So after work, I grabbed some food and ironed my uniform before de-snowing the car and heading into Llanishen. Once I got out of our village the roads were ok – probably because there was plenty of traffic to keep them clear. Our end of the street was awful, but then we only have about 10 houses there. The trip wasn’t helped by the fact that my car has developed a hole in the exhaust from all the salt. It’s in the garage being fixed today…

So we jumped on the vehicle and completed our inspection very quickly – it’s easier when you have two people doing it, and we had three on the vehicle last night. I decided that I’d had enough time driving and wanted more experience in the back, so arranged to be the attendant for the evening.

We logged on and immediately were asked to hold on for a second while control checked what we should be sent to first. They called back and asked us to back up an RRV for transporting a patient, but when we arrived on scene, the RRV reported that the patient had already made their own way to the hospital. Clearing from that incident, we were dispatched to back up another RRV, about half a mile down the road. There we picked up a woman in her 40’s with “nonspecific abdo pain”. Once I’d coughed my way through the cigarette smoke, we prepared the carry-chair and she stood from her armchair and sat herself down. Mike and I packed her and moved her out to the vehicle with some difficulty – a scenario not covered in training was using our equipment in snow and we found it sinking through the snow and ice.

Mike had already started to attend to her so I took the keys and prepared to drive when whe woman asked for “gas and air”. We looked surprised and asked her, on a scale of 1 to… “It’s 10.” she interrupted us, sitting comfortably and not showing any signs of pain. I blinked and sighed inwardly, leaving Mike to it. Apparently, morphine didn’t touch her pain (hence why she hadn’t asked the paramedic for any), but entonox worked wonders. It was a quick drive to the hospital and we passed her over to the care of the nurses in A&E. There followed a discussion between the three of us on the ethics of witholding pain medication if you believe that there was no clinical need for it.

The next job was for a young woman who really did need us. A transfer into hospital, the GP had diagnosed “?DVT R leg”. Her medical history was long and she was currently just 2 months out of her most recent encounter with chemotherapy. From the way she held herself I could tell she was guarding herself against pain and I asked if we could help, but she politely declined analgesia in stark contrast to our previous patient.

Our last patient was a hospital transfer for another “?DVT” patient. 97 year old lady, she was a real card. I had a great time chatting to her on the long trip to hospital. She reminded me a lot of my own grandmother (who’s 92) except that she got a little repetitive at times. She confided to me that she didn’t mind what we did to her so long as we told her first. She was a little deaf and I found myself being her closest friend as I was the one who got confirmation that she’d heard me before we did anything. We got to the hospital and found that there was no bed for her – a bit shocking as this was a transfer from another hospital. We sat in the corridor for a while, chatting with her until we were given a trolley for her. Her condition needed treatment, but it wasn’t a surgical emergency (according to the Surgeon who reviewed her later as well as the nurses) so there was some confusion as to why she had been transferred at that time of night. The constant bouncing around annoyed me, though not near as much as the paramedic who bumped our stretcher out of the way just to get past us, casuing our patient to call out in pain. We may only be “Jonnies”, we may only be carrying an old lady while you’re dealing with a patient going into resus – that’s no reason to hit our trolley out of the way instead of walking around.

We said our goodbyes and headed off for a break – things seemed to be calming down. We’d not long finished our break when we got our last job of the night – back to the hospital to pick the same old lady up. We looked at each other and shook our heads – this was the second time in two days she’d been passed back and forth from one hospital to another – completely unacceptable. We picked her up again, much to her delight, though this time I drove and passed the responsibility of looking after her to a colleague – I was tired and felt a bit drained from looking after her – she really did remind me a lot of my grandmother. My colleagues said that they’d transferred her less than a week ago as well.

We dropped her off and got her settled before cleaning our kit and checking in with control. They thanked us and sent us home, which was nice since the temperature was dropping fast.

This was the busiest shift I’ve had so far. I really enjoyed it, though it left me feeling drained both physically and emotionally. Looking forward to more shifts now.

Most people won’t know and won’t care what that means, but if you work in or volunteer with the emergency services and you’re on duty tonight – you’re probably either sleeping in preparation or getting your stuff ready.

