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Here's a few chapters taken from the book (yet to be published ... and yes I'm looking for a publisher)...
Almost 25 years ago I joined Melbourne's Metropolitan
Ambulance Service as a trainee paramedic and have often been asked... 'So what's
the worst thing you've seen, then...???' I've pinched a few of the 'Rules' and
a bit about the girl in the pub at the start from sites around the web... also
a few of the headings... then I've woven a bunch of stories together from personal
experiences into the following excerpts... if you like them ... let me know...
If you're associated with a publisher somewhere...
and can connect us... then... who knows... there may well be a whole book available
soon... send me an email
there's 20 short chapters written so far.. this is just a sample... happy reading...
Or
Or
Entertaining Aspects Of Ambulance Work
© William J Dettmer
PO Box 1481 Frankston 3199 Vic. Australia
Now, this thing here is an ambulance or BWT. This is your uniform. 3 shirts, 2 jumpers, 2 pairs of trousers, a jacket, first-aid kit, hat, boots and shoes. And, oh yes, here’s your underpants and cape. The underpants go outside your trousers in case of emergency and the cape should be worn, hidden, unless required. You’ll be issued with the magic sponge once you’ve finished your training. Now fuck off and get to work. You guys have got a lot to learn.
PREVIOUSLY THAT NIGHT
You’ve been drinking since you
finished work at 6. It’s now 3.30am. You have absolutely no idea where your
shoes are. Creme De Menthe, Beer, Advocaat and Southern Comfort suddenly
seem to be viable drink combinations. You fail to notice that the toilet
lid's down when you sit on it. You're sitting on the floor. On your own.
You've just had to get someone to help you pull your panties up in the ladies
loo because you tried twice and ended up on the floor on your bum. And it
was wet. You stagger back to the bar, grab a number of men on the crutch
and, thinking your whispering, scream lewd suggestions that are incomprehensible
to everyone but you. You keep dancing into people and you've fallen off
the podium twice. You start crying. You can't stop. The urge to take off
all your clothes, stand on a table and sing ‘Light My Fire’ become strangely
overwhelming. You seem to be seeing more of the toilet bowl than the dance
floor. You notice that there's vomit on your dress and suspect that it's
yours. You've started to sound like The Godfather from the 60 smokes you've
had. You keep missing your mouth with your drink. You tell your worst enemy
that you've always loved her, really. The stairs take on the appearance
of a Luna Park theme slide. Nothing seems to make sense anymore. You start
every conversation with, ‘Don't take this the wrong way but...’ Everything
you say seems hilariously funny. To you. You drop your burger on the floor,
pick it up and carry on eating. The entire club has seen your knickers,
most of them against their will. You rediscover your childhood gymnastic
skills, to the joy of half a dozen blokes near the bar. You realise why
you gave up gymnastics. You've been flashing your boobs at passers by. You
mistake a police car for a cab and shout obscenities when it doesn't stop
for you. There are less than three hours before you're due to get up, head
to the gym then start work. You've forgotten where you live. You smell terrible,
look horrible, but in your eyes you’re a super model. The world is your
oyster. ‘Oh my god’, you think, ‘oysters!’ Gross. Suddenlyeverywordseemstojoinupwiththenextone.
Everything’s moving. The world is spinning. You think you’re dying. Your
friends think that you must be dying. You pass out. The police are laughing.
Someone grabs a mobile phone.
The Ambulance is on its way.
