Back Soon

I am sorry for the lack of posts in the past 4 weeks. When Magwitch banished his black dog last year, it seems to have spent a number of months straying before finally taking up residence in my house.

But there’s imminent light at the end of the tunnel, and I do have a few recent encounters to blog about. So normal service will resume. Soon!

7 comments March 22nd, 2007

Bad Blogger

I feel I should apologise for being a bad blogger lately. For a wide variety of reasons I have not been able to post anything, but hopefully over the coming days I’ll have a little more to say.

One of the reasons I’ve been a bit lax is I am moving house shortly. Finding a house to live in wasn’t easy, but has yielded a rather amusing anecdote. For a few weeks now, there has been a small pool of discoloured liquid on the window sill in the kitchen. Both me and my housemate assumed this was leaking in from the gutter, though it had struck me that in this hot weather, it was surprising that it had not evaporated. If anything, it had increased very slightly. Still, up until now, it hadn’t interested me enough to actually do anything about it. But with impending viewers to the house, we both thought it was probably time to clean up the house.

After taking the various junk off the window sill, I slapped a damp cloth at one end of the window sill and wiped along and straight over the aforementioned liquid. I was a little taken back by the cloth not proceeding straight through it, but instead actually stopping, sticking to the substance. I looked up to see where the substance was originating from to find it dripping from the inside of the window frame. It suddenly occured to me that a couple of weeks ago, my housemate had commented on the number of bees flying in and out of a vent in the wall outside - I reached up and touched a bit fresh from the ceiling and cautiously tasted it. It was indeed honey!

I trust the next tenants of the house will be as impressed with fresh honey dripping down the window as I was.

1 comment July 26th, 2006

Back Once Again

You’re still there? I should apologise for the lack of insight this blog has brought you lately. I have been back in the country around 3 hours following a long flight back fom America and therefore have no new work stories.*

* I have got one actually - will post it soon.

For those of you who are interested in where I’ve been, I’ve divided the good bits into mini-blog entries. Because I want to.

A Hot Day In Hell

Tuesday 6^th June, 2006 - or you could write it 6/6/6. What better place to go to celebrate than to Hell? Hell is a small settlement in Michigan, which consists of one bar, a shop and post office and apparently very little else. According to the Hell, MI website, it is a popular place for people to send their tax returns from. It was a popular place when I was there - and around about 30°C too. Awash with bikers and other curious visitors, it seems the place had vastly underestimated the number of people who would flock to the village which is a shame as it had a lot of potential. As it happened, there wasn’t a lot to do there.

American Indian

It’s no secret that I am a big lover of curry. So what better to do whilst 4,000 miles away from home than to go for a curry at an Indian restaurant in America. Upon walking into the restaurant, my immediate overwhelming thought was “oh dear, it’s been Americanised”. After overcoming the initial disappointment of spacious American-style booth seating (think Happy Days…) and bright lights, the menu was actually fairly extensive and the normal ostentatious décor adorned the walls. It made a refreshing change for rice and poppadoms to be included with the main meal, all for just (equivalent of) £4.85 along with pickles and chutneys served with your initial free poppadoms which had black lumps of what I can only guess were spices inside. I ordered a jalfrezi curry and surprised when I was asked how spicy I would like it. What is the point of having different types of curry if you dictate the spice level? I asked for medium hot (as a jalfrezi is supposed to be) and was generally pleased with my meal. It amused me while eating that the obviously second generation Indian-American waiting staff were touring the restaurant instructing customers on how to eat the food correctly. Aside from the bastardised surroundings, my only complaint was with the fact that the chicken had been obviously roasted prior to its addition to the curry. Overall, not bad at all, but hardly ‘world class food’ as one review of the restaurant online suggests.

Oh I Do Love To Be Beside The Seaside

In near 30°C heat, what better place to go than to the beach. But going to the beach when the nearest coastline is no less than 500 miles away is not easy - you’d think. As someone who has grown up in the centre of England, the nearest beach is around 90 miles away, on the north Welsh coast but in mid-west America, the Great Lakes are also surrounded by beaches. So although not technically beside the sea, it was still a beach! The large number of dead fish that were lying close to the water’s edge surprised me and caused a rather offensive odour all around the beach. I was also surprised to see shells on the beach as I did not think that normal sea creatures would live in a fresh water lake but I put this down to evolution.

