I had an Ambo callout last night, and got back in very late. Well, that’s what I signed up for, even though I did not foresee that would be filling large holes with concrete the next day, when I signed up. I believe one seldom does.

Anyway, patient was large, I am small. The space we had was equally small. This was the big plus for me being small. There were no other positive aspects. Anyway, using ingenuity, the tools the ambulance service provide, and ingenuity (did I say that before? Anyway, a lot was used) and what strength I have, my sidekick and the patient’s partner, we did not have to call in further assistance, and were able to deliver them to hospital, and get them into a bed. All’s well that ends well, as the popular novelist said. I did however not get to bed before midnight, and then couldn’t sleep, trying to work out how I could have done it better. This too is a core trait of the writer, methinks: Never quite satisfied with their own work.

The process was in a very similar vein to story-plot solving. Patient was in pain and in trouble. In the story, you usually can’t fix the pain, and probably don’t want to. In actual life at least I managed to ease it. But the real issue was to move the person to where they could be lifted and got onto our stretcher. Moving them was very difficult, because almost everything we do involves rolling the patient slightly, getting something under them and then using that. In this case: no room, and the injury was such as to make rolling almost impossible.

To cut a long story short, this is where if you’re writing a book, you go back and insert a carpet for the incident to have occurred on. It’s tidier than my adventures with a slide sheet. It did however mean I could pre-position the ELK (a pneumatic lifter) so it was under the slide sheet and we were able to drag the patient out of the tight corner, onto the ELK and, having space to get them sitting so we could use it to gain the height – and the slide-sheet to make the transfer onto the stretcher, in a semi-sitting position.

The worst of the job was then done, all we had to do was get the stretcher out of the house. Trust me on this: no-one designs houses for this. Wheelchairs, yes, but the transfer ELK to wheelchair to stretcher is just one extra step making patient have more pain and a harder time. (In this again, the novelist probably wants the extra transfer.

So: that is sort of summary of a plot. You have a problem that hero faces, you need to move them from where the problem is insoluble to where it is — and you need to prepare all of steps to final resolution – the slide-sheet, the ELK pre-positioned, the supporting people to make sure they don’