Bark at the moon

There’s a phenomenon know across all of the emergency services – the full moon. Ask any of them and there will be no doubts, a full moon brings out the crazies (can I call them that?).

Often during busy nights, when the jobs we’d be called to were of a strange nature, one of us would question the lunar status. Almost every time, the moon would be full.

Every job has to be treated as whatever appears on the information screen, until proven otherwise and, occasionally, it would be a genuine job. Even before starting a night shift, if we spotted the moon, we could confidently predict a surreal 12 hours ahead.

This also applied to being careful what you wished for. While on shift during a full moon, certain people (regulars) and certain types of job or ailments were never mentioned or they actualy came to be! I proved this one shift when I deliberately mentioned one regular patient and a couple of different illnesses at the start. Everything and everyone I mentioned appeared on our screen at some point during the next 12 hours!

I experienced one of my first stabbing incidents under a full moon. On reflection, I should have expected something abnormal. The job came through: a patient in their mid 30s, stab injury to their left leg with a bread knife. Most readers will know that a bread knife has a serrated edge that could do a lot of damage, on the way in…and on the way out. We ensured that the police were dispatched as we made our way to the scene, just in case the assailant was still in the area.

We arrived on scene at the same time as the police. I was attending so went into the house first. I walked in to the kitchen (where else would a bread knife be?) to find the patient sitting next to the kitchen table, with a rather large bread knife protruding from their left thigh. There wasn’t a whole lot of blood evident, but dangerous internal damage could not be ruled out. We would never remove a penetrating object anyway, that was for the staff at A&E to do after ensuring it was safe to do so.

I approached the patient, assessing them and the situation as I did so. They had been sitting with their head down, but raised it as I approached. Their face bore a manic smile that caused me to step back unexpectedly, standing on the foot of the police officer following behind me. “Good evening” I mumbled. “I’d stand up to greet you, but I have this stuck in my leg”. The patient made as if to take hold of the knife. I suddenly panicked that they were about to pull it out. “No! Let’s leave that there” I blurted out, images of arterial bleeds in my head.

One of the police officers began questioning the patient. They asked who had put the knife there. “They did” said the patient. “Who are they?” said the officer. “Them. Them”. Spotting our quizzical looks, the patient clarified – “Them!”, gesticulating wildly at their head. Alarm bells began ringing for us all. Loudly!

We had a mid-thirties patient with possible psychiatric issues, potentially armed with a large knife and a wound that could become highly concerning. Deep breath, reassess quickly. “Can you hear them just now?” said the police officer. “Don’t be stupid! They left when you arrived!”. Oddly, that made sense. The patient seemed calm and in control of themself. I explained that it would be bad to remove the knife, and that I wanted to wrap a bandage around it and their leg to hold it in place. They agreed, and I, cautiously, stepped closer to them.

While I was dressing the wound area, my partner had brought the folding wheelchair from the Ambulance. The, very compliant patient moved across to wheelchair and was wheeled out to the ambulance. “Thanks guys” said one of thd police officers as they were about to leave. Oh no! I wasn’t sitting in the rear of the ambulance with a somewhat disturbed patient on my own. The police have stab vests, ambulance crews have lovely thin uniforms. Reluctantly, one of the officers agreed to travel with me to the hospital while his partner followed in their police car.

The patient was unexpectedly relaxed for the journey, unsettling in itself. I handed over to a nurse at A&E and the on-call psychiatric nurse was called in to help.

I never found out what happened to that patient, mostly because I didn’t ask, but, if I think hard enough, I can still remember the manic look on their face when I first entered that kitchen.

I can’t think of any other job where I was completely on edge through the whole time I was with a patient. It took a bit of time to wind down after that job, but Control weren’t bothered. They had jobs stacking up.

The next job appeared on our screen and we went mobile….