Last Tuesday at a suburban petrol station a woman burned inside a car. Withstab wounds and near 100% burns she spoke to paramedics on scene.

She died later that night in hospital.

I spoke to paramedics who had heard the gruesome details first-hand from those on scene. Of how they felt that this was the worst scene a paramedic could attend. And of some paramedic’s relief that it hadn’t been them on scene.

I read in the local paper, the Knox Leader (June 8, 2010 – words by – Adrian Bernecich), about a hero grappling with the horror of the day. Dean Filmer showed all that is good about humanity by trying to help despite the carnage and danger. He’s also going to seek counselling after all that he’d witnessed.

I just hope the paramedic’s who attended this patient seek counselling themselves. No training or life experience could prepare a paramedic for what happened that day. Those that transported the woman to hospital would have had her cries and pleas in their ears for the long journey to one of the city trauma centres. They would have fought to keep her comfortable despite her skin peeling away at the slightest touch.

These people, the paramedics, will grapple with this horror for a long time to come and the community will probably never understand this battle.

To papers, like the Knox Leader, don’t forget that paramedics are people too. Nasty things take their toll.

I think they deserved a foot-note after this job.

Some days you just wish you hadn’t put the right shoe on the left foot when you woke up.

“The other day” was one of those days.

My partner and I received a job just around the corner. Looking at the pager I knew it was the local skate park. Some winner had taken the plunge off the edge of the bowl and hurt himself. We soon earned an upgrade to bells and whistles when the caller said his mate had fallen a couple of metres on to his head and then had a seizure.

We pull up and peroxide boy says his mate is awake and talking. “He’s sittin’ o’er on the chair ma’e”.

That’s when my day went south. Fast.

Firstly I got three stories. “He was unconscious straight away”, “Nah mate, he crawled out and sat on the chair”, “he was shakin’ for ages”, “mate, I tell ya, he was awake when he was shakin’, mate”, “hang on let me get another photo”, “this is goin’ to MySpace tonight”, “oh yeah I ‘fink he had somfin’ comin’ out ‘is ear, like water”.

We just went around in circles.

We checked his spine and grips along with his conscious state. We put a collar on him to support his neck, just in case and popped him onto the stretcher. He had no base of skull fracture signs. His pupils were a-ok. His vitals were fine and he just wanted to go home.

We just couldn’t put him into a category. He’d possibly had a seizure and possibly been unconscious at some point in time, so we spinally immobilised him. His injuries didn’t fit out time critical guidelines so I felt he’d need a hospital that could do some CT scans, just in case. My partner was undecided but did feel concerned by parts of the story, understandably.

So we threw the ball to the captain and got some external thoughts.

The clinician felt the major trauma hospital in the city was the way to go. Just in case.

Sorted.

He got a cannula (which he hated), ECG, O2, a trickle of fluid, a big time secondary survey (examination), and we made sure he was strapped down tight, just in case. I suppose that’s what it’s all about. Just in case.

For the rest of the shift I just felt, “wrong”. In some ways I felt that I’d lost control of the case. Perhaps if left to my own devices I would have gone to the wrong hospital and the patient could have deteriorated. I just don’t know.

Next time I’ll know. I think erring on the side of caution is the paramedics best option.