What no waffles!

Today had a call to collect a patient from the Coastguard rescue helicopter.

He was a Belgian fisherman with a 25cm laceration to his inner thigh.

I was driving when the call came in and with a 10min ETA for the helicopter, I put my foot down to get to the helipad, as a wound that large may have compromised his femoral artery and he could be bleeding badly from a life threatening wound.

I rushed through the traffic on blue lights and turned into the road for helipad, which was a mass of speed humps!! After launching my crewmate from his seat on the first and nearly loosing the back axle on the second, I made an exectuive decision to take the other 17 at a more sedate pace and hoped the council loons who had put that many on this road would not have the death of a fellow EU member on their conscience.

As with most of our jobs, the information was a little misleading and when we arrived at the helipad we were met by the Coastguard mobile ground unit, who informed us that the helicopter was 10mins away from meeting the fishing vessel in the English Channel!

So insued the 1hour wait for the helicopter. We amused ourselves, watching the sailors on exercise, launching themselves into the freezing water nearby and attemting to scramble into their liferafts.

Finally the helicopter arrived (much pleased with my photo by the way) and we were waved in by the crew, I reversed the Ambulance gingerly towards the helicopter, wondering exactly how far off the ground the rota blades were spinning? Could just imagine the incident report I would have file if the rota's took the light bar off the roof!

I jumped out the cab, only to be nearly blown off my feet by the wash created by the rota's and almost loosing the door to the Ambulance in the process as it swung widly on it's hinges.

We transfered the patient from the helicopter to our stretcher on the wire basket they use for rescues and wheeled him into the Ambulance for some much need peace and quiet. On examination, he appeared to be no where near a recent encounter with the grim reaper and other than some mild pain, quite chatty. Pity none of us spoke Flemish!

The helicopter medic came aboard and handed over the patient and kindly asked for his rescue stretcher back, this presented a small problem as we had already buckled the poor lad up ready for transport.

I had one of those few and rare sparks of imagination and suggested we get the scoop stretcher to lift him up so they could remove the rescue stretcher. Great idea shouted my crew mate through the noise, as the heli medic had left the door open.

Outside I go to open the equipment locker to get the scoop, which is on the equipment locker door behind the long board (we use this for spinal patients and it looks like a surf board with handles). seems logical to have remove the long board first, which I do and it catches in the rota wash, flips in my hand and smacks me in the face! Ouch!

Finally get all the relevent equipment into the back of the truck and manage to perform the swap with minimal discomfort to the patient. The run into hospital is routine thankfully as a blue light run would have been a challenge with both eyes watering from the smack on the nose.

To top an eventful afternoon, the guy failed to bring any waffles or even a nice piece of Cod with him, some people are just so thoughtless!