After my "nothing is too small, nothing is too big" thoughts of yesterday, today has all gone wrong. It's a long story, but I'll see if I can make any sense of what happened.
The day did start as most do recently with a hair-raising drive to work. The ambulance work was all going normally. My crew mate and myself were quite happy trundling around picking up the grannies and taking them to hospital today. We are what is known here as a "nana magnet".
Anyway, while trundling back from hospital the last time we were allocated some work around the corner from where we were in a hotel. The call came through to us as someone with some aches and pains in his arms and tummy. We went to the hotel, and after a quick check over of the person in question, we came to the conclusion the man was having a heart attack, and the best place for him was the hospital.
After doing the treatment we had to do, we called the hospital to tell them what was occurring. As you may have seen on TV, when there is something serious, or we need to have doctors waiting for quick treatment, we pre-warn the hospital. In Sussex we did it via the radio in the ambulance, here in Perth we do it on the phone. We did this for the fellow having his heart attack.
We arrived at the hospital and waiting for us was a couple of people. One was one of the consultants on duty in Accident and Emergency. As I jumped out the ambulance he asked what was going on. Trying to concentrate on unloading the stretcher, disconnecting all the leads, wires and tubes from the ambulance (remember what I said about multi-tasking), I didn't answer but said I'll tell him in a minute.
Once inside the hospital, I started to explain to the doctor what was going on and he just said "Shut up" to me, turned and walked into the area that we are going to be putting the patient. I think that you would have seen the steam shoot out my ears.
Anyway, the patient got the correct and great treatment, and I thought I'll leave it about the way that I was spoken to. Off we went to pick up another granny and bring her into hospital. During the trip I kept thinking about the situation. I'd decided that I wasn't going to leave it, so I went into the department, and found the consultant. I asked if I could have a quick word about the last patient that we brought in. When he said yes, I let him have it with both barrels along the lines of "Do not ever tell me to Shut Up again. I'm a fellow professional, and just because you are a hospital consultant it doesn't give you the right to treat me like a lackey." I didn't hang around to hear his response.
I feel that maybe I've managed to mark my card at that hospital. I'm not going to be on the doctors Christmas card list. Oh well.
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