Wednesday 19 June 2013

Bemused

"63 year old female, cardiac arrest"

There's that all to familiar ominous feeling when we get dispatched to a cardiac arrest. There is a heightened tension in the cab and my senses are much more focused on the drive. I can feel my eyes fixed on the road ahead, assessing the movement of everything ahead of me. What our advanced driving course taught me most was awareness and hazard perception. After 5 years of practice it's all second nature but still requires concentration. At any one time on a blue light drive we are planning our movements based on everything in the distance and just in front of us. It's changing constantly. 

I was racing through the high street, watching for pedestrians on both sides of the road, scanning the parked cars for potential movement, monitoring all 3 sets of traffic lights and looking for gaps in the traffic for me to weave through. A car 100 meters ahead on the other side of the road flashed to let me through. They were just before a traffic island which had a pedestrian standing on it. I pulled out onto the wrong side of the road, my lights and sirens were on and headed towards the gap the car had created for me.

As I approached the island, I could see a man waving at me. I started to slow down in case he was flagging us down. As I got closer I could see the expression on his face. I could also see it wasn't a wave. He was doing a 'wanker' hand gesture, whilst mouthing expletives at us. His eyes full of of hate and anger. As we were drawing level with him he raised his middle finger and spat at the ambulance. We continued on our way.......bemused.

Please, someone explain why people like this exist! How can anyone have such hatred for the ambulance service?! You could see the hate in his eyes. Is it a uniform thing?! I genuinely don't get it!

I'd loved to have stopped and asked for an explanation or to hear what he was saying but a lady was dead and we needed to fix that! We arrived, fixed it, she survived and wrote a thank you letter. I wonder if he would have behaved the same if he'd walked past us doing CPR! Hmmm......

Thoughts on a post card please. I'm looking for answers and solutions! Sensible or not!

13 comments:

  1. There isn't really any need for comment- he's a sad loser!
    Don't let it get you down - remember that the majority respect and support the wonderful and vital work that you do.
    Grateful

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  2. I'd suggest Ella he was either under the influence of something or an absolute subhuman bottom feeder.
    I genuinely to believe the human race has evolved as far as its going to go, has gone over the peak and regressing down the other side back towards neanderthal man.
    We did a resus in a Chicago Rock pub a while ago. The punters were kicking our kit around, mocking us mid CPR, intentionally getting in the way obstructing our work, getting super aggressive when we wouldn't let one of the patient's entourage drunkenly try and hug him because we were attempting to save his life....Police were called in the end.

    I don't know where its all heading.

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  3. Its a crown vehicle. Its classified as assault...if you got the ref, pass it on.......ps keep up the good work.

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  4. Why does he hate you? Cos he's a knob.

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  5. Well its good the lady survived. As for the gentleman, the chances are that to him uniform = authority and authority = what told him off in school for punching people, hence all uniforms are bad.

    You could put it down to, people are stupid. because they are.

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  6. The human rights act has created to many wankers.

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  7. Could have made a solution by mowing him down! One less anyway!

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  8. One thing I know for sure is you never know what is going through people's heads or on in their lives to make them act the way they do. You never know, he may have felt silly afterwards and regretted it :-)

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  9. It's easy to generalize this guy as a sub-human douche bag. But I think it comes down to the perception of people of vehicles. We tend not to view vehicles on the road as people behind the wheel. We view them as traffic, an annoyance or an obstacle to overcome.
    The person who cuts in at the last second in the vehicle line at a construction zone would never dream of cutting the line at a supermarket. In the supermarket he would be cutting in front of people where as on the road he is overcoming an obstacle, the traffic.
    Not to defend Mr Douche bag, but I think he was more expressing frustration at the obstacle approaching him than disdain for you as a human being. But I like to think that everyone in the world actually very nice but just not as smart or as enlightened as I am. I sometimes worry that the opposite might be true.

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  10. I know what you mean Ella, i find it very odd indeed, once i was coming out of a side street into another road, just a 30mph limit, turning left, so i make sure everything is clear on both sides, as i look back to my left to where i am about to pull out a private hire car over takes a car, he is clearly doing more than 30mph, i would hazard a guess more like 50 but hard to judge, but more so as he passes in front of us he has his middle finger in the air outside of his window laughing, i only wish i had managed to get his license number but he was going too fast.
    Obviously there are a few things wrong with his actions there but the blatant abuse of the ambulance service really did confuse the hell out of me! I just find it so hard to believe how anyone could dislike the very people that are there for them, their family, their friends in their time of need.
    Fortunately there are those that make up for it by being so sweet, my favourite moments are when you are plodding along under normal road conditions, maybe at traffic lights and little children walking with their parents smile and wave at us, i always wave back and smile and it makes my day. The ambulance service has changed me for sure, my crew mate that day said i had gone soft as i get older lol, i was like yea, being a uniformed service we have a responsibility to show off our friendliness and i always hope that if that child ever needs our help, they will feel safe when we arrive because of that moment where i waved back. Maybe i'm naive still lol

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  11. I dare say the 'demon drink' made him do it.. or some other lame excuse, were he ever to be confronted about it. I dare say that someone in a uniform and in authority at some point in his past had told him not to be such a tw@t and now he sees anyone in uniform as fair game - like others have said before me 'bottom feeder'!
    I suggest a really big smile and a nice wave next time.. nothing deflates them quicker than not getting the reaction they seek!

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  12. Maybe he thought your ambulance was a police van.

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