Hot days like today often equal nanna down days. Nannas get all hot and bothered and dehydrated and unbalanced and boom! Nanna down. Paramedic in an ambulance required.

Osteoporosis has taken its toll and those brittle bones are ripe for the brakin’.

Fractured NOFs (neck of femurs or the longest bone in the body) are really common and that’s what turned up today. We also had the classic dehydrated nanna in a barely rousable state. “We just thought she was havin’ a kip”.

That’s when you want some good veins to go vampire on. You just need to get that cannula into the patient to rehydrate them or take their pain away. But you don’t often get them. The older folks get, the more calcified the veins are and they become elusive. The structure of the skin on the arms has broken down causing the skin to just act like a loose fabric over the arm while underneath the veins dance around like worms when you try and pin them down.

So that’s what ruined my partners day. He was hot, sweaty and in the heat he’d worn his overalls. The barely audible cursing under his breath as he “blew” 3 cannulations in a row (not like him at all) would have been funny if it wasn’t for the poor oldies in pain and in delusional states.

You have days like these and you just have to get back on the horse. Patients need pain relief and fluid.

Come Winter he’ll be wishing for some of the Summer sun.

I expect that if I ever reach the ripe old age of 93 I’ll be a demented old fool. Drooling unhappily into my porridge-like steak and beans puree. I’ll be grumbling that back in my day, men like Kurt Cobain composed “real” music and the youth of today have no respect for the elderly, and will they please turn down that infernal racket.

Well, today I met a remarkable old duck. 93 years young and living alone. Her son was down for the holiday season and he was heading home tomorrow. She padded out the back door without her walking stick to fetch something from the garage and managed to plunge head first down a set of stairs leading from the back porch.

She landed with her arms outstretched and kissed the pavement with her forehead. Her son found her trying to untangle herself with her feet still on the top step and her head resting on the concrete path three steps below.

She’d given herself a golf ball size haematoma on the hairline dead centre on the forehead and her left wrist was at an awkward angle, an obvious fracture. She had skin tears on her elbows and several of her fingers were bloodied. When we arrived she’d righted herself and was sitting on the stairs. Shaken but only mildly stirred.

“Me arm hurts a bit and I feel a bit shaky”.

“No wonder”, I said, “Someone from my generation would be screaming and crying”.

I gave her the once over but she was remarkably unscathed for such a violent trip.

Cervical spine – check. Palpate spine – check. Head, teeth, shoulders, hips, legs and arms – check. It goes to show that good genes can take you a long way. She was even a smoker.

A super-nanna indeed.

A puff on the penthrane, an air splint and she was happy. I suppose that’s one way to have your son hang around a little longer.

The Age newspaper article by Dan Oakes explored the deepening crisis the ambulance service is facing in Victoria. It goes on to explain that paramedics are fed up with overwork and the violence that threatens them on a Friday and Saturday night.

One solution outlined by Ambulance Service Victoria (ASV) management is to abolish the paramedics rolled in rate of pay and then giving back the penalties in the traditional weekend periods. This, according to ASV, would make these more appealing times to work.

This issue has some issues:

• Paramedics, at the moment, don’t get paid professional rates of pay unlike other medical “professionals”. For example a nurse is regarded as “professional” but paramedics are not despite the elevated levels of responsibility (in the field).
• Has reducing a persons wage ever improved morale and their desire to work for an employer?
• Employing 21 year olds just out of university (now the only way to become a paramedic) who have the understandable desire to experience life outside work with friends on a Saturday night. Why would they want to work? The ambulance service intake is now almost devoid of any people with previous careers or people with a family of their own.

Anyway I’m sure you can all discuss this amongst yourselves and let us know what you think. The comments field below should be working and you can send us your thoughts.

Some jobs just continue to surprise. Last night was certainly no different.

The first job of the night began as a car rollover at a major intersection and ended up being a remarkable piece of luck.

Husband and wife were heading over to their son’s home for tea when the husband feels himself passing out. As he blacks out his foot hits the accelerator. The car launches from the lights and the wife grabs the steering wheel from the passenger seat.

She manages to dodge and weave her way across the intersection. The car heads down a small embankment, onto the wrong side of the road, up the gutter and down the footpath. She remembers looking for something hard to hit but not too hard. She picks out a large signpost and her car strikes it hard. The car is stopped.

For her troubles she breaks her right arm, a small price to pay for being able to hang on to the steering wheel. Her husband has some discomfort from the seat belt.

A lucky escape indeed.