We were on our way to a local address, probably less than a mile away. We had been told that the call was a double fatal stabbing and that our attendance had been requested by the police. They wanted confirmation that the casualities were deceased. As information was sketchy we didnt hang around.
On arrival we were met by a police officer standing at the front door. The whole place was pretty busy, there were lots of other officers present and it appeared the area was being treated as a crime scene. We entered the house and the officer guarding the front door informed us that they were both dead. Who? I enquired. He explained that in the living room were two people, a male and a female, both of whom had been stabbed to death and that we had been called to confirm death.
I entered the room and in light of what I had been told was taking great care not to compromise what was a crime scene. Lying in front of me were two people, an adult male and adult female. It was quite strange. It was if they had been carefully arranged in the position that they were found. The woman was lying on her back on the floor in front of the fireplace in a nice straight line, her arms neatly by her side. Her head was pointing towards the fireplace. Lying next to her was the male. He was lying on his left side with his right arm draped across the woman as if cuddling her.
I made my way to the side of the woman and crouched down for closer inspection. She was clearly dead and there was evidence of a number of puncture wounds. It was while I was examining her that I noticed something that made me almost gasp. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the mans chest rising and falling.
He was Alive!
I shouted out for the benefit of those present "this mans alive, I will have to intervene". I almost felt a little guilty for messing up what the police thought was just a crime scene. I went to the side of the male and with the help of my colleague we rolled him away from the woman.
My second surprise! Sticking out from his chest was a knife. Because of his position it had been hidden from view.
On inspection penetration did not seem to be deep, the knife was being held in place between two ribs. There seemed to be significant blood loss. His trousers in the area of his groin were blood soaked. We exposed him to inspect for further injury but found none. It would seem that the blood had leaked from the chest wound. All the while the patient had apeared to be unconscious, but on reflection I think that he had been conscious throughout and was pretending. We did attempt to determine his responses, but in the circumstances did not persist. I believe he was a good actor!
On alerting the police to this you can imagine things became a little frantic. We treated our patient and rapidly transported him to hospital with the police in close attendance.
It transpired that the couple were married. He had stabbed his wife and then attempted to kill himself, clearly unsuccessfully.The really sad part of all this, is that they were found by their 12 year old daughter, who had come home from school in her lunchbreak. I cannot begin to imagine the effect this would have had upon her.
So many broken lives.
Sunday 27 February 2011
Friday 25 February 2011
Life can be Cruel!
He was lying on the concrete floor. We found out later that he was only eighteen. We were inside a large industrial building and the young guy was our patient. He was an apprentice and had been working on a large industrial transformer. This was a place where they were built.
He had been approximately 10 feet from the floor, standing on scaffolding, when something went horribly wrong. He had received a massive electrical shock and was thrown from the scaffold onto the floor where he was found. At the time we did not know how much voltage was involved.
As I approached him I let out a sigh of relief. He was conscious and he was talking. Thank god I thought to myself. These were good signs. He was alert, his Glasgow Coma Scale (a measurement of his conscious level), was a maximum of 15. Despite the fall he appeared to have escaped serious injury. Everything was going to be Ok.
I was so wrong!
While we were talking to him I noticed something that I had never seen before. Not that calls such as this were common. He was sweating beads of straw coloured fluid. It seemed that plasma was oozing from his pores. This worried me; hopefully the patient had not seen my look of concern.
Due to the potential seriousness of the incident, we treated our patient and removed him to the ambulance quickly, conveying him to hospital under emergency conditions and alerting the hospital of our impending arrival. I recall his mother waiting for him at the hospital when we arrived. I believe her sons employers had alerted her to what had happened. She looked relieved.
I was right to be concerned. Our patient was eventually transferred to our regional Burns unit in Billericay, Essex where he died approximately two weeks later. His death was slow and he underwent amputations before he finally succumbed.
Why? You ask!
I am not an expert on these matters but when electricity of sufficiently high voltage passes through the body it causes tissue heating and internal burns due to the large energy. The current will pass along pathways of least resistance for example nerves and blood vessels. The patients internal organs gradually failed, because they had been cooked, causing the patients death and there was nothing that anyone could do to prevent it.
