Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated Jun 19, 2008
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.
The Collapse
It was when we were living up North and I was working in the ambulance service at a station about twelve miles from our home. I had been working as an auxiliary when I was employed at the station in my home town, this meant being one of the two men crew on the A&E ambulance during evening and weekends, as my normal position was only a part time job transporting out patients to and from their homes to the local hospitals. I had to go through a lot of extra training both in driving and ambulance aid in order to carry out that work. After doing the auxiliary duties for a few months it was really starting to wear me down, as I ended up having to cover a lot of extra shifts due to one the other two auxiliaries being off work because of sickness. That, along with the fact that for some strange reason every time it was my normal term of duty we seemed to be a lot busier than when I was doing the extra shifts, caused me in the end to collapse early one Saturday morning after having been out for most of the previous night. I had been covering extra shifts and was on call for a total of twelve nights without a break. We had a really busy shift the previous night; in fact we never managed to get a sleep at all that night. It was quite common for us to be called out four or five times a night, so that meant we never got much sleep, and we still had to do our normal shift the following day. My mate had just dropped me off at my house on our return and we shared a bit of banter about not seeing each other for a while; then he drove away. I crept into our kitchen and started to make myself a cup of well-earned coffee. My wife by this time was in a bit of a mood with me, as every time I sat down to eat or try and get some sleep, the beeper would go off, and she would have to throw yet another meal into the bin once again, so she was not very happy about the situation. On some occasions she would ask if I was coming back, or going out, and I even had to check my bleeper to check for myself.
I always used to sit down with a cuppa after getting home from every job, as it always took me a while to settle down, especially if the job was a traumatic one. Then I would more than likely have to clean myself up as we did tend to get a bit messy while on jobs, so I crept upstairs so as not to waken my wife, as every time I was called out it woke her up as well, but when I met her at the top and asked her if she wanted a coffee as well, I got a nod. So I went back down to the kitchen to make us both one. It was when I was half way up the stairs again, carrying the drinks that I felt a bit light-headed and dizzy, but I just put that down to tiredness, and carried on. As I bent down to put my cup on the bed side table I felt myself just drifting away. As I began to fall, my head was scraping the wall. Then I saw the electric socket at the bottom of it and tried to move my head away from it, but for some strange reason I just could not move it, and the last thing I felt was my head striking it, and then nothing. Fortunately, I was not out for long, and I came round hearing my wife telling her son (my stepson) to phone for a doctor, to which I replied 'no, phone Dave' (I will call him that for this story), who was my partner in the ambulance crew. Then I drifted out again. My wife told me later that Dave arrived about three minutes later, which was pretty good going as the ambulance station was about a mile and a half away. 'Told you I would see you soon', he said as he crouched down to speak to me, then he tied me into the carry chair and asked my wife to give him a hand taking me downstairs and out to the ambulance, which would have normally been my job.
At this point Dave broke every rule in the book and drove me straight through to the main hospital which was about 26 miles away, instead of taking me to the local hospital. As that is what we all had to do at that time according to the NHS rules, all that entailed really was to let the duty A&E doctor examine the patient before sending them through to the main hospital and for this he got a fee from the NHS. My wife came with me in the back of the ambulance as I drifted in and out of consciousness, holding the oxygen mask over my face. I remember telling her exactly where we were on the route, as the ambulance drove over the five manhole covers which were close together on the road, as I used to steer round them when I was driving, as I knew that road like the back of my hand. Dave would shout through the odd wise crack to me while he was driving, this was the usual black humour that we used to use to relieve the stress out of any given situation when we were working together. As soon as we arrived at the A&E Dave ran in to get someone to help him take me out of the ambulance and inside even the porter, who came out to help him, knew me and passed some humorous remarks about my situation. Once I had been examined by the doctor and hooked up to the ECG machine, the doctor told me that I had an irregular heartbeat and that I was going to be sent to the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow as soon as a bed became available. At this point we all thought that I had suffered a heart attack, so that was what they put on the sick note that was sent to my employers. Two days later I was transferred to that hospital in Glasgow where I went through a lot of intensive tests on my heart, some of which really hurt, over the course of a week. At the end of this I was told by the specialist that although my beat was still irregular, it was not the reason for my collapse; that was due to both physical and mental exhaustion from over working and missing too many meals, and that I would have to take it easy for the next few weeks, and he gave me a letter to give to my doctor when I got home.
I took the train back home and handed in the note at our local surgery, and was really glad to be home with my family and friends. Now, by this time I had been off work for some weeks, and had not heard a thing from my employers, despite the fact that it was their policy to keep in contact with staff who were off sick by means of one phone call every day and a home visit once a week by the station management, usually an officer. I went to see my local doctor who signed me off for another six weeks, and on the sick note he wrote down the diagnosis that was given by the specialist in Glasgow: 'Total physical and mental exhaustion'! By this time, some weeks had passed and I still had never heard from my station officer or indeed anyone, until that last line was posted to them on the Friday afternoon. The following Monday morning, much to our surprise, we had a visit not only from my station officer but also the area manager. My wife let them in and I was still in bed at the time, as the medication I was on kept me feeling constantly tired and a bit drowsy, but I still came down to see them. It was only a couple minutes after their arrival when they produced my sick note and placed it on the coffee table, and asked me if I could get my doctor to change the reason for sickness from what was on it to something along the lines of heart attack, as it makes the service look bad! I was totally shocked at this, and although I could not react the way I normally would, a quick glance to my wife told her everything I wanted to say, and she promptly told them to get out of our house and slammed the door behind them when one of them turned to say something. I was really relieved that she did that, as I was in no condition to do that for myself. That incident was the first of many that I had during my seven years in the service, and was a good benchmark for what was to come for me in the future!