Mmm… Beer

I have long been a fan of American beer, regularly drinking the likes of Coors and Budweiser here at home. So what better to do in its native environment than enjoy the real thing. The USA lives up to its stereotype here with 24 oz (720 ml) bottles and cans of beer which are available in shops and bars. The concept of drinking out of a can in a bar is a strange one to me (that’s what you do in the park aged 15), but one you soon learn to live with! The bars I visited certainly had one thing in common - they all desperately needed cleaning!

So that concludes my brief account of my US Visit. Back to the real world now, and straight into nights. Yay for annual leave.

1 comment June 15th, 2006

Welcome Home

The other day I wrote about experiencing an emotion that I never had before. Today I experienced another of those.

Just over three weeks ago, I took a gentleman in his 80s into hospital for assessment. He was released this morning (Thursday) and was thrilled to get out. So home he went, glad to be back with his wife also in her 80s in the security of his own home - until 9 o’clock when four hooded teenagers forced entry through his front door and attacked him and his wife, ejecting them both out of their wheelchairs leaving them lying on the floor bleeding while they ransacked the house. They were both in a bad way, each urgently requiring medical attention. The elderly man however stated he would prefer to die than be taken back into hospital though with a bit of coaxing, he gave in and accompanied his wife to casualty. It later transpired that the exact same thing had happened the night before while his wife had been there on her own, but last night she didn’t go to hospital. It was at that job that we met the police for the third time in the shift. We had seen them earlier at a car vs. well known supermarket delivery van RTA and at the house of a self-harmer with a knife.

I also found out today that I don’t actually like curry… I cooked a jar of Thai Green Curry with chicken and rice earlier and I really didn’t enjoy it! It looks like I’ll be sticking to regular curry from now on.

Anyway, bedtime now. Same again tomorrow though according to the rota I am on my own.

March 31st, 2006

Has Spring Sprung?

Aside from the fact spring allegedly started on Monday (and it snowed yesterday), spring definitely sprung for me earlier. On the way to a woman having a miscarriage, we were negotiating our way across a busy junction against a red light when a strange twanging noise was heard. My driver’s first reaction was “what the hell have I hit?”, but at the same time as he thought that, I had a sinking feeling. Literally. At that moment in time, at least one of the springs in the passenger seat of the ambulance had given way. My very caring driver kindly informed me that if the spring had gone upwards, he would not be applying pressure to any resulting haemorrhage. Thankfully, I was not bleeding PR.

It’s been a pretty run-of-the-mill three days really. I did do a 12 hour overtime shift on Monday in the end which kept me occupied for a day and will keep my pockets lined in May. I need to do more of these because mortgage lenders take regular overtime into account if it’s on your payslips so come September, when I’m after a house, it’ll be useful to get that bit more mortgage (that I can’t afford). It was good to work in my old area again, and on a brand new, one month old ambulance (which already had 5,000 miles on it!). We had some genuinely ill patients and an 89 year old guy who needed medical attention about 4 hours before we got there. Unfortunately, by the time his son called us, he wasn’t very talkative and rather cold. The miscarriage I mentioned above wasn’t the only one I went out to today. It is unusual to have two in one day, but the first one knew it was going to happen as she was told by the hospital last week it was imminent but noone expected it to be as torrential as it was. This was very sad, but it helped that the woman was expecting it and was coping very well emotionally. The second however brought about an emotion I’ve never experienced before. She was approximately 10 weeks along the line and was obviously miscarrying. She said it was okay because she was going to have it terminated anyway. I have to admit abortion is not a topic I have been particularly interested in before, and have had patients tell me that they’ve had them before and I thought nothing of it (though one once did say “please don’t judge me for this but…”). I have certainly never been anti-abortion which I suppose makes me pro-abortion by default. But today I felt different - I think it was just her attitude towards it all and the suspicion it aroused. I couldn’t help thinking she had done something herself to induce this, but my mind just went back to the “please don’t judge me for this” said by someone else. It has not changed my view and although I am obviously entitled to my own opinion, I don’t think a closed-minded, hard and fast view on something like this is really appropriate for someone in my job. I pride myself on being tolerant and open-minded.