h
Good morning and welcome to ambulance 45. So you’ve had a big night, have you miss? Amazing just how much alcohol one individual can get in to their system and still be upright. I gotta say, you don’t smell too hot. I love the fragrance of vomit at 3.30 in the morning. That’s the problem with working this job, the sick people. Today your crew will be Bill and Ben. No jokes please, we’ve heard them all before. It’s half past 3. We’ll be flying at approx. 1 metre and for most of the time our wheels will be on the ground. Ben, can you drive a little faster, please? And belt the air conditioner on will you mate, get rid of the smell. Sooner we get this one into Cas, sooner we get her out of the car. Now, what’s your name? Come on now, I don’t for a minute believe it’s Elle McPherson. Your address? Oh, I’ll bet you can remember if you try. Do you have any allergies, apart from obviously mixed drinks? No, we don’t have ‘E’s’ in the vehicle. I told you already, it’s 3.30am. Now, in case of accident the crew will leave the vehicle, but you should be OK. Just sit tight and don’t touch anything. Please don’t touch that, it’s the patient ejector seat. If you play with it you’ll end up on the road. Yeah, look I have seen your breasts a few times, will you put them away. No, there will be no in-flight movie, however there will be a lovely panoramic view of the streets of Melbourne in the window to the rear. Please remember you are travelling backwards so what you are seeing in front of you is actually what has gone before. You’re not hallucinating. Everything is not moving away from you. No, that was a speed hump we went over, not your friend. You really did step way above and beyond by calling that young policewoman ugly and looking for the scar on her neck when she said she was from Tasmania. Will you please stop singing ‘Light My Fire’ and stop trying to grab my balls. We’re on our way to the Royal Melbourne Hospital and should be landing in approximately 8 minutes. You passed out back there and your friends and the local coppers weren’t sure if you were fitting or not so you’ll have to stay in cas a little while for observation. The staff there are going to love meeting you. They like nothing more, in the middle of the night, than cleaning up young ladies who’ve decided that they just have to try every drink in the bar. No, we’ve never met before. Yes, I do come here often, too often. The weather in Melbourne today is currently dark and will be followed by intense light in around 3 hours from now. Yes, I’ve seen your knickers. No, I don’t want to hug you. For Gods sake stop trying to light your cigarette here in the back with all this oxygen. No, I don’t for a minute think you’re dying, though the odour is similar to a dead body. No, we won’t tell your mum. Kindly refrain from throwing up or screaming unless absolutely necessary as I’ve got a headache and Ben has been drinking. We’re only doing this job to get away from nagging wives and squealing kids. If we wanted that sort of behaviour we would have stayed home. All right, it’s 3.36 now, you’re correct, it can’t still be 3.30. Oh, Christ, try to throw up in the bag. Now I’ll have to change my shirt. Leave your clothes on until we get there, please. I knew I should have taken a sickie tonight. Oh come on now, there’s no need to cry. No, I won’t leave you, not unless you throw up on me again. No, I’m already married. That would be bigamy. No, I’m not terribly well hung. Ben, drive this thing faster will you. Yes, I’ll be right behind you en route so, should you require anything, wave your arms about frantically. Enjoy the flight.
h
It’s been one of those nights so
far. Now at around 5.30 in the morning, we’re getting to that time of the day
when most people are still asleep you prepare to go home. It’s been cold and
raining, unusual for Melbourne. Only a little while to go AND it’s a public
holiday so that means ‘normal’ people are home with families planning what to
do with the big day off, while people who, like me, work somewhere within the
emergency services, are out there tidying up the loose ends. In the middle of
the night.
We’re about to do a simple patient
transfer. Two actually. A couple of old blokes’ heading home from hospital early
in the morning after being treated for whatever ails them. The casualty dept.
is being cleared out to make way for the new day’s patients. We should be right,
finish on time and (as the shepherd said) "get the flock out of here".
Should. Funny how nothing ever goes the way it should.
As we stand our penultimate patient
of the morning to transfer him from hospital bed to ambulance trolley, his bowels
open. There’s shit everywhere. My young assistant turns green as it almost lands
on his shoe. The smell is appalling. I notice with a chuckle that my mate has
to leave the room before loosing it. The nurse turns her nose up, but gets on
with the job. The patient in the cubicle next door, separated only by a wafer
thin curtain, mutters something about the aroma. I’m left holding the old bloke
so he doesn’t fall over and gag at the stench as he apologises. ‘No worries,
mate, just part of the natural body functions’, I say as we start to clean up
the mess. ‘If you think this is bad, you should have seen the young lady we
had a couple of hours ago’.
We move along to the last of the night and are met by the nurse (male) stating,
‘Have fun with this one guys’, which worries me… ‘Anything we need to know?’
‘No, just get him out of here, will you, I’ve fucking had him’. Everyone’s happy
and smiling at the end of night shift.
Turns out the patient is confused,
aggressive, violent and doesn’t want to leave. Just your usual happy, smiling,
demented geriatric. He’s been in Cas. to get his nose fixed after a minor fall
late last night and is sitting there shoving his finger up his hooter, causing
more bleeding. Security guard standing by for the next outburst. I say ‘righto
mate. We’re just gonna slide you across on to our trolley here’. To which the
gentleman replies, ‘get fucked.’
A dad, waiting with his little girl
to see the doctor, throws the usual line… ‘You blokes do a wonderful job. How
do you get used to it?’
‘You don’t get used to it, pal, you just get on with it’. But you have to follow the rules
The Rules For Ambulance Officers
THE RULE OF WARNING DEVICES:
Any Ambulance, whether it is responding to a call or travelling to a Hospital, with Lights and Siren, will be totally ignored by all motorists, pedestrians, cats and dogs which may be found in, on or near the roads along its route.
the cat on punt road
warn’ing a caution against danger, etc.; something that gives this: previous notice: notice to quit, etc,: an admonition: the sound just before the clock strikes.
