I was on day shift the day my father passed away. My partner and I had been out to a couple of jobs but we were on standby in the mess room when I got the call. My partner realised there was something wrong as soon as I hung up. When they found out, they made me go home and contacted control to let them know. I remember driving home, having a shower (not sure why) and changing out of my uniform. The next thing I remember is receiving a call from a family member asking where I was. I was in a small village, some distance from home, on one of my favourite country roads for driving.
I went into hiding for the next three weeks and my friends gave me space. On reflection, possibly neither of those was a particularly good idea. Death was something that happened in other people’s lives. To me they were “jobs”, they had to be. Other people did the grieving, I walked away. Suddenly I was actually one of those other people…and I didn’t know how to be.
On the day I returned to work the second job of the day was to a local nursing home, run by the same company as the one my father had passed away in three weeks previously. The Ambulance screen claimed we were going to someone having a seizure, when we got there it turned out to be an elderly resident in complete cardiac arrest. We began work on the patient, until one of the nursing home staff tried to stop us. It transpired that the patient had a DNACPR order – Do Not Attempt CPR. This document was an ambulance crews’ nightmare, an end of life decision made by the patient or their family and their doctor. It is a legal document that prevents anyone from bringing a patient, usually with a poor quality of life, back from a fatal incident such as cardiac arrest. Unfortunately, until the document is presented, ambulance crews have a duty of care to do the opposite. We asked to see the document and the nurse presented us with a photocopy, not good enough. After 10 minutes of CPR the original document appeared and we stopped. It took around 40 more, long, minutes for all signs of life to completely disappear. 40 long minutes before our involvement was over. As I was doing the paperwork I heard two staff members talking – “That’s the second one this month. There was one in the other home three weeks ago.” my partner looked over at me to check I was ok. I nodded. Back in the Ambulance the screen lit up with the next job….
Some weeks later, it dawned on me that the nursing home my father was in was on the outskirts of my working area and I could have been called to that job
Cancer patients are regular jobs. Usually you gave them analgesia for the pain and took them to the cancer ward. Once dropped off, we’d go to the next job. To sit in a consultant’s office while they explain to you and your spouse that your spouse has cancer is not a situation you expect to be in, nor are you trained for. It is a genuinely surreal experience and it took some time to sink in. “This only happens to other people!!”. These are times when true friends get you both through.
There was no support from my ambulance service, no help offered. Thankfully surgery was successful, but I’m still waiting for any ambulance service manger to ask me how I’m doing, or even show an interest in that situation… or the loss of my father. The support my spouse and myself received was external, from cancer support charities. Without that support it would have been so much worse. The cancer is gone, the psychological effects are still there, but I can’t say enough about how amazing the support of those cancer charities is. If there are heroes out there, that’s where they work.
As always, this post is not about looking for sympathy in any form whatsoever. Ambulance crews face challenges every shift, and I am fully aware I am far from being the only one to face such situations. This post is to highlight yet another reason the Ambulance services across the UK need to step up their staff support, possibly even begin supporting in some areas of the country. We are all only human after all.
Life After the Blues (and twos) 