It’s 11PM, traffic is light, the thermometer in my brand new car on the first day of ownership is reading -1.5 degrees celcius.

I’m about 2 miles from my exit, and my final destination after travelling 500 miles in the prior 12 hours. I’m a breath away from home.

I check my rear view mirror. Nothing behind.

Moments later, a tremendous impact from my nearside behind. I see the central reservation. I see the hard shoulder and the barrier whils’t I travel backwards. I feel something soft hit me from my side as my head crashes into it. I see the central reservation, again, but this time its stationary, so obviously I am too.

I sit there. Looking. Not moving. Just looking. I’m in a car, my car. There’s smoke everyhwhere. White things hanging over the windows. The click of the hazard lights. I’m being asked if I’m ok.

In no more than 30 seconds, metal has been crunched, people have been thrown around and lives have been altered.

I don’t believe my luck. I’m not even sure yet if this really happened, or if I’m about to wake up and laugh at the terrible dream I just had. Either way, I’m so glad everybody walked away from this one with relatively minor injuries considering the forces that were involved here.

Irony is a powerful force too, I don’t think I’m going to be listening Headlights on Dark Roads by Snow Patrol again in the car.

Courtesy of BBC News

Half asleep, half intact
Half alive onward,
Cuff’d and cursing the cops to Death
Intoxicated kindred
‘Forward, the Drunk Brigade!
Charge the triage nurse!’ he slurred;
Into the valley of the ER
Must have been a hundred.

‘Bypass the Drunk Brigade! Bypass!’
Yell’d the Doc dismay’d!
Not tho’ the EMT’s knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Their’s is not to make reply,
Their’s is not to reason why,
Their’s but to transport “that drunken guy”:
Into the valley of the ER
Despite being divert’d

RN’s to the right of them,
Doctors to the left of them,
Sicker patients in front of them
Piss’d and thunder’d;
Stumb’ling in they fought and fell,
Horrible stench from them did swell,
Into the valley of the ER.
Their gaping maws smelt like Hell
I wish they were obtund’d.

Flash’d all their genitals bare,
Three months of filth in their hair,
Swinging at security there,
Charging the RN station, while
All the staff wonder’d:
But in the benzodiazipine-smoke
Right thro’ the 4 points they broke;
The Guards were rushin’
Reel’d from the faecal-soak
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they fell back, but not,
Not yet all obtund’d

Doctors to the right of them,
Police to the left of them,
Bearing haldoperidol behind them
The stalwart RN’s thunder’d;
Scream’d at but still drunk as hell,
While a clumsy bystander tripped and fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the ER of hell
All the was left of them,
Somehow not obtund’d.

When can their odour fade?
O the pathetic charge they made!
When at last they all slumber’d.
Depsite the valliant charge they made,
Thus ends the Drunk Brigade,
Finally obtund’d.

…and make sure you don’t end up in any campaign videos such as;

About 13 years ago whilst working on an ambulance, my colleague was dealing with a young boy who had dislocated his shoulder.

He was playing in a rugby game, his dad was with him, they were both in the back of the ambulance.

Dad was insisting that the one of the two EMTs put the shoulder back into place, there and then so that the boy could continue with the match which had 20 minutes remaining and apparently was “crucial” to the team.

Obviously, relocating a joint is something that requires a medical team in an A&E Department. X-Rays need to be taken and decisions need to be made, along with some proper strong pain relief.

Dad wasn’t having any of this, he picked up a bandage, and outstretched his arm expecting his son to receive it. As he went to take the object from his dad, his dad with his other fist strikes his son on the shoulder with a large amount of force, obviously inflicting untold pain on the boy.

However, this had knocked the shoulder back in…

20 minutes later, at the end of the match, the boy collapses.

He is rushed to A&E where they decide that the joint has trapped a major blood vessel.

They left the doctors who were considering amputating the limb. They to this day are not sure of the final outcome, but to have any limb starved of blood for that long, doesn’t leave the victim with much of a chance at saving it.

Was it really worth it?

A response found on a forum of a knife enthusiasts website.

Is it just me? who thinks this is a bit of a shocking comment made on a forum with reference to one of my previous posts, The Sharp End: Knives, which alone is one of the blogs most  viewed articles with thousands having read this one article alone over the past months.

Friday night was fairly standard, piss heads and minor problems. Although it also marked the start of a beer, music and beer festival in my local area.

Saturday was more intense as the night went on, we saw a couple of new faces with old problems.

Tess is a 49 year old recovered alcoholic who likes to get completely slashed once a month. She then wets herself, shouts profanity and makes allegations against her partner of domestic violence. And then as well as all that she still finds time to whack her partner for little or no reason right in front of everyone. I stopped this lady from being arrested and got her home because I felt too sorry for whoever would have to cart this “nasty piece of work” to the nick.