Let’s just swing back my early days as a student
with Auntie Jack. He’s teaching me what to do when driving through the streets
of Melbourne in an emergency situation.
It’s different to what you imagine. Cars seem
to just stop in front of you when they see the lights flashing, or pull right
instead of left. People follow you to see where you’re going and others get
in your way. Young blokes occasionally give you the finger, just because they
can.
To the person at the side of the road watching,
or drivers in cars at a stand still, it appears the ambulance is flying, when
they’re only travelling at 60k’s. It’s relative. I couldn’t begin to count how
many times I’ve been asked, ‘How fast do those things go?’ 712 kmh. OK. Now
you know. You can answer it on ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire?’ if it ever comes
up.
Do us a favour, will you please. Even if you were
hit over the head by a paramedic when you were a baby and don’t like them very
much, just get out of the way when the lights and sirens are coming up behind
you. The rule is that, when it’s safe, move to the left. Clear the way. It might
be your house they’re going to.
Well I’d been in the job a few weeks, out on the
road a short time and Alan says ‘OK let’s get you behind the wheel and see what
you’re like on the dash.’
I’d certainly been round the block, having driven
for about 10 years before joining up, so the driving wasn’t a problem. It was
the emergency driving, so totally different, which freaked out new recruits.
We’d been away for a couple of weeks as part of
the training, to the driving school in Shepparton at DECA.
Arriving there on the Sunday evening it was straight
to the Victoria Hotel, book in and wander down to the restaurant bar for meals
and a few beers. And then a few more beers. About 20 blokes away from home for
a week of intensive driving instruction. And then a few more beers.
‘Let’s get the guitars out’, says I.
So a couple of us sit around in the piano bar
on a Sunday night, playing and singing to anyone who wanders in. A short while
later a couple of guys roll up and ask ‘what’s going on boys? We’re having the
monthly Police get together slash piss up. Why don’t you bring them guitars
up those stairs. We’ll provide the beer. You sing us a few songs. Let’s have
a party’. Which we do and at about 3am, pissed, we crawl into bed. The only
problem is we’re to be picked up and taken to the driving range at some ungodly
hour like 8 am.
Now do the words ‘too much alcohol, too little
sleep, not enough food’, mean anything to you?
There we were, a sorry lot, suffering all these
things and more, standing around the foyer of the Victoria hotel when the drivers
came to get us in the ambulances for our first day of instruction. In we jump
and head out to the skidpan, the lecture room and the witches hats.
15 minutes or so being thrown around the back
of the ambulance on the way out to school and some were starting to suffer quite
badly.
Into the classroom we go for orientation.
Peter Kent was the first to fall apart. Just as
the instructor was making his opening remarks, ‘Chewy’ (PK, get it?) says ‘scuse
me’ and bolts. Comes back, sits down, looks like shit. Someone else stands up
in the middle of the second phrase. ‘Scuse me’ and bolts. Doesn’t come back
for a while. Third person, ‘bout 5 minutes in, ‘scuse me’, to which the instructor
yells, ‘OK, that’s it, you lot are supposed to be professionals, aren’t you?’
Murmurs ‘Mmm yes sir, No sir, 3 bags full sir’. And a couple more run to the
loos.
We were sent out to get some fresh air and sober
up before the rest of the course was continued.
We were much more professional the next day.
So I’ve learnt how to drive over a couple of extensive
training weeks and now I’m about to run the gauntlet.
Alan’s sitting in the passenger seat, being as
calm as you can be, given the circumstances.
It would be a few years before I had a similar
experience, training a new recruit. One young guy that springs to mind used
to freak and suffer total tunnel vision whenever he was driving and the lights
and sirens came on. Took me a while to break him in. First time we were on a
run, he was wholly focused on nothing but that small strip of road right in
front of him. Cars all over the place to the left and right didn’t seem to exist
when he plowed us, at high speed, through the middle of a major intersection
with me banging on his shoulder, pulling on the handbrake and screaming in his
ear…. ‘f#@*ing stop, you moron’ to the screaming of tyres, honking of horns
and gnashing of teeth of the other road users.
But I digress.
Here’s Alan talking, well yelling me through my
first run.
