Tag: #relatives

Keep the Faith

Recently I was sitting outside a café with some other people. We noticed a bit of a commotion across the other side of the road. Some large seagulls were attacking a young pigeon, quite savagely.

I stood up and walked over to the scene scaring the seagulls away but, as soon as I turned away they were back. The pigeon was in a bad way but alive so I picked it up and walked back towards the café.

As I walked past the café and the others joined me, the pigeon passed away in my hands.

The people in that café must have thought I was a bit nuts, maybe I was, but I wasn’t going to do nothing. It may have been “nature in action” but my instinct was to try.

It reminded me why I joined the ambulance service in the first place – because I’m a rubbish onlooker and I wanted to help. It also reminded me of the many jobs we did that didn’t have the outcome we wanted. Even when we knew the situation was hopeless, we still tried.

Early in my career an older paramedic told me: “If it’s someone’s time to go, there’s nothing and no-one can change that, but we don’t make that decision!”. At that time the figures showed CPR jobs were around 5-8% successful, but everyone we were called to was in the 92-95% group until we had done our job.

Sometimes that was difficult, especially when you knew the relatives were watching. It would have been so easy to do nothing and tell the family it was over, rather than letting them hold onto some hope as we worked, but there was hope in us too, hope that this patient was one of the 5-8%, and we would never give up until
protocols said we had to.

We never beat nature, the lost ones were always lost but, to shake the hand of the survivor, the one who would not be there if we’d lost our faith – there are no words.

The show must go on.

Someone recently asked me how I coped with the death and dying when I was in the Ambulance Service. I spoke in a previous post about how the crew depersonalise jobs. It’s something you learn the importance of very quickly. Often a crew will be required to give a police statement regarding a death, if a patient’s death is unexplained (usually the case, until a doctor writes a death certificate or a post mortem is carried out). One of the questions always asked is “Would you recognise the patient again?” to which I always answered “No”. The patient could be lying in the next room, but I had blanked their face from my mind, I had to. Occasionally the patient would be someone we had dealt with a number of times, one with an ongoing illness, someone you had built a rapport with. On those occasions there was sadness, and the family usually appreciated your precence.

On one occasion, I took my old school master in to hospital for a planned stay. I didn’t recognise them initially but, when I did, the respect came back as I remembered this kind person who had helped shape me and my school mates. Little did I know this would be their last journey, but I’m glad I was able to pay some kind of respect before they passed away.

The terminally ill patients were frequently inspiring. They knew the life they has left was short but they spent their time preparing, and preparing the people around them. “Live every day as if it’s your last” one of them said to me. Something I still need to remind myself of constantly. Those were the ones who lived life to the full, who often saw so many positives, even when facing their own end.

“There’s always someone worse off than you”. Words from another terminally ill patient. Words that kept me going often during my time in the service.

Some didn’t know death was coming – cardiac arrests, RTCs… The patients who had passed away before we arrived were the ones that were easy to blank out. The ones who we worked hard to save, only to have the A&E staff make the difficult decision that it was hopeless to continue, those were difficult to blank. While still being able to depersonalise the job, it was still hard to forget the effort we put in. Sometimes there was anger – anger at the patient for dying, anger at the hospital staff for giving up…anger at ourselves for failing to save a life.

I remember my first cardiac arrest. It was also my first real CPR. The horror of breaking ribs lasted seconds as we worked hard to save the patient. We rushed them to hospital but it was all hopeless. I thought I had come to terms with it until we returned to A&E the same day. One of the nurses pointed out the patient’s family being shown to the relatives room. They looked up at us as they walked past, and my heart sank as they tried to smile, grateful smiles for our efforts. Our part in it all would be forgotten quickly, but at that point in time we had done our jobs as best we could.

Sometimes relatives would ask to see us so they could thank us for our efforts. The first time I initially declined because I felt that I was “only doing the job I was being paid to do”, but a nurse politely explained how it was part of the families’ grieving process. Those moments were hard. This was someone elses’ grief, but I was being involved in it.

I saw death in many forms. While the memories of the lost ones will live on in those close to them, most will be forgotten by me over time. But there are those that will stay with me – some for good reasons, inspirational patients, some for bad reasons, the circumstances around their death. But all will have one thing in common – I don’t remember their faces.