A tragic loss of a young life! Life can be so cruel!
Thursday 24 February 2011
Hell Hath no Fury... Like a Woman Scorned!
We rushed into the house and found a young man in his early twenties slumped in an armchair. Protruding from the centre of his chest was a very large carving knife! It had been driven clean through his sternum. The poor guy was gurgling and about to breathe his last. I thought Oh Shit!
The story is, he had gone to visit his estranged partner and there was an argument about child support and money. This rapidly developed into a full blown domestic dispute and it would seem that the neighbours had called for the police.
When the police arrived, they attempted to calm things down and succeeded. Or so they thought!
This incident had taken place in the living room. The female had asked to leave the room as she said she needed the toilet. She left, but on returning, rushed across the room at her estranged partner and stabbed him with a bloody great knife. She used such force that it went through his sternum. It would seem that she went to the kitchen, not the toilet.
And all of this in front of two police officers.
It must have been the two, who when I arrived, were sitting outside looking like the world had just ended. Fortunately the woman was on her way to the police station.
And all of this in front of two police officers.
It must have been the two, who when I arrived, were sitting outside looking like the world had just ended. Fortunately the woman was on her way to the police station.
It is alleged that the woman had asked for money from her estranged partner. He apparently suggested that she earn it, by taking to the streets if you get my drift. This was clearly not the right thing to do.
The young man!
He died!
Despite vigorous attempts to resuscitate him and surgeons performing a thoracotomy (opening his chest) in the resuscitation room of the local A&E department he died. The knife had penetrated his heart.
Wednesday 23 February 2011
Death on the Underground (1980's Style)
We were off. I had the distinct feeling we were in for another busy day.
We had been dispatched to a call given as male collapsed in Walthamstow Underground station. It was rush hour and the roads were busy. The usual frantic crawl into London.
I knew that this call could present us with some problems, as the station was difficult to access. We arrived in Selbourne road and loaded ourselves with everything we thought we would need, as returning to the vehicle was not going to be an option. The station was quite deep underground.
This meant response bag, defibrillator, suction, carry chair, blanket etc. I felt more like a removal man than an ambulanceman. For those wondering, I was not yet a Paramedic but had extended skills in airway management and vascular access and was able to use a defibrillator in Cardiac Arrest. This in london was known as Hotel trained. These additional skills would have been useful in this case, had the opportunity presented itself.
We quickly passed through the ticket barrier and platform of the British Rail station and made our way to the two flights of stairs that descended to the moving escalator that would take us into the depths of the Underground station. On arriving at the bottom of the moving stairway we began to cross the hall between the platforms, all the while looking for someone in distress. We were greeted by a member of London Transport staff. I had noted that there were no trains at either of the two platforms and was beginning to wonder where our patient was.
I was now a little bemused, as the member of staff appeared unconcerned and gave no indication that there was a problem. You will appreciate we had driven through rush hour traffic under emergency conditions and had just hiked a considerable distance, carrying a lot of equipment, the adrenaline was flowing and we were ready for action. We explained why we were there, her response was to ask us to follow her to a small hidden away office. On entering the office we were introduced to the station inspector but had to wait as he seemed busy on the telephone.
We stood and waited with anticipation and probably looked more than a little bemused. This man eventually finished his conversation and then calmly began to tell us that someone had collapsed on one of his trains. The nature and severity of the problem was still unclear and I was thinking where is the train and more importantly the patient.
Eventually all was revealed. It was like pulling teeth!
The patient an adult male had been travelling on a crowded London bound, rush hour train. You can picture the scene, everyone busy minding their own business, hiding behind their newspapers. Someone eventually realised that he was not sleeping but was unresponsive, presumably a member of the travelling public. When the train pulled into Walthamstow station, the station staff were alerted and it would seem that the actions taken were as follows:
So we had to wait!
The train was eventually recalled but only after another train had passed through the station. It slowly returned, empty with the exception of the patient. Quite spooky really.