‘Now, Billy, let’s take it steady here. There’s
a bit of traffic round. Keep your eyes on the road. Watch your mirrors. Look
out for that driver. Watch where you’re going. We’re on Punt road and it’s fairly
busy. I want to live a few more years yet. HA HA HA. (manic laughter) Watch
that taxi driver. SHIT, that was close. OK you’re doing well so far. Speed up
a bit. NOT THAT MUCH. Watch those bumps. MIND THAT BUS. OK so far. Don’t drive
up too close to the footpath. ‘Oh, Home on the range… where the deer and the
antelope playeeee’. Now when we get to Alexander Parade stay as far right as
you can. Watch that pedestrian. Yes we’ll stay as far right as we can. It’s
coming up just under the bridge. WATCH THAT CYCLIST. It’s all right don’t worry.
He didn’t fall off. HA HA HA. See it just ahead there past the pylons. WATCH
THE PYLONS. Don’t panic. You’re doing all right. I’ll be OK. Yes I will. I’ll
get home tonight. ‘OH, HOME ON THE RANGE… WHERE THE DEER AND THE ANTELOPE PLAYEEEE’.
Now remember cut the corner off. We’re nearly there. Cut the corner right off.
Stay over to the right. Almost there. HARD RIGHT. Round the pole. FUCK, not
that side of the pole. Aaaaeeeehhhh!!!!!!!!.
He’d got me so wound up with his constant yammering
and telling me to ‘go round the pole, go round the pole’, that I had. Straight
round it to the right, not sticking to the left of it and into the path of cars
coming down Punt Rd from Toorak Rd, which I managed to swerve competently around,
right into this cat sitting in the middle of the rise, not moving.
Thump.
Alan screamed some more. ‘STUPID @#&ing CAT.
WHERE DID THAT COME FROM? IT’S OK, WE DIDN’T HIT ANY CARS. I’M GONNA BE ALL
RIGHT. DON’T PANIC. WE’RE OK.
Me. ‘SHUT UP’!!!!
Him. ‘It’s all right now Billy, you did well.
Not far to go now. We’ll debrief later. Which we did.
Never did find out if the cat was OK. It wasn’t
there when I looked in the rear vision mirror and it certainly wasn’t stuck
to the front of the car when we arrived at the scene.
‘Oh, Home on the range… where the deer and the
antelope playeeee’
THE GROSS INJURY LAW:
Any injury, the sight of which makes you want to puke, should immediately be covered by tissues and towels.
the body in the back
death deth, n. state of being dead:
extinction or cessation of life: manner of dieing: mortality: a deadly plague:
cause of death: spiritual lifelessness: the killing of an animal in hunting.
The rules have changed a bit but there was a time a few years ago when the ambulance
would take dead bodies to the city morgue at the end of Flinders lane, liaise
with the morgue attendants and police then head back out on the road to help
someone else.
I remember a time early on when I went to the ‘coroners’ and there was the sound
of a buzz saw coming from next door. I asked the attendant if they were having
some renovations done. He just looked at me vacant and, in the droll undertone
workers in that profession seem to acquire said, ‘no, just whipping the top
off a head. You’re new aren’t you?’
Probably still had my tongue hanging out and my tail wagging, at that stage.
I’ve mentioned death before and I’ll mention it again. I mentioned earlier that
I didn’t have those breakdowns for nothing. I’ve seen death in all its forms.
You don’t really ever get used to death, particularly messy death, but you do
get to appreciate that it is inevitable. Not too many of us look forward to
it, but those in every aspect of health care observe it closely on a regular
basis. One of the deaths, which helped, in the end, to bring me undone was particularly
messy. I’d been sent to standby at the scene of an accident while waiting for
the police to carry out their specific tasks.
I asked the ambos I was relieving at the incident what they had. They stated
they had a lady, hit by a bus, under that sheet over there. Then they headed
off into the wild blue yonder. I answered questions from bystanders and police,
kept people away from the victim and just stood around chatting. Not having
yet seen the body.
At some point in the 30 minutes or so that I was there, the wind came up. The
breeze lifted the sheet covering the body. I nearly collapsed. The crew attending
earlier had failed to tell me the extent of injuries. She looked like she’d
exploded, a bit like the pictures I’d seen of Jack the ripper’s victims. Bits
everywhere. Had I been first on the scene, it wouldn’t have been so bad. To
come out of the blue like that took my breath away completely. My vision tunnelled.
Someone close by screamed. One of the policemen vomited. I quickly covered the
victim again, but the damage was done. That scene played on me heavily and still
does.
First time I had to transport a body some distance was a few weeks into the
job working with a bloke named Bob from Waverley branch. Waverley branch was
fun for the most part with a good crew and a nice relaxed mess room to sit around
in and either train or watch telly. It was at this branch where, for the first
instance in the job, I made a bit of a dill of meself, though I didn’t recognise
it at the time.
