Friday, 8 July 2011

bouncy castle

I was standing outside the truck, another kid was being assessed in there so I couldn't get in. It had stopped raining by then though, which was ok. Then I saw it, blood, deep red, oozing from a small child's forehead. A teacher said 'he's fallen off the bouncy castle'. I grabbed a pair of gloves from my belt and told this kid to put his hand on his head and hold it really tight. He had been crying, but giving him something to do seemed to calm him down a bit. I shouted through the vehicle door 'we've got a patient, get me my pack'
I took this kid, and his parents, down the side of truck, out of the way, for a bit of privacy, its a school fete, and kids are generally curious at that age. It was a simple enough job, some saline solution, add gauze, clean and bin in a clinical waste bag. Finally dress.
But the smallest dressing I had still would have covered half his face, but the bandage that came with it didn't. Not a problem, i grabbed a conforming bandage the size of the dressing, a couple of rolls later and hey presto, one neat dressing. I did some basic obs, pupil dilation, which was fine, then the normal questions, are you dizzy, do you feel sick, can you remember what happened?
Everything was fine, the kid and the parents were happy. I gave out one of our head injury advice
cards, then did the paperwork, thats the bit of the job I hate, it can take ages, and you don't need half of the stuff on there most of the time.
I gave a bit of advice, answered a couple questions then they went on their way, leaving me to clean up the mess I had made, open wrappers, discarded gloves, all the paraphernalia that gets left over. And I had to brush myself down, after kneeling on a wet floor.
Once I had finished I turned around to my colleague and said 'so we are only hear to show kids round an ambulance then?'

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