Black Friday is traditionally the last Friday before Christmas. It’s the day that large numbers of people organise to have a drink together before Christmas…and as a result, Cardiff alone will see 300,000 revellers partying tonight. It’s an incredibly busy night for the emergency services, busier even than New Year’s Eve.

So, what am I doing tonight? After working my day job, I’m on duty (as a volunteer) with St John tonight who have been asked to provide the Welsh Ambulance Service with assistance in Cardiff. We have around 10 extra ambulances on duty; we’re helping to staff the triage centers both in St Mary Street and in the Millenium Stadium. I suspect we’ll see everything from broken nails to alcohol poisoning and assaults, as well as the normal numbers of cardiac arrests and the usual calls because life goes on. I suspect we’ll get more RTC’s tonight because it’s cold and icy and it’s also going to be busy.

And Oh My God but it’ll be cold tonight. The MetOffice is reporting a low of -3 Celsius tonight, down from the dizzy heights of +2 Celsius, with wind speeds dying down from 23mph to 5mph (giving “wind chill” temperatures of around -6 Celsius). That means freezing roads and crashing cars. It means freezing pavements and falling drunk people. It means cold air and hypothermia in partygoers wearing very little. That “beer jacket” that keeps you warm when you’re drunk? It doesn’t – it just stops you from feeling the cold. It could kill you on a night like this.

So tonight we’ll be busy. Tonight we’ll be picking up, helping, trying not to get assaulted and trying to keep warm. I’ll be tweeting and possibly updating the blog where I can, you can follow me on twitter if you’d like: www.twitter.com/thinknuts

Stay safe!

Every year I plan my shopping ahead of time and buy as much online as possible and do it at a reasonably early point. In this way, on Saturday I had to get three gifts, possibly four and another two were yet to be delivered (they arrived this morning). So, given that I already knew what I needed, I planned to spend all day in Cardiff. Eh, what?

I can’t be doing with all this rushing around. It’s far too stressful. By doing most of my shopping online, I know I’ve only got a few small items to get. So I get a group of friends and we wander around town all day. We go for a big fried breakfast at Calcio’s. We stand in queues chatting and catching up, not minding the time. We wander around the stalls of the Cardiff Christmas Market tasting mulled wine, whisky mead, sloe gin, cheese, nuts and crepes. We ooh and aah at the quality of the hand-crafted items. We spend ages pottering around that second hand bookstore not minding the time at all. And if the crowds get a bit much, we head into a coffee shop where we split up – one party goes to nab a table and one to the queue, so that by the time the drinks are ready we’ve somewhere to sit. We organise it so that friends can pop in and join us for a bit and then toddle off or whatever. Basically it makes for a fantastically relaxing time. I thoroughly enjoyed Saturday wandering around Cardiff with a host of friends. The evening was also festive as I popped over to Dan’s for a coffee and then headed back home where Mal came over for munchies and a DVD (Team America: World Police [2004]).

Sunday started abruptly with the pager going off around 0800 though, but before I’d hit base, we’d been stood down from this search. I toddled off home and invited Jon for lunch but the pagers delayed that again as I headed back to base while we were on standby to rescue a dog. That didn’t take too long and I headed back to chat with Jon, eat food and watch Taxi with Queen Latifah. Finally a quick trip over to Rich’s turned into a 5-hour session of playing with computers, D&D and A/V kit. Finally, I spent the early hours of this morning reading a fantastic book (Sniper One: The Blistering True Story of a British Battle Group Under Siege ).

I had a cracking weekend, lots of Christmas spirit and friendship and it was great to catch up with people. This method of shopping is highly recommended.

I’ve won a few awards in my time. Some good, some not so good, some funny, some serious. I won a penknife in the team a few years ago for my attendance at incidents. I won the “Kermit the Frog” award at my last job for a Friday afternoon mishap that was categorised as severe “muppetry”.

Tonight I won two awards. The first was the “What the sh** was that?!” award for going above and beyond the call of duty in rescuing a casualty as we crossed the range in an international archery championship and stopped the competition in order to rescue a young lady.

In addition to that, I won a second award – this one was the “Phwooar!” award for a “most convincing display of flirting with a member of the Royal Family”. In my defense, I will say I wasn’t flirting, though it might have been a different case if it had been his younger brother….