A quick dash up and down the platform and we found our man still sitting in the seat in which he had collapsed. Unfortunately he was quite Dead!
Equally unfortunate was the fact that in those days we did not have the authority to recognise Death as we do now so had to initiate and continue resuscitation. All this, while getting him and all of our equipment back to the surface and our waiting ambulance.
Needless to say that was me knackered for the rest of the shift!
We had been dispatched to a call given as male collapsed in Walthamstow Underground station. It was rush hour and the roads were busy. The usual frantic crawl into London.
I knew that this call could present us with some problems, as the station was difficult to access. We arrived in Selbourne road and loaded ourselves with everything we thought we would need, as returning to the vehicle was not going to be an option. The station was quite deep underground.
This meant response bag, defibrillator, suction, carry chair, blanket etc. I felt more like a removal man than an ambulanceman. For those wondering, I was not yet a Paramedic but had extended skills in airway management and vascular access and was able to use a defibrillator in Cardiac Arrest. This in london was known as Hotel trained. These additional skills would have been useful in this case, had the opportunity presented itself.
We quickly passed through the ticket barrier and platform of the British Rail station and made our way to the two flights of stairs that descended to the moving escalator that would take us into the depths of the Underground station. On arriving at the bottom of the moving stairway we began to cross the hall between the platforms, all the while looking for someone in distress. We were greeted by a member of London Transport staff. I had noted that there were no trains at either of the two platforms and was beginning to wonder where our patient was.
I was now a little bemused, as the member of staff appeared unconcerned and gave no indication that there was a problem. You will appreciate we had driven through rush hour traffic under emergency conditions and had just hiked a considerable distance, carrying a lot of equipment, the adrenaline was flowing and we were ready for action. We explained why we were there, her response was to ask us to follow her to a small hidden away office. On entering the office we were introduced to the station inspector but had to wait as he seemed busy on the telephone.
We stood and waited with anticipation and probably looked more than a little bemused. This man eventually finished his conversation and then calmly began to tell us that someone had collapsed on one of his trains. The nature and severity of the problem was still unclear and I was thinking where is the train and more importantly the patient.
Eventually all was revealed. It was like pulling teeth!
The patient an adult male had been travelling on a crowded London bound, rush hour train. You can picture the scene, everyone busy minding their own business, hiding behind their newspapers. Someone eventually realised that he was not sleeping but was unresponsive, presumably a member of the travelling public. When the train pulled into Walthamstow station, the station staff were alerted and it would seem that the actions taken were as follows:
- Quickly evacuate the train
- Shunt said train into inaccessible underground siding
So we had to wait!
The train was eventually recalled but only after another train had passed through the station. It slowly returned, empty with the exception of the patient. Quite spooky really.
A quick dash up and down the platform and we found our man still sitting in the seat in which he had collapsed. Unfortunately he was quite Dead!
Equally unfortunate was the fact that in those days we did not have the authority to recognise Death as we do now so had to initiate and continue resuscitation. All this, while getting him and all of our equipment back to the surface and our waiting ambulance.
Needless to say that was me knackered for the rest of the shift!
Tuesday 22 February 2011
Aircraft! What Aircraft?
"Well theres no one here" said the police officer, as he was exiting the drive of the Assembly Hall in Walthamstow. I turned to my mate and said "I knew it was a hoax". We had been dispatched to a call involving a crashed aircraft seen to go down behind the Walthamstow Assembly Halls in Forest Road, Walthamstow, London E.17.
When this happened, Paramedics were not recognised in the UK, we were all ambulancemen or women. Some of us though had advanced skills.
Anyway the police officer said that something had been reported happening in a road not more than 400 yards away. A road that was subject to frequent hoax calls. I was now more sceptical than ever.
So off we went looking for an aircraft. As we entered the road which was bordered on each side by small residential houses there was nothing to see. No carnage, no arm waving, no smoking buildings, no wailing or knashing of teeth, no wreckage, just an elderly man quietly standing on the pavement about a hundred yards in the distance looking in our direction. We made our way towards him in the hope that he might have seen something that could help us.
