annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A&E pt1 This was the other day. It's part one, to be continued. And here I am again with a wristband – wrong kind of wristband, though, I’m in bloody A&E. Sharp chest pains just at the end of the zoom art group, spreading into my neck and jaw. Looked it up (on the NHS website, I’m not totally mad), it said call 999 so I did. Ambulance and three nice female crew arrived very quickly, did an ECG – you know, stickers all over you and wires and a machine that spews out rolls of paper with wriggly lines that they scrutinize intently. ECG ok but blood pressure sky high. They said I need a blood test to rule out a “cardiac incident” so here I am and I guess here I’ll be for a good long while yet. We’ve only made it through the outer set of doors of the ambulance bay. In this ‘air lock’ space, neither quite in nor quite out, is me, another woman also sat in a wheelchair – she’s continuously trying to vomit into a cardboard sick bowl, with no success - and an older woman spark out on a trolley, connected up to all sorts, including an oxygen mask. Plus all our crew, seven of them altogether, standing up, chatting a bit, mainly looking at their phones. After an hour or so we’ve all been moved through the doors onto the corridor and been ‘handed over’ to A&E staff so our ambulance crew have gone back out. The trolley woman has gone but as I wrote those words two more people on trolleys came in, one straight through double doors into the Resuscitation Area, the other handed over at once. So although we’d been handed over previously, these new patients are more poorly so have precedence. I’m going to be here forever I reckon, though a bloke in grey scrubs has just taken blood samples so I’m on my way. (Adam, not just a HCA, can take blood and fit cannulas, loves it, plays in a marching band, not an instrument, is a drum major, like a conductor, wanted to be in the Marines in their band but can’t read music.) From here I can see the ‘office’ area where all the computers are and all the staff keep coming and going, tapping on keyboards and looking at screens, sometimes in groups, pointing at the screen, discussing, explaining, deciding. Different scrubs – navy blue, bright blue, pale blue, green, grey, pink, paramedics in their green uniforms. If they all signify different jobs, it’s more than I can work out. I always think the navy blue are ward sisters, staff nurses, but there are loads of them so now I’m not sure. Who are the doctors? A tall man in ordinary shirt and trousers pushes a broom around. I’m sat in a hard wheelchair, no cushion, wide enough for someone much bigger than me and with chains and locks like they use to secure supermarket trolleys. Someone in the background is groaning in pain, rhythmically, rising and falling, on and on and on. A voice rises above the background noise: “Right, Gordon, can you stand up for me? Thanks. Now sit down here, Gordon.” (He’s behind me, back behind the doors, hasn’t leapfrogged past me. [He has now, ten minutes later]) The staff move purposefully, writing on forms, taking implements out of sterile packaging as they walk. There’s a woman across from me lying on a trolley, bright pink blouse, black patterned trousers, green crocs, lying on her side, legs drawn up, clutching a grey sick bowl, green cotton hospital blanket folded under her head. Greasy hair, eyes closed, mouth slack, breathing heavily, her whole chest rising and falling. All the people who were here before me have gone. “How the lady is doing in number3?” But no, the sleeping woman has been moved in front of me and another old bloke, on a trolley, groaning. There’s a security bloke wandering around, looking pleased with himself. “I’m going to need to do that again, Philip. We’ll get you comfy first.” He’s still groaning and the other rhythmic groaning has kept going, for more than an hour now. Such a buzz of conversation, only a few fragments rise above it. “You’ll feel a sharp scratch again..” “OWWWW!” I’ve been moved across the way, can’t see so much. I’m alternating between reading my book (The Opposite of Lonely by Doug Johnstone), knitting my scarf and writing shit down. I’ve been here for several hours and no one has taken any notice of me except Adam, who took my blood, ages ago. About six young people come in, a group of them, all very clean in brand new, still in folds from the box, yellow shirts, lanyards and that, but the biggest thing is clean, brand new, untouched by the weariness of this A&E. Students, I reckon. “Magda? You busy…?” “I’ll give you a hand.” My main ambulance woman just returned, holding another set of notes. “Philip, I’m just giving you some morphine for the pain.” Boings and beeps, endless. Beeps from the monitors all over the place, don’t know what the boing is but it’s been going forever. “You haven’t got a flat surface, I don’t suppose…?” Met with a tired, hollow laugh. A trolley emerges from a bay behind me, a woman clutching a gas and air mask, groaning – she’s the one that’s been groaning since I arrived. Behind her comes a tall man pushing a buggy with a sleeping toddler. “He said he had bloods…” One of the grey scrubs women just cleaned out the bay (RAT Bay says a notice hanging wonkily from the ceiling) and went off calling to me over her shoulder, “Don’t let anyone else take this bay, this is MINE!” and comes back almost at once with a man from the waiting room. I gather that he’s had severe toothache, couldn’t get a dentist so has ended up taking an overdose of both paracetamol and ibuprofen. “Over 40 paracetamol” “Yeah, but over three days”. “I did see two machines in ambulatory but that was earlier…” They’re trying to get a canula into the guy with toothache but can’t get a vein. More and more and more people crowd into the bay. There’s a woman standing, rocking, carrying a naked baby wrapped in a grubby fleece. Woman plump, young, hair tightly tied up off her face, grey hoodie and joggers. Baby quiet, long and thin, staring around. “We’re going for X-Ray, OK? I’m going to wheel you.” Waiting ambulance crew play peek-a-boo with the baby. I’ve just been seen by a staff nurse. They may want to do second blood test to check that some thing I’ve never heard of and didn’t quite catch hasn’t risen. All change. Baby taken off to a cubicle, youngish new bloke on trolley parked up opposite me, someone else, hidden by monitors moved quickly through the entrance and straight into the Resus Area.
12:44 a.m. - 24.11.23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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