You see the job of being an ambulance officer carries its own particular stresses.
I found this out later in my career when things weren’t going altogether brilliantly.
The sort of stress that it is sneaks up on you and beats the shit out of you
before you know it’s there.
The Crisis Counselling Unit was set up following a series of meetings regarding
stress in the job. These meetings were designed to assess the problems to help
officers through the demons.
I didn’t know there were demons back then and spoke up, at the first meeting
at Waverley, and said… ‘Stress. There’s no stress in the ambulance service.
What do you mean stress. This job is a piece of cake. You want stress, then
go and do sales like I did. Man that’s stress. Everyone loves you in this job,
you get your uniform, a lot of respect, it’s great fun. Stress!… ptooey. You
guys wouldn’t know what stress was.’
Oh how wrong can you be?
I wasn’t averse to standing up and speaking my mind, though I got a bit of a
reputation as a smart arse in certain quarters. I have a great deal of respect
for those in authority, when those senior exec’s and officers know what they’re
on about. None whatsoever for those who don’t and no tolerance of fools. I remember
it used to be the older blokes at city branch who would complain about the shifts,
the hours, the roads, the work, the other officers, the managers, the … everything.
My group had been told, like all the other groups who came before and after,
just sit back and shut up, listen and learn for the first 12 months or so. Don’t
go making waves. That’s all well and good but we’d been in the job a few months,
excited about every new experience and these guys just got me going one night
with all their complaints so I stood on a table and said… ‘Guys if you’re so
unhappy about the job, get out. There’s lots of others keen to come in and give
this job their best.’ Didn’t go over all that well, but I was having a bad day.
It was a little while after that when the Assistant Superintendent in charge
of the control room, nice guy, but with a reputation for chewing out staff in
a very ‘poor management’ type of way. Burst through the doors and screamed at
the officer in front of me, he despatching work to vehicles around town, me
taking a 000 call, ‘what the hell do you think you’re doing…. Etc…etc… This
went on for a few minutes with me trying to get details amidst the noise and
yelling from someone who was having a bad day and should have known better.
I asked a couple of times for the caller to repeat what she’d said. Then I put
my hand over the receiver and said something like… ‘shut the fuck up’.. to the
OIC, turned to the radio operator and said … ‘he’d never talk to me like that
in here, Steve’… and went back to the call.
Afterwards I was called in to the Super’s office and given a bollocking before
being asked to get out and not bother coming back to the Control Room when I
told him that one of the first rules of good management was that, if you have
to tell a staff member off, you do it with dignity and in private.
Anyway…
We’d gone to a fairly normal little house in Mt Waverley, having been called
by family members for an elderly male, collapsed and non-breathing. I suppose
we would have been there an hour or so, doing what we could and had tried all
our resuscitation skills for a while without success. Then, having decided we’d
done all we could, Bob threw his hat in and told the family that we’d be taking
the deceased in to town. And oh yes, he was definitely dead.
When we got rolling Bob said that, seeing as how it was on the way, and the
fella in the back wouldn’t be complaining, we might just stop off at the bank
in Glen Iris. So we did.
Now bodies in death are similar to bodies in life. They can make the most interesting
noises. Sometimes there’s an escape of air from various orifices of the dead
and occasionally they move as muscles contract or relax in death. Bob was gone
for quite a few minutes and came back to find me standing, white as a sheet
and smoking on the footpath beside the car. He roared with laughter, knowing
full well what had just happened.
A short time after Bob had left the car the poor old chap in the back of the
ambulance had let out a bit of an OOOOAAAHHHhhhh!!! sort of sound and sat up,
scaring the shit out of me. Bob laughed almost all the way to town.
THE THEORY OF WEIGHT
The weight of the patient that you are about to transport increases exponentially by the number of floors which must be ascended to reach the patient and the number of floors which must be descended while carrying the patient.
fat fat, adj. Plump, fleshy: well-filled out: thick, full bodied (as of printing types): corpulent: obese: having much, or of the nature of, adipose tissue or the substance it contains: oily: fruitful or profitable: rich in some important constituent: gross: fulsome..
At 6 foot 3, I’m a bit too long for most little baths, so I tend to shower..
This little tale is about someone else who was a tad big for the bath, but she
didn’t let that stop her. Oh no..
Injuries are commonplace amongst rescuers. One of the guys who taught us in
the early days, Gren, had been injured in a trench collapse, stepping in to
help the injured, with the trench collapsing further, pinning him and doing
some nasty damage. Another mate went to assist at the Hoddle St. shootings and
as he went to move a patient, the poor soul was shot again.