Ron likes ketamine. So much so that he wants to live in an actual “K-Hole”! As with all ket incidents, the mates never shut up and let you get on with it, they have to tell you what to do and that he’s fine. Thank you police officers for making them piss off (and hopefully have a wash too)!

We made some difference that day though, the others on the team sorted a severe asthmatic incident, an epileptic fit and a couple of other things.

Sunday was busy in the day with plenty of blue lighting to sort out rugby injuries, lucky we had a 4X4 or we would have rolled a few times.

Sunday night was an absolute snore, we got so bored we went for a bit of driver training, I got to drive my first ambulance, and I got to put the nee naws on too!

Happy times!

But it wasn’t without its thrills, I don’t really think however I could make a movie out of it, get millions of dollars. Shame.

Whilst at the check out, a wave of shop people and security staff ran past me in a most urgent manner, one clutching a first aid box.

Curiosity got the best of me, I didn’t hurry, its was on the way back to the car and chances were it was something rather… uninteresting.

Off I plodded, when I turned out of the main centre, into the car park bit, the scene that greeted me was a grim looking one.

Present were; 2 cops, 2 security guards, too many supermarket workers and a concerned wife. They were all kneeling in a scene of what I can only describe as, grim.

Smeared all over the bright warm coloured marble tiled thingie floor was a most unusual amount of blood, certainly unusual because my understanding of human anatomy is that the blood should be inside the body…?

Daniel (obviously not his real name) who was 60, had suffered what appeared to be an epileptic fit, which he has a history of according to the wife. He hadn’t had one for some time and he wasn’t on any medication to control the condition.

The sign that confirmed the fact that Daniel probably did in fact have a fit (not just a fall) was the fact that you can clearly see through his trousers that he had voided his bladder (I can’t put it politer then that!).

Unfortunately, Daniel had also hit his head in several places. Likely sequence of events was, he hit himself going down, and then he hit himself repeatedly whilst he was convulsing on the floor.

Once the primary survey was completed, by that I mean, it could be ascertained that he was breathing albeit unconscious (wife said he liked to sleep after such events, quite normal). I found the several cuts and bruises on his face and head, although I didn’t get a chance to count. He also had a number of cuts to his arm, supporting the likelihood that it all started on the escalator.

The most challenging part of the incident was when Daniel did come around, he wasn’t interested in sitting or lying, no! He wanted to get up and walk. He was in a state of desperate confusion trying to fight off and escape his helpers. This is a result of the fit he had, and possibly a serious head injury. His wife ultimately kept him calm and standing in once place. Thank god she was there!

He went off to hospital after about 10 long minutes of sleeping and struggling, I’m sure he will be ok, I will be able to find out how he was when he got there in a couple of days. Best of luck to him!

If you would like to know more about Epilepsy, take a look at http://www.epilepsy.org.uk/.

In many countries friends will go out for a drink to socialise and tell stories or go to a bar to watch a football game.

In England however the norm seems to go out get drunk then beet the s**t out of each other. But why do we do this?

In the UK it seams that we don’t go drinking to socialise, we go drinking to get completely wankered. This binge-drinking culture is new and quite frankly it’s a complete drain on the countries resources but why do we drink like this, who is to blame?

The most obvious reason for drinking would be because we are really thirsty all the time (probably not)
Supermarkets for selling lager cheaper than water (cheaper than milk, too, I looked it up)
Is it the 24 hour licensing laws ?

Is it the TV adverts making drinking look cool ?

Is it the iconification of George Best ( I hope not) ?

Is it the parents?

Well I don’t think it has anything to with the avaibility of booze, although the new scheme in Ireland which will force the supermarkets to charge more for alcohol shows the government disagree me, to be honest I don’t think booze is that cheap any way and if the price goes up any more I will have to start drinking listerine again. If it’s in the shops we will pay for it. And I don’t think it’s the TV adverts, the WKD guy is a twat.

I defiantly don’t think 24 hour licensing laws have anything to do with it, in Germany the pubs are open to 6 am! And they don’t seem to have much of a problem

So what is it, I believe it all comes down to the British attitude of not wanting to take any responsibility, people will go out and get so drunk that they cant look after themselves because they assume someone else will. The emergency services have gone from being used in a worst case situation to a taxi ride home

This can be seen in other areas of British life, the benefit culture for example, benefits have gone from being used when all else goes wrong to being a way of life because people want the government to look after them.

It’s this soft approach and complete lack of care for our self’s and lack of respect for others that has landed us in this hole. And to be honest I can’t think of a solution.

If we could look back a generation and respect each other like they did maybe we could improve this situation, but who knows. Maybe the next generation of drinkers will look back to us and try not to repeat our mistakes.

And sorry to be so cynical but I am really drunk right now (no I’m not really)