I also went to a medium security psychiatric unit today. It was a huge place, with a long list of banned items at the entrance including mobile phones, cameras and dental floss. I lost count of the number of security doors I went through and the number of offices I past with ‘Clinical Psychologist’ or ‘Forensic Psychologist’ written on the door. I wasn’t allowed to be told his history but I know that people who have previously made news headlines are resident there. The patient’s room reminded me of a well lit police cell with a wash basin and a very clinical feel. In the other psychiatric facilities I have been in before, there has always been a sense of normality to them - as if someone was trying to make them feel as little like what they actually are as possible - but this place felt exactly like what it was. It was interesting anyway!

I have to go to the gym tomorrow. I do not have a choice. I am already feeling the fact I haven’t been in a while.

March 22nd, 2006

Hot Hot Heat

Well my first day back at work after my week off to find I’m not back at work. You see my rota before I left said I was working 9am to 5pm today so I turn up on time to find two people sitting in the mess room also working that shift, one of them on overtime to do so. It turns out my rota was changed while I was in Ireland, and naturally I was not told about it. So at that point, I might as well have gone back to bed. But luckily there was a Clinical Support Officer (CSO) on station who found there was a person without a crewmate starting at 10am and working through to 8pm so I stayed and worked that in return for not working Thursday night.

Now, I am glad I did this as not only did I get to work with someone I used to work with regularly, but the first call was a genuine one. A call to a house fire with persons reported. These come along all the time and you don’t normally even get halfway there before you are cancelled as the fire service has got there before us and cleared the building (I’ve never beaten the fire service to a job yet, despite working next door to and sometimes even in a fire station). But once in a while, you do make it to a persons reported and today was one of them. We got there to find three fire trucks and three police cars completely blocking the road preventing us from getting even remotely near to the house. You know something’s not right when you’re greeted by a firefighter in a white helmet (higher ranking) telling you to get around the back quick. I did this to find a 48 year old woman, completely naked, on all fours on the grass in the back garden. She had serious burns all over which I quickly added up to 25%. The fire service was already busy covering her in burns dressings so I got the oxygen on and her onto the bed. Understandably she was cold, and now had 25% of her body covered in even colder burns dressings - which incidentally smell like old mops due to the tea tree oil in them. But dirty mops smell better than burnt flesh. We alerted the receiving hospital and en-route found out that she had drunk a considerable amount of wine before the fire started. My crewmate also told me that there were bars on the inside of all the windows of the house (quite nice house, in a reasonable area) which seemed strange, and certainly wouldn’t have helped her when she was trying to get out of the house. Once in the hospital, she was sorted out straight away and a little while later I went back in to see how everything was going and two doctors were puzzling over the exact area of the burns which they eventually added up to 24½%. So my guess was pretty good considering it was done at a 5 second glance!

The number of people being injured in house fires in the West Midlands seems to be rising sharply right now. I was talking to the crew who went out to this horrific incident on Friday earlier, and this sort of thing really does seem to be on the increase. It’s not nice on those streets out there.

On a different note, thanks to the rota mix up, I now have Thursday night off which means I can go to my friend Charlie’s wedding reception. He is getting married on Thursday to the girl he started going out with at school which makes me feel both old and single. He started going out with Debbie six weeks after I started going out with someone and we split up in December 2000. Six years on (more or less to the day), they’re getting married. Now 23 is not an old age to be married, but those two are so unlike each other they are meant to be together! I have no idea what Charlie would be doing now if it wasn’t for Debbie. But it doesn’t stop me from feeling any less single. Now I have to buy a wedding present. Any ideas?!

1 comment March 12th, 2006