became impaled by one of the metal posts which entered through the left side of his upper chest. His predicament deteriorated further when the police dogs caught up with him and began nibbling at his legs (in that way only an Alsatian can!). He waited helplessly until the police caught up and rescued him from the clutches of their jaws. Unfortunately they pulled him back from the fence before realising that he had been impaled.

When I arrived, although he was conscious and breathing, he was starting to look quite pale. His pulse and respiratory rate had sped up (not just from the adrenaline!) and he was also quite predictably in a lot of pain from the deep wound on his chest.

Thankfully, I saw the ambulance heading towards us from the end of the road shortly after I had arrived. Time is of the essence in these types of calls as things can change very quickly so I was pleased to see them! Our priorities were to almost simultaneously perform all of his physical observations, listen to his chest sounds, give him oxygen, put a three sided dressing over the wound and put in a cannula (a needle into a vein in his arm) as a route for painkillers and any fluids he may need. The crew promptly took him off to the nearest ‘Trauma Centre’ after making them aware of the approximate time of arrival so they would have some time to prepare, leaving me at the road side to finish off my paperwork.

I have heard since that he is doing well and will recover from his injuries.

Smashed windscreen, by wheany, on flickr

I was working on a car with my colleague Richard when we were called to a RTC (Road Traffic Collision). It was the rush hour, already dark and it had just started to rain. The traffic was dreadful as we neared the scene and even though the drivers were trying their best to move their cars out of the way for us, it was gridlock and we were struggling to pass through them. Eventually, after realising we were going nowhere fast, I decided to get out, grab as much kit as I could carry and run the last part of the journey.

The police and fire brigade were already on scene and I found our patient, an elderly man, being tended to by one of our first responders. At this time the responder was only able to hold on to the man’s head and neck to stop him moving, and potentially risking further damage, until further help arrived to assist him.

Our patient had been walking along when a car mounted the pavement and he was thrown in to the air. His face struck the windscreen (bulls-eyed) and he was flipped over, coming to land flat on his back on a raised wall area of ground that was part of the garden of a public building. He was in a very awkward place and the car was jammed up tightly against the wall.

Incredibly he was still conscious and able to talk to us. Although he was bleeding heavily from a nose bleed and a head wound, he appeared to have no obvious serious injuries elsewhere. His breathing was fine and all his physical observations were stable. We gave him oxygen and began to cut off his clothes to enable us to assess him further for any possible injuries. We placed a cannula in his arm in case he should need any medicines from us, and of course we covered him with a blanket to protect his modesty and keep him warm.

The HEMS team had been activated and they arrived by car a few minutes after us along with an ambulance. We put a stiff neck collar on him and lifted him on to a spinal board before moving him in to the ambulance.

Thankfully his condition remained stable, but because of the significant mechanism of injury we blue’d him in to hospital to give the hospital time to prepare the trauma team and make some space in the resuscitation room to receive him.

I popped back to see him a little later and he was waiting for a head scan, and thankfully I have since heard that he is still doing OK.

Running Staffie, by markhillary, on flickr

I was nearly at the end of my shift travelling in steady traffic through South London. The evenings had already started drawing in and it was dark, but still warm, so I had my windows open.

Suddenly a woman wearing a dressing gown and slippers ran out into the road into the path of my car. I noticed that there were some men around her trying to encourage her to come back to the pavement to stop her being hit by the traffic. I quickly braked to avoid hitting her; she turned back and ran into a nearby off-licence. The men called out to me saying that I had to help her so I parked up and went in to the off-licence to see what was going on.

This woman was obviously very angry and she was distressed and crying. She was very hostile to me and wouldn’t answer my questions. She continued to wave her arms around, shout and swear, at me and everyone in the vicinity. I established from what she was shouting that she was a victim of domestic violence and something had happened at home that evening that made her snap and run out into the night dressed only in her dressing gown. The owner of the off-licence said that she was a regular customer and he had apparently offered to phone her daughter for her when she first came in.

