I spotted another full moon this week. It reminded me that the phenomenon isn’t just limited to night shifts (patients aren’t actually vampires. Vampires don’t get ill). The “less sensible” patient can require ambulance assistance any time and, while we might not know it’s there at the time, during the day when there is a full moon.

One such call appeared on my screen mid-morning one winter. There was a lot of snow on the roads, but they were drivable. The job was about 10 miles from our station and not a high priority, so we didn’t rush.

The on-screen navigation was known for its inaccuracies, and the maps it was based on were somewhat out of date. Thats where the job began to go wrong. The estate we were going to was very new and didn’t exist on the maps the system used, but it still plotted the “quickest route”…..or so we believed.

It was when we drove into an industrial building site we first queried its accuracy. My partner was driving and came to a rapid halt at the bottom of a snowy, muddy, hill. After realising we were off course I decided to look the address up on a well known mapping app on my phone. We were very off course!

My partner turned the Ambulance and drove up the hill, at least that was the intention. Part way up the wheels lost their grip and began to spin on the snow. “You’ll have to dig us out” my partner grinned. Yes, it was my job at that moment in time. I climbed out of the ambulance and opened one of the external side hatches, located the snow shovel (modern ambulances are equipped for most situations) and began to clear the snow away from the rear wheels. My partner slowly began to drive the ambulance clear, and kept going. Stopping at the top of the long hill, they radioed me, suggesting I hurried to join them as we were still en route to an emergency.

After updating control on our situation, we got back on course with the help of my phone. The job was an RTC – “4×4 vs house”. Neither of us was sure what to expect.

As we got closer, we knew we were at the correct location. There were an unusually high number of police cars and officers also making their way to the scene. We turned a corner into a cul-de-sac and knew we’d arrived.

There was a posh 4×4 holding up a spare bedroom, seriously. The driver was out of the vehicle. Their partner was away on business but had asked them to run the car every other day so it didn’t sieze up. Having gone to do so, the driver hadn’t realised the vehicle had been left in Drive and, lurching forwards as soon as the ignition was turned on, rather than brake they had accelerated. This had propelled them across the cul-de-sac and straight into the end wall of the garage attached to the house opposite. The garage the owners had built a spare bedroom above. The car literally was holding up the room as the supporting wall had mostly been destroyed.

The fire brigade had also arrived and we left them to the structural issues while we began to assess our patient. Their injuries? They had knocked their knee on the vehicle door when climbing out! Surprisingly, they declined a trip to A&E. When we asked why they had called for an ambulance they replied “isn’t that what you are supposed to do if there’s been a crash?”.

We later found out that the excessive police presence was because the house next door to the demolished garage belonged to one of the officers.

Around the same time, a city based colleague declared the full moon.

It’s genuinely a thing!