The pager went off again just before the conference call – search for a missing elderly lady in Maerdy. I jumped onto the conference call which didn’t last very long and cleared a few other things off my desk before taking my leave. Heavy showers, torrential at times, slowed my progress but I managed to get there quite quickly. Taking the Landrover out I had a call telling that this was not an immediate (blue light) response. Locking base up I headed off in the Landrover down towards Aberdare for the valley-hop across to Maerdy. Traffic was medium and the road conditions a little wet so I proceeded along at normal speeds until on the way out of Aberdare my phone rang. Pulling over to answer it, my instructions were clear: “Blue-light it and put your foot down, we’ve got another job.”

Flicking the lights on I did indeed put my foot down, overtaking the surprised cars in front of me I headed over the mountain. In Maerdy the crew was waiting for me and after getting everyone on board we headed off. Information immediately started flowing in as I slapped the sired on. We had a woman with a leg injury on the mountain in Llwynypia. It’s a good drive – 7 miles, google maps reckon 20 minutes. It wasn’t that long on blues. We got there to find that St John’s were on scene and our crew went in while I got changed and waited for the two guys from Brecon team to join us. The casualty was on an archery range and before we headed up in the light rain, I turned to the large group of people beside us. Several of them wore green tops with logos of a kangaroo – not surprising since we already knew the casualty was Australian. I turned to a man in a hi-viz jacket and asked them to stop the shooting on the ranges – we’d had a report over the radio that the party ahead of us were seeing arrows flying. After a brief conversation the official with a radio saw things my way and started calling on all ranges to stop firing. Wondering where all these tourists came from I headed back to our group and off we went. Within 10 minutes we were at the casualty site. After a brief discussion over the relative merits of a helicopter evacuation, we decided to “scoop and go” and a few minutes later we were starting the journey back to the control vehicle where the county ambulance was waiting for us.

The carryout was interesting, I ran point trying to find a decent route out. Halfway out the rain got heavy. Very heavy. I had a helmet on in case we were going to call a helicopter in (like most of my teammates) and so I didn’t bother fighting to get my hood adjusted to fit over my helmet – it’s a new coat and I’m not used to all the adjustments yet. By the time we got back to control it was raining heavily and with our casualty in pain, we helped the ambulance crew load her on board the truck before stopping for a few minutes to sort our kit out. Of course, now that the casualty was in the ambulance it stopped raining. I still managed to get a soaking though because as it turned out my coat is very waterproof. I had a hood full of water that covered me when I went to shake it out. Great.

We packed the Landrover back up with sodden kit as the staff from the activity center brought us cups of tea and Welshcakes which were greatfully received, as were the thanks that were piled onto us. At last I took a moment to look around and realised that there were a few different nations and that people had some kind of badges dangling from their necks. The picture became clear when one of our crew came over and whispered to us.

“Do you know what we’ve just stopped?”

“Er…no…?”

“The World Archery Championship. We’ve stopped the World Archery Championships. The woman we rescued was a substitute for the Olympic Archery team.”

We headed back to Maerdy where the search was wrapping up soon after that. It wasn’t long before we were back at base setting our kit out to dry, buoyant in the wake of a job well done.

Tonight was agaKin out with the ambulance service – something I’m really enjoying though it is frustrating at times. It’s frustrating because the knowledge that I have in terms of diagnosing and treating some conditions through mountain rescue could be applied here – giving Hypostop to diabetic patients having a hypo; giving Entonox to patients suffering from painful trauma; giving aspirin to a patient suffering from a possible heart attack - just three examples where we could make even more of a difference to the community.

Take the last few calls for example. We had a two hour battle with a lovely old guy who was having a very bad hypo – only the second of his life and he’d had diabetes for some 20 years. When we turned up, the wife was able to take a blood glucose measurement for us and between us we managed to get him to take some sugar and some jam. We can’t perform blood glucose measurements ourselves and we don’t carry Hypostop (actually I do for mountain rescue but can’t use it for ambulance service calls). I’ve had a call to an elderly lady who fell – a “nan down”. She’d broken her femur, that much was obvious from the swelling and deformity, but she might also have done some damage to her knee. I had no analgesia – we don’t carry Entonox – and so I could do nothing for her other than monitor her and keep her company. The last 20 minutes of the hour-and-a-bit I spent with here were very worrying – she was starting to deteriorate and I had nothing I could do or give her to treat her. If the crew hadn’t arrived as I was getting my phone out, I would have been on the phone to control to ask for an RRV to back me up – I was concerned at that point about her slipping into hypovolaemic shock. Finally, a few weeks ago, I saw a gent who was complaining of classic heart attack symptoms, and all we could do was watch and wait. I did call for an RRV on that one because I was worried, possibly not necessary, but I’d rather be dragging an ambulance officer out of bed to come and slap on a 12-lead ECG for nothing than having my patient die.

So a frustrating time at the moment. If the ambulance service insist on sending us to these calls where we are currently achieving nothing but stopping the clock, then at least give us that tiny bit more in terms of skills and equipment that could make such a huge difference to someone’s life.