http://www.ilikecurry.co.uk The thoughts of an Emergency Medical Technician working on frontline ambulances in England. Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:01:06 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A routine call on a Friday night to a pub. Not an unpleasant pub, just to a twenty-something year old guy who happened to get in the way of the bouncers while they they 'ejecting' someone. His slightly unbalanced, slightly intoxicated gait resulted in a rather hard landing on the ... http://www.ilikecurry.co.uk/?p=144 I knew there would be something that would make me return to this thing. Something big, that I'd want to vent about. Or perhaps something reflecting on a past post. You see, when I come across something I want to blog about, I always think to myself I'll write about that ... http://www.ilikecurry.co.uk/?p=143 There's rarely a week that passes without going to a 'nan down'. An elderly person, normally female, who more often than not lives alone and has fallen over at home. In recent weeks, I've been going to 3 or 4 or these a day for some reason. Some people hate them, ... http://www.ilikecurry.co.uk/?p=142 Every month I get several people coming to my blog after searching for something like "what does it mean when ambulances have flashing lights but no siren?" or "ambulance lights flashing no siren dead?" - these are actual searches that pointed to this blog in the past three weeks. I have ... http://www.ilikecurry.co.uk/?p=141 This post contains language which may offend some readers. It has been quoted directly from the aggressor and its absence would detract from the scene which the incident occured in. The abuse of NHS staff has been quite widely publicised recently. You don't have to look hard to find stories like ... http://www.ilikecurry.co.uk/?p=140 I appear to have written a grand total of seven posts in the past twelve months. I will write more, it stops Merys Jones bugging me to post anyway! http://www.ilikecurry.co.uk/?p=139 I make no secret of the fact that I have a very short attention span. I get bored of things very quickly (interruptions in blog posts?!), and this is why I love the job that I do. No two days are the same, and it is unusual for me to ... http://www.ilikecurry.co.uk/?p=138 "I woke up and I was too hot" said the 70 year old woman stood in front of me. It was 3am on a warm July evening. She told me that she didn't normally feel the heat and had never woken up hot before. Looking at her bed, there was a ... http://www.ilikecurry.co.uk/?p=137 "The doctors say this is all related to smoking. But still, when you're in the Burmese jungle, with Japs to the left of you, Japs to the right and they give you forty cigarettes a day, you're going to smoke them" I love hearing patient's war stories... http://www.ilikecurry.co.uk/?p=136 We were almost there - a patient with a painful hand. Did it warrant an emergency ambulance? I'll never know. Less than two hundred yards away from our destination, we were flagged down by three people at the side of the road. "Metro Control, Alpha Bravo 123, we have a passing ... http://www.ilikecurry.co.uk/?p=135 The AVL said 'Charlie Code Green', but it's still a blue light response. Believe it or not (and I've probably mentioned this before), but any 999 call to the ambulance service (in the West Midlands) receives a blue light response - even when it is graded by the electronic triage ... http://www.ilikecurry.co.uk/?p=134 Okay, I'm back at last. I have just removed 2070 spam comments (as well as 8 genuine ones that slipped in there too - sorry guys!)  and now I'm ready to go again (with an updated Wordpress and a spam filter in place, thank you very much WP-HashCash!). A lot of ... http://www.ilikecurry.co.uk/?p=133