As we pulled up alongside this chap he nonchantly pointed towards his house and said "Its over there!" "What's over there?" I said impatiently. He looked at me blankly and walked off towards his front door reaching into his pocket for his keys. I looked at my mate, he looked at me, we shrugged our shoulders and decided to follow him. To this day I am still amused by his apparent lack of emotion. He had even taken the time to lock his door before coming out to the street.
He unlocked the door of his small terraced house and we dutifully followed him through to the back door. He then opened the door and there it was. I was lost for words!
Propped up against a factory wall that bordered the end of his narrow garden was a Cessna. A small light aircraft! It was standing at approximately 45 degrees on what was left of its tail section. The tail had snapped, as had both wings and its propellor was lying to one side approx 20 feet away.
There was no smoke or fire but the two things that immediately grabbed my attention was the strong smell of fuel and the sight of a female hanging head downwards from the cockpit, with a large pool of blood gathering on the floor beneath her. We could also see another female sitting inside of the cockpit, but our view was impeded by the perspex housing. When we had recovered from our shock and surprise, we decided to ignore the smell of fuel and ventured forward.
Unfortunatley it did not take long to establish that the poor lady hanging from her side of the cockpit was dead. We draped a blanket over her in an attempt to shield her from the eyes that were now peering at this sight from the many adjacent windows. We then clambered onto the wings of the aircraft to examine the second occupant. Amazingly she had survived the impact and was displaying signs of life. Our access was impeded by the damaged cockpit housing, however, with a little gentle persuasion and a couple of size nines we managed to dislodge it.
On closer examination we found that our patient was trapped by a large engine that was sitting in her lap. This prevented us from examining her lower half. She was breathing, had a pulse and was drifting in and out of consciousness. Apart from what seemed to be a relatively minor injury to her head, her abdomen and chest appeared intact. Although her conscious level was impaired there were no signs of clinical shock which was fortunate, as it was not going to be easy extricating her from the wreckage. Due to the angle of the plane and the displacement of her seat she was almost upside down.
We had of course called for help as soon as we were aware of the severity of the incident and continued to treat our patient with oxygen and monitor her condition. It was not long before the cavalry arrived. We were soon inundated with police, firefighters, onlookers, media, uncle Tom Cobley and all.
I estimate that it took about one hour to successfully extricate our patient from the wreckage of her plane. She was then conveyed to the local A/E where it was found that she had a fractured orbit (eye cavity) which had allowed air into her cranial cavity. She also suffered fractures to her lower limbs. I believe she recovered sufficiently to discharge herself into private care following her initial NHS treatment.
The rescue was a collaboration between all emergency services, including our local BASIC's doctor. I offer particular thanks to the Fire Service. With great innovation and skill they erected an "A" frame on the flat roof of the factory building and with block and tackle and rescue equipment, managed to hoist the engine from our patients lap. It was then possible with sheer volume of numbers to remove the patient and pass her carefully onto a waiting stretcher.
I'm a great believer in fate. Our patient had survived in part due to her seat mountings shearing when the engine of the plane was shunted towards her. Her friend was not so lucky, her seat held fast and she was crushed!
Oh! I nearly forgot to mention. How did this happen?
It would seem that the two women were flying to an airstrip somewhere in Hertfordshire. When approaching our area the plane developed an electrical fault which caused the wiring in the cockpit to ignite. This began to fill the plane with smoke. The pilot was compelled to cut all power, which meant turning the engine off. She attempted to land her plane in a playing field behind the Assembly Hall, (hence the location we were originally given) but because of her now limited control, was unable to prevent the plane from bouncing. It continued to glide towards the houses where it was eventually found.
By some miracle the plane had not collided with the house in who's garden it landed. The only damage to the house appeared to be a couple of broken roof tiles.
When this happened, Paramedics were not recognised in the UK, we were all ambulancemen or women. Some of us though had advanced skills.
Anyway the police officer said that something had been reported happening in a road not more than 400 yards away. A road that was subject to frequent hoax calls. I was now more sceptical than ever.