A few minutes after I arrived the woman’s teenage daughter turned up; she was rubbing her jaw and also quite distressed. Thankfully she was a little more willing to engage with me and told me that her father, as well as hitting her mother, had also punched her. Worryingly she told me that her nine year old sister was still alone in the house with him. I asked her for the address but this made her mother irate. She was extremely angry with me and dragged her daughter from the shop screaming at her not to answer any of my questions and telling me in no uncertain terms where to go. I got straight on the phone to let the control room know where I was going and asked for urgent police backup while I attempted to follow them. Once again she took her life in her hands by crossing the road walking in the path of the oncoming traffic as she crossed the road.

Although I didn’t really want to make her any more angry, I also didn’t want to lose sight of her and her daughter as I still didn’t know where the nine year old was, and they were my only hope of finding her. Mother and daughter set off down a dark path between a railway line and a row of back gardens; I hung back but followed them and tried to keep them in sight. I hoped that the police would turn up quickly because if I’m honest –  I didn’t really have a plan!

I was getting quite far from the road and entering onto a stretch of unlit path when things seemed to take a turn for the worse. The woman and her daughter broke through some of the fencing and climbed into a back garden. It was at this point that I also became aware that I was being followed at a walking pace by someone on a motorcycle. I actually felt a bit afraid, and at this point I didn’t know if it would be better to follow mum and daughter through the fence or confront whoever it was who was cruising behind me on the motorcycle.

I made my decision, stopped quickly, turned around and said firmly to the cyclist “What do you want?” I certainly hadn’t expected what happened next. He flashed his warrant card at me and told me that his was an off-duty police officer. He had seen me set off on foot after the shouting, angry woman and her daughter and seeing that I was entering an unlit passage way he became concerned, did a u-turn and came back to check if I was ok. Bless him, I was so grateful.

The police arrived shortly after that and despite an area search there was no trace of the pair. Then I remembered that the man in the off-licence had called the daughter on his phone for the woman just before I had arrived. We managed to retrieve the phone number and the police were able to trace the address. When they arrived at the house, they found the abusive man and were pleased to discover that he was already wanted for various violent offences and promptly arrested him for those as well as the domestic violence.

The Jetty

Well I had an unexpected bit of drama while on my holiday in Sicily. I had been enjoying a spot of sunbathing on a small beach by a jetty when the weather suddenly changed for the worse; apparently this is not an uncommon occurrence on the island. The sunny blue sky was rapidly filling with tumbling gray clouds and to say the sea had become ‘choppy’ would have been a gross understatement.

I prepared to leave the beach. As I pulled on my clothes and rolled up my towel, I noticed a young man running at great speed towards the end of the jetty. Something about his expression made me take an interest and because I am terribly nosey by nature I went from the beach to the jetty and meandered in the direction that he was heading to see what was going on.

Trying to make sense of things, I glanced back towards the beach where I saw a small group of women anxiously pointing out to sea, they appeared to be shouting something at the young man who had ran past me but the noise of the sea and the wind combined made it impossible to hear anything else.

Rescuers

The young man started to point out towards the open sea and I realised that he was shouting to two older men who were being thrown around by the waves. The strong current was preventing them from getting back to shore. I heard someone close to me calling the coast guard on their mobile phone. We were then joined by a man carrying a surf board, he wanted to help but at this point it would have been madness for anyone else to go in the water.

One of the men managed to make it to the jetty but it was too high and he couldn’t climb up. He looked about seventy years old. He tried to cling on but he was being battered against the wall by the waves. One man and I tried to reach down to him but we couldn’t get a proper grip of his wet arms and he kept slipping back in to the water. Then I remembered my towel and so I lay down on my stomach and got it looped around one of his arms and twisted it to form a sort of tourniquet, between us we were then able to drag him up from the sea. He was covered in grazes and bruises with very blood shot eyes but apart from that he appeared in good form. No sooner had I wrapped my towel around his shoulders when a huge wave came over the harbour wall and outright soaked us both!

Rescuers

All our attention then turned to the man who remained in the sea – he was quite far out, perhaps 60 metres at a guess and we watched helplessly from the jetty as he struggled to keep his head above water. I honestly wondered at this point if I was going to have to take part in a resuscitation effort. Presently the life guard appeared with a rope, he looped one end around the man with the surf board who then very bravely jumped in to the turbulent waves. We relaxed the rope as he slowly made his way out to help him. Every now and then a huge wave would sweep over them both and we would lose sight of them; I would hold my breath anxiously until their heads became visible again. At last the surfer reached the man and they both held on to the surf board as we pulled them back towards the beach and to safety. Their wives and daughters had been sobbing as they watched this going on and there were plenty of hugs all around once they were both safely back on land.