I, like just about every serving ambo, got a smack in the mouth (more than once)
was pushed, kicked, abused, threatened… and that was just from the other AO’s.
Most of the back injuries are caused by incorrectly lifting.. let’s say… the
slightly well endowed.
Australia’s population is expanding, round the middle. Just like the problem
I had earlier with the wigs, I’ve always had a problem with really fat people,
particularly because the job that I’ve been doing for so long involves picking
the buggers up. I had a discussion once with a chap, rather put out by my comment
on his weight, where I asked, ‘would you like to lift you up?’
It was only a few weeks before this particular incident that we’d gone to a
commission flat on the 475th floor of a block in Collingwood. A rather
well endowed, extremely well built, slightly bigger than average… (read - huge)…
lady had been having a bit of a blue with her equally well-endowed hubby and
had fallen to the floor screaming, complaining of back pain and looking for
a bit of sympathy.
Now anyone who knows me well will tell you what a sympathetic and caring soul
I can be and I’ve always struggled with my own weight problems.
I was working with a little guy Vic Hunt (brother Mike, ‘anybody seen Mike Hunt?..
old joke) who had a wicked sense of humour but was literally half my size. Vic
and I had a reasonably good working relationship and spent a bit of time together
on the road. Don’t know what he’s doing now.
Well there we were on the 756th floor, having walked up, as the lifts
were broken down again. We were standing in a delightful, single fronted villa
with ocean views looking at the whale who’d somehow managed to make her way
up all these flights, screaming and wobbling and craving a bit of attention
and making her hubby suffer for his misdeeds.
Vic looked at me, I looked at Vic, we both looked at the victim.
She was saying ‘I can’t walk… you’ll have to carry me down… I need to go to
the hospital… I’ve got me pension card… gee I’m hungry… I’m in pain… throw me
a chocolate… how me some sympathy boys… got some morphine?’
Vic looked at me, I looked at Vic, spoke soothingly to the leviathan, made sympathetic
noises..
‘I can’t move… OOOh it hurts… get your stretcher… I need some pain relief. Where’s
that chocolate you bastards?’
I looked at the window, then at Vic, winked a sort of ‘follow me here will you
mate’ and started to move the furniture out of the way, pushing the curtains
apart and saying things like… ‘hmm yes, this ought to be OK. Might be a bit
dodgy but we should make it. Vic can you get on the blower and call the Fire
Brigade please?’
Dead silence.
‘What choo want the Fire Brigade for?.
‘Well, it’s 823 floors from the ground to here and it will take us 4 days, including
sleep and meal breaks to get the stretcher up, ‘cause the lift’s broken. We’ll
need to get a lifting machine in from somewhere to get you from the floor to
the stretcher, then another 4 days with 12 of us taking turns to get you down
to the ground floor. I reckon the quickest and best way to tackle this for your
delicate, waiflike constitution would be for us to bring in the Firies. They’ll
bring their rescue ladder WAAAAAAAAY up to here, drop in a stretcher on a rope
and lower you down to our waiting ambulance… all the way down there…
They’ve got tie-downs and blankets, so you should be ok with the height and
the cold air’.
You’ve never seen a woman get off the floor quicker in your life, except maybe
at a stocktaking sale.
Back to the original tale.
We were met at the door of another flat on another cold, grey night by one of
the prettiest girls I’d ever met in my life. Extremely polite and shy saying
how she was really sorry but she hadn’t known what to do and had thought that
the best thing was to call the ambulance services for some assistance with mum.
‘Mum’s in the bath’.
Vic and I were checking her out, nodding and winking as you do, when there’s
this horrific tinny squeal from another room, ‘I’M IN HERE’.
The young lady continues to apologise profusely while we make all sorts of accommodating
noises and Vic’s trying to chat her up. Once again the voice. ‘Come on! Hurry
up! Don’t apologise, I’m sure the boys have seen a naked woman before!’
Well we had. But not quite like this.
Now the old adage goes something like, ‘if you want to know what a young woman
will look like when she gets a bit older, check out her mum’. We did. All 44
gallons of her.
When we got into the tiny bathroom, there was mum, wedged in the bath. There’s
mum and about 2 cups of water. And the bath was full.
Seems she’d lost some weight and was convinced that she didn’t need to sit on
the board across the bath to shower herself anymore, feeling herself trim and
petite enough to plop down fully into the tub. Problem came when she tried to
get back out and found that she was in fact stuck quite firmly.
