Babysitting

As I work mostly on the FRU (First/Fast Response Unit) at the moment, I am supposedly tasked to the calls that are graded as either Red or Amber, so they are either immediately or potentially life-threatening. Supposedly, both because the system doesn't always get it right and because a call to someone having breathing problems from asthma and breathing problems from a cold are graded the same. A great deal depends on what Ambulance Control gets told on the phone. Anyway, I digress slightly...

A call to a 9-month-old choking is definitely worthy of being a Red call, the highest priority. I'm about 4 miles away, and if they're sending me, I must be the nearest. There's nothing quite like a call to a poorly child to get the adrenaline going, and I often find that I drive a little quicker to these calls. After driving 3.9 miles, the call is updated, the baby has stopped choking and is now breathing properly. The call is regraded to Green, the lowest priority, to which FRU's aren't sent. Nevertheless, as I'm within sight of the house, I call control and offer to go in anyway, just to make sure that all's well. As they have no other ambulance to send within a 15 mile radius, I think they were grateful of the offer.

I'm greeted downstairs by dad. He's looking a little pale, but clearly on the recovery stage from whatever the shock was.

"Thanks for coming so quick. Come and meet them".

"Them? There's more than one patient?"

"Well, there's only one patient, but there's more than one baby..."

Ah. Well that I can cope with. I go upstairs to meet these babies, only to find that they aren't 9 months old, but 9 WEEKS old. And they've only recently come out of hospital after being born very prematurely. One of them choked on their milk, couldn't breath and went very blue, but dad had managed to remedy the situation just before I turned up, so all was well. It's fairly common in newborns, especially if they were born prematurely, to struggle a little with feeding, but this was about the fifth time that it had happened, so we decided that it would be best to send baby back to hospital for a check up.

Except that, if you remember, there was no ambulance to send. So I'd have to wait. One dad equals one pair of hands. So where's mum? She's out with another one of the babies... Yup - triplets!! And there's lots of things to get ready if you're going to take multiple babies out. A friend was looking after the "patient" who was completely unharmed by the ordeal and was slowly dropping off to sleep, dad was getting organised and eating something on the move, and I got to look after the other baby. My kids are somewhat past the stage of being bottle fed and rocked to sleep. So getting the chance again, and especially with such a tiny baby, was a really nice change of pace. Waiting an hour on scene on my own for an ambulance doesn't usually fill me with glee, but this time I wasn't in such a rush...

Not exactly ambulance work, but all part of the service.