I made my way back to our apartment looking like something of a drowned rat. As I told my husband all about my adventure I was still feeling slightly bemused by how events can suddenly take an unexpected turn – although thankfully, on this occasion, with a very happy ending.

Rescue Boat

My last shift before my holiday was comprised of a diverse bunch of calls and here are some of them;

Firstly there was the 45 yr old lady found dead on her kitchen floor. Not seen for days; found by a neighbour who held a key. The police were on scene too and we suspect that she had fallen as she was lying in a pool of dried blood from a head injury with an over-turned step ladder nearby. When her family arrived they were extremely distressed and beside themselves with grief.

The young man with stomach ache; just one minute after the pain started his wife called 999. I arrived some 3 minutes later with an ambulance in my wake. No sooner had I introduced myself when he informed me that the pain had resolved and he had completely recovered. A total of 4-5 minutes of pain resulting in an emergency ambulance and car attending for what was most likely no more than a nasty case of trapped wind!

A 14 year old lad fell from a ramp while skate-boarding. He had sustained a really nasty injury of his forearm. I didn’t need an x-ray to tell me that the two bones were fractured as his wrist was very deformed (dinner fork deformity).  I cannulated him and gave him morphine in the middle of the skate park surrounded by at least 70 young people whizzing about me on bikes and boards.  The young people were brilliant; they helped carry my bags and made themselves generally useful. The mixture of entonox (laughing gas) and morphine made the lad very emotional and he was declaring love for those around him and literally crying and laughing at the same time which made us giggle.

A young girl with Down’s Syndrome accidentally had her finger shut in a door. It was bleeding and obviously fractured. She resisted most of my efforts to assess her, but eventually I managed to wrestle a dressing on to it to stop it flapping around and she and her family went to hospital for further treatment.

Then there was the road traffic collision. Luckily the couple were uninjured following the accident on their way to a wedding. The lovely police officer on scene kindly agreed to drop them off at the wedding. I imagined their friend’s faces as they clambered out of the back of the police van outside the church dressed in all their finery!

A toddler, newly diagnosed with epilepsy who had suffered another fit. Bless him; he was still dressed up in his fireman’s uniform when we arrived!

Last but not least was the alcoholic gentleman who had become very unwell due to his years of excessive drinking. What made me sad here though was his daughter. Rather than being able to simply enjoy herself with the trials and tribulations of being a teenager, she was instead, clearly well out of her depth dealing with the business of trying to ‘fix’ her father. She was grown-up beyond her years and told me all about her dreams to study and become a doctor – I suspect that she will be a very fine doctor indeed.

So now, I’m off on holiday – See you next week!

It was given as “police on scene, male stabbing; no further details”.

The call came in on a beautiful, warm summer evening but no sooner had I started to drive there when the heavens opened. The wipers were in overdrive trying to keep my screen clear for the high speed, blue-light journey. I put my foot down and was there within only a couple of minutes.

I arrived to find a solitary police man kneeling over a male on the ground. At first glance I couldn’t tell if my patient was dead or alive. I parked half on and half off of the pavement, left the lights flashing and grabbed as much kit as I could carry. As I walked towards them it was now clear that the man was conscious and the police officer was talking to him and attempting to reassure him.

He was laying face down on the pavement; he said he had been attacked in the park by a group of young males. Initially he thought that he had only been punched but as he ran away he suddenly felt very weak and breathless; finally able to go no further he collapsed just outside of the park gates where a passerby called for help.

As I pulled on my gloves I knelt down onto the wet pavement on the opposite side of the young man from the police officer. The victim, who I shall call Gary, was a young man in his early twenties. I asked him a few quick questions about his breathing and his pain. He was very pale, in a lot of pain and having difficulty with his breathing; he also felt really sick.

I knew the ambulance would be arriving soon, but every second counts, so I tried to do as much as I could in the meantime to stabilise Gary’s condition. I made good use of the officer and got him to use my tough scissors to begin removing all his clothes so that I could visualise his injuries better.