There’s no room for a block and tackle, no room for a lifting machine, certainly
no room for a back up crew, and we didn’t feel comfy suggesting to the young
bombshell beside us that she slip of her clothes and get in the bath with mum
to give her a push (although that thought crossed my mind). So Vic and I ponder
just how we might go about extricating Lady Godiva from the reservoir.
I’d sort of gone off the beautiful young thing beside us a little, when I saw
what she had the potential to become in later life, but suggested a few things
while Vic suggested a few nightclubs they might try, should she be interested.
Mum was quite happy with the attention of a couple of younger chaps in uniform.
I placed a towel over the exposed jelly like substances and somehow managed
to get the plug out to her satisfied little giggles and ‘Ooh that feels nice’.
MUM!
Vic took hold of her meaty little pinkies. I got behind up against the wall
of the bathroom. Asked mum to please not help us and just relax. Put all of
my strength into the job and HEAVED.
Vic pulled. I pushed. Mum sighed, tensed up. I screamed.. ‘DON’T Do That!’ as
she tried to help, which was the worst thing she could have done, as I could
feel my back muscles working overtime. Then there was this squishy, gooey, slippery
sort of Ppphhttt! Sound, like you get when you spoon out jelly from a bowl,
as mum wiggled upright and I collapsed on the floor when my back gave out.
No… ‘Are you all right’, as her rather delicate, slightly wet still, posterior
was wiggled in my face, so big it blocked out the light. Just a ‘Thanks boys’
as she sashayed out of the room to clothe herself..
Now yes, I’d seen plenty of women naked before in all states of disarray and
pleasure, but I’d not previously had the pleasure of that particular experience
with a nude beauty..
And it was himself, not the patient, who in this instance had to go to the Casualty
department and ended up off work for nearly a month till the body healed itself.
THE LAW OF TRIAGE:
In any accident, the degree of injury suffered by a patient is inversely proportional to the amount and volume of agonised screaming produced by that patient.
the air splint.
ac´ci-dent, n. [L. accidens,
falling, from ad, to, and caders, to fall.]
1.A happening; an event that takes place without one’s foresight or expectation; an event which proceeds from an unknown cause, or is an unusual effect of a known cause, and therefore not expected; chance; casualty; contingency. 2.That which takes place or begins to exist without an efficient intelligent cause and without design.
Accidents come in all shapes and sizes. As do
patients. They happen at the most unexpected times in the most unusual of places
and as a rule, whenever you don’t have your clean underwear on.
I’ve been to a few of ‘em. Maybe you were there?
Remember me? I was the big bloke with the smile on my face. Maybe not.
We have these large things in Melbourne called
trams, used to be green, now there’s a few different colours. They weigh about
365 tons and the joke used to be that they were usually driven by refugees who
didn’t speak a lot of English and don’t seem to smile an awful lot. Just as
well they (the trams) are on rails and you only have to point them in the right
direction or god knows where they’d end up.
>And trams have the right of way on the roads.
Well you wouldn’t want to have an accident with one of these big buggers and
then have to spend hours explaining yourself to someone who doesn’t speak much
English, would you?
We used to have tram conductors, happy smiling
souls who would sell you a ticket, tell you where to get off, in the nicest
possible way, and help you with your pram. Then we got Jeff Kennett and most
of Melbourne, particularly public transport, has suffered ever since. Today
we have ticket machines that don’t tell you anything, hardly ever work and are
impossible, illogical pieces of equipment that you’d like to kick. And they
never help you with your pram. And the drivers don’t know how they work or,
if they do, they’re not telling. Or maybe it’s the language problem again.
I slipped off the track again, didn’t I? But we’re
getting there.
You have to give way to trams in Melbourne or
they might just bang in to you. They’re touted around the world as a symbol
of Melbourne, gigantic pieces of equipment with no sense of direction, without
the refugees to pull the handle and ring the bell.
Saddest thing I ever saw in relation to the trams
was a happy Japanese family, obviously looking forward to a ride around Melbourne
on one of our ‘icons’, spoke no ‘strine, hopped on a tram in the middle of Melbourne,
asked a driver who spoke no Japanese and only broken English for help. They
got none, were pointed towards a ticket machine, which didn’t work, then sadly
and quietly left the tram, looking bewildered. They’d been Jeff’d and they didn’t
even know it.
Because of the trams we have a special way to
turn in the middle of town called a ‘hook’ turn. You move to the left at the
intersection, stay hard left as you progress into the junction, wait till the
lights facing you change, then turn right and drive like hell to get through
before getting cleaned up by people on your left waiting to get across. It’s
fun.
