An overview of my last two days.
I've been on two 12hr shifts 0900-2100 but actually finishing as usual at least an hour & half late, which isn't really a problem for me to be honest, as we are in an operational job.....
OK Green 2 (Greens being the lowest category) allocated in one of the posher parts of our great city. A 51 Year old gentleman, living at home with his mother has decided that the best place to take a dump is on his arm chair, which may I add he hasn't moved out of for 3 weeks. The call came in as Abdomen pain, so we promptly leave station to attend to this poorly fella. We arrive at what is quite a posh house in quite a well to do street, and as we enter the address there seems to be nothing amiss, we are actually entering a well decorated, well maintained & expensive property, so of-course we were thinking wonderful, we can treat the patient, care for him take his Obs & have a blinding cupa tea while doing it. Oh how we were wrong. As we approached him we noticed a smell usually reserved for our other customers who get plastered on cheap cider, but here we are in a posh house smelling this smell, which is a combination of poo & pee. But that isn't the worst of it, as we speak to him and remove the blanket covering his lap we notice dried crusted poo which is level with his waist. So we do a quick set of Obs & decide that A&E (E.D)is th best place for him, as his skin had pretty much burned raw with his close proximity to poo. Anyway as we get him up from his chair, the movement breaks the hard layer of poo on the top & reveals the caramelised type poo underneath, then the smell hits me and all I can do is make a quick exit to the door & vomit in the mans garden, unfortunately leaving my crew-mate in there with the patient (he's a better man than I), I put on 3 face masks & this still doesn't hold back the smell. We get him on our chair & take him to A&E quickly, very quickly because he was still leaking poo all over my boots, our floor & bed... As we enter A&E we stink the whole place out & the sister in charge orders some student nurses to wash him down.. turns out he comes into A&E for a wash every 3 months or so... why you ask? is he disabled, does he have a mental condition. Turns out he doesn't, he is fit and healthy & can fully mobilise, just he like's pooing in front of the telly............ errrrrrrrrrr what a job..
Green 1 Allocated. Elderly faller, no injuries ? reason for fall. This job is miles away in an area of west London called Southall. We walk in to the house and see an elderly white lady of a large size (with a full beard) laying on floor being cared for by her neighbours. She is a sweet old dear that as usual doesn't want to bother anybody. As we do a set of Obs we notice that she is braddycardic at 42BPM, & her O2 Sats are 78, very low. Blood sugar is ok but she is Hypertensive (cant remember figures on that) she also had SoB (shortness of breath) & was pale. So we pop her on o2, struggle with getting her onto our trolley bed & blue her in to the nearest A&E which was only 1 mile away..
The saddest thing about this job is that she had a Son, but it wasn't he that looked after her, it was her entire street... I hear all this racism all the time & hear the press knocking the community but in this street the Sikh community is taking it in turns to feed her, wash her & clothe her. Each household actually had a week's responsibility then the duty was handed to the next house. Unbelievable & extremely community spirited, well done to you all and thank you for restoring my faith in humanity.
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