Gary’s airway and breathing were a priority so I listened to his chest to assess his breathing and put an oxygen mask on his face. I checked his torso – front and back – for stab wounds; worryingly I found five of them. There was a real risk of serious injury to Gary’s heart, lungs and other vital organs. So I put in two needles, one to each arm, in case I needed to be able to give any drugs or fluids if his condition suddenly deteriorated. I also gave him some morphine for the pain; but I was really worried that at any time he would go into cardiac arrest from his severe injuries – time was of the essence.

Gary was scared – who wouldn’t be? At that moment I am sure that he thought he was dying; he kept looking at us in turn, straight in the eyes and saying ‘thank you for helping me’, while we just muttered pathetic words of reassurance to him in return. Obviously with five stab wounds to the chest and abdomen there was a real risk that Gary could deteriorate at anytime and this fact was something that all three of us were acutely aware of.

Gary ‘thanking me’ made me feel under quite a bit of additional pressure. For me it is different caring for someone who is alive and talking when you arrive and then have them die in front of you in comparison to arriving when they are already in cardiac arrest and you never got the opportunity to make that human connection.

Thankfully the ambulance crew and further police officers arrived within minutes. We worked together then to remove the last of Gary’s clothes so we could check for any further injuries to his limbs that we may have missed, and we covered him with a blanket.  Once inside the ambulance and out of the rain, we did checks on his blood pressure and pulse and reassessed his breathing to detect any changes. Simultaneously the police were cordoning of the area as a crime scene and contacting his next of kin.

Gary needed to be in a trauma hospital – fast – so we placed a call to let them know that we were coming in and informed them of the nature of Gary’s injuries so they could be prepared for him when we arrived. We travelled through the streets with the lights flashing and sirens on to push through the traffic.

The police officer travelled with us to hospital in the back of the ambulance and we reassured Gary as best we could during the journey.  I couldn’t imagine how terrifying it must have been for Gary; what started out as an ordinary day ended with him being viciously attacked and then hurtling through the streets with lights flashing and sirens blaring not knowing if he was going to live or die.

Once we reached the trauma centre we handed Gary over to the awaiting team and stayed to help out a little. More police officers arrived and I saw one with Gary’s partner who was clearly very distressed.

Gary required extensive emergency surgery. I followed up Gary’s case and found that despite serious injuries to his lungs and liver, thankfully he survived this random attack by strangers, although he will need continuing medical care.  I would imagine that the psychological scars will take a lot longer to heal, if they ever do.

Luckily I was just around the corner when I got called to this one. Traffic police were driving by on their way to curry night at the local police station. They saw a young man on the ground just inside the grounds of a park. They pulled up to investigate and saw that he was injured and losing a lot of blood from a leg wound. Springing into action one of the cops put a huge battle dressing on the wound; he pressed firmly on it and elevated the leg. He established that the young man – Alex – had been taking a short cut by climbing over the railings when he slipped and impaled himself by the lower leg onto one of the spikes. Unbelievably he managed to pull himself off and stagger only a few steps before he could go no further.

The policeman said he had to climb over the railings by using the police car as a step up, but that it was very tricky so the other cop hadn’t even attempted it. He told me that the fire brigade were on the way to break the lock on the gate. However, I ADORE climbing things and do so at any opportunity, so I decided to attempt to scale the railings. I threw my bags over first then used the car to give me a step up, then clambered over the spikes. Landing safely and dare I say, gracefully perhaps, on the grass on other side, I assessed Alex’s condition. He was very quiet, pale and sweaty, his blood pressure was ‘in his boots’ so I put a cannula into a vein in his arm and gave him some fluids to boost it a little, and then I gave him some painkiller. We cut away his blood soaked jeans to assess the wound and check for other injuries. On the surface it was quite a wide laceration and there was no way at this point of knowing how deep it was or what the damage was like underneath.

Three fire engines arrived next and even though all we needed were some bolt cutters I never complain about having them there! At least we could move in and out of the park with the equipment now.

An ambulance arrived and we prepared to get Alex on board for his journey to hospital. We lifted him on to the trolley bed and kept him lying down with his legs elevated; we needed to monitor his blood pressure constantly as it remained a little low but at least the bleeding was now under control.

So Alex went in the ambulance to hospital for further assessment of his injuries, the police went off to enjoy their curry, and after a quick clean up and restock I was ready for my not so eventful next call.