Only a few weeks ago I watched as a poor distressed
soul from New South Wales moved in to the right hand lane to make a right hand
turn, as you would expect to do if you were making a right hand turn anywhere
else in Australia. He was at one of our most photographed intersections, the
corner of Flinders Street and Swanston Street. Fool.
I thought to myself, ‘this’ll be fun’, as I watched
and waited for the fireworks to start.
Didn’t take long, only a few seconds really, before
the behemoth trundled up and stopped right in front of him with the expatriate
Greek driver hanging out the door of the tram abusing him. To make it even more
rewarding the tax exile at the rear from Romania drove his tram up the bum of
the poor New South Welshman and sat behind dinging away and swearing at him.
Well I presume he was swearing, certainly sounded like swearing. A bit. And
everyone who went past on the left-hand side tooted and said welcoming things
like, ‘fucking loser’ as they roared past.
So he couldn’t go forward and he couldn’t go back
and he’d never been to Victoria before so had absolutely no idea what the hell
was going on and traffic banked up around him and pedestrians were making welcoming
signs, sticking two fingers up, and cars were honking horns and … And it wasn’t
till the nice policeman waved the cars away, came up to the window, said something
like, ‘you’re new here, aren’t you cobber’ that things eased a bit and somehow
managed to get slowly sorted.
Y
ou could see through the window of the car his
poor little wife sitting beside him banging him delicately on the arm, probably
saying, ‘I TOLD YOU WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME SOUTH OF THE BORDER, THESE PEOPLE
DOWN HERE ARE JUST SICK. With the kids in the back, one laughing, one crying,
one looking dazed.
Where was I? Oh yes.
There was a little Italian lady who decided to
take on a tram in peak hour at the other end of Swanston St. She lost. The tram
knocked her down and there was much uproar, gnashing of teeth, a lot of squealing
and a fair amount of screaming from the poor patient on the ground, as you’d
expect in such circumstances.
We were sent from City branch about 200 yards
away and arrived at the scene minutes after the call with lights flashing and
capes flapping in the breeze, just my partner and I (underpants outside) and
our BWT. The guy I was working with was gay, mincingly gay, sashayed when he
walked, very effeminate in his demeanour and a hell of a lot of fun to be around.
Everything was a show. When we pulled up at any accident scene it was like the
spotlights went on and he was on stage.
‘Hmmm now what have we here? Poor thing. Let’s
see what we can do for you sweetie’, he said as he checked out the patient.
‘Billy, better get the Oxygen and the pain relief and maybe one of those lovely
air splints for the leg would you dear. Better get the big one, she’s a whopper’.
Laughter from a few bystanders.
‘Don’t speak a da English do you pet. There, there
now we’ll see if we can make it all better. Anyone here with this little soul?
No! Never mind. Stop screaming dahhhling. Come on now, settle down a bit.’
He then turned to the gathering throng and explained
to them what we were about to do, ‘so best give us a bit of space, not get in
the way. The air splint here should give her a bit of comfort. Looks like she’s
broken her poor little leggy weggy. Anyone speak Italian? Yes? Goodo then just
let her know what we’re going to do will you. You’re a big strong Italian boy,
aren’t you? Hmmm.’
More laughter.
While I’m getting the air splint out and he’s
chatting away to the big Italian boy, full of eye batting and innuendo, amid
the screaming from the patient and the laughter of the crowd… I was beginning
to feel a bit like a busker with dozens gathering around to watch the show…
the Penthrane we used for pain relief was beginning to take effect and the patient
herself started to giggle a bit.
Air splints are a bit like a blow up balloon.
They have a little mouthpiece to inflate with that seal like a pool Lilo or
beach ball. They work by being filled with air and put just the right amount
of traction on the affected limb. And this one had the mouthpiece in such a
position that when I placed it over her leg it was right in her crutch.
My partner looked at the positioning and said
something along the lines of ‘probably best if you blow this one William. Now
if it was this big guy here!’ More laughter, from everyone but the slightly
red Big Italian Guy.
Only a little while before being called out for
this job we’d been sitting at the branch watching ‘Flying High’ on video. One
of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. There’s a scene where the plane is in
trouble and the autopilot, a blow up doll, inflates on the seat in the aptly
named cockpit. As it deflates, the only way to get it back up is for one of
the hostesses to get down and blow, looking for all the world like she’s giving
the doll a head job. The doll smiles.
As I’m about to go down on the mouthpiece and
wrap my lips around it, have my mouth almost in the woman’s crotch, Gerry doubled
over in laughter and said ‘Oh my Billy boy it’s just like the doll in Flying
High’.
I spluttered and laughed so hard I fell over.
The patient looked bewildered. The crowd roared.