So off we went looking for an aircraft. As we entered the road which was bordered on each side by small residential houses there was nothing to see. No carnage, no arm waving, no smoking buildings, no wailing or knashing of teeth, no wreckage, just an elderly man quietly standing on the pavement about a hundred yards in the distance looking in our direction. We made our way towards him in the hope that he might have seen something that could help us.
As we pulled up alongside this chap he nonchantly pointed towards his house and said "Its over there!" "What's over there?" I said impatiently. He looked at me blankly and walked off towards his front door reaching into his pocket for his keys. I looked at my mate, he looked at me, we shrugged our shoulders and decided to follow him. To this day I am still amused by his apparent lack of emotion. He had even taken the time to lock his door before coming out to the street.
He unlocked the door of his small terraced house and we dutifully followed him through to the back door. He then opened the door and there it was. I was lost for words!
Propped up against a factory wall that bordered the end of his narrow garden was a Cessna. A small light aircraft! It was standing at approximately 45 degrees on what was left of its tail section. The tail had snapped, as had both wings and its propellor was lying to one side approx 20 feet away.
There was no smoke or fire but the two things that immediately grabbed my attention was the strong smell of fuel and the sight of a female hanging head downwards from the cockpit, with a large pool of blood gathering on the floor beneath her. We could also see another female sitting inside of the cockpit, but our view was impeded by the perspex housing. When we had recovered from our shock and surprise, we decided to ignore the smell of fuel and ventured forward.
Unfortunatley it did not take long to establish that the poor lady hanging from her side of the cockpit was dead. We draped a blanket over her in an attempt to shield her from the eyes that were now peering at this sight from the many adjacent windows. We then clambered onto the wings of the aircraft to examine the second occupant. Amazingly she had survived the impact and was displaying signs of life. Our access was impeded by the damaged cockpit housing, however, with a little gentle persuasion and a couple of size nines we managed to dislodge it.
On closer examination we found that our patient was trapped by a large engine that was sitting in her lap. This prevented us from examining her lower half. She was breathing, had a pulse and was drifting in and out of consciousness. Apart from what seemed to be a relatively minor injury to her head, her abdomen and chest appeared intact. Although her conscious level was impaired there were no signs of clinical shock which was fortunate, as it was not going to be easy extricating her from the wreckage. Due to the angle of the plane and the displacement of her seat she was almost upside down.
We had of course called for help as soon as we were aware of the severity of the incident and continued to treat our patient with oxygen and monitor her condition. It was not long before the cavalry arrived. We were soon inundated with police, firefighters, onlookers, media, uncle Tom Cobley and all.
I estimate that it took about one hour to successfully extricate our patient from the wreckage of her plane. She was then conveyed to the local A/E where it was found that she had a fractured orbit (eye cavity) which had allowed air into her cranial cavity. She also suffered fractures to her lower limbs. I believe she recovered sufficiently to discharge herself into private care following her initial NHS treatment.
The rescue was a collaboration between all emergency services, including our local BASIC's doctor. I offer particular thanks to the Fire Service. With great innovation and skill they erected an "A" frame on the flat roof of the factory building and with block and tackle and rescue equipment, managed to hoist the engine from our patients lap. It was then possible with sheer volume of numbers to remove the patient and pass her carefully onto a waiting stretcher.
I'm a great believer in fate. Our patient had survived in part due to her seat mountings shearing when the engine of the plane was shunted towards her. Her friend was not so lucky, her seat held fast and she was crushed!
Oh! I nearly forgot to mention. How did this happen?
It would seem that the two women were flying to an airstrip somewhere in Hertfordshire. When approaching our area the plane developed an electrical fault which caused the wiring in the cockpit to ignite. This began to fill the plane with smoke. The pilot was compelled to cut all power, which meant turning the engine off. She attempted to land her plane in a playing field behind the Assembly Hall, (hence the location we were originally given) but because of her now limited control, was unable to prevent the plane from bouncing. It continued to glide towards the houses where it was eventually found.
By some miracle the plane had not collided with the house in who's garden it landed. The only damage to the house appeared to be a couple of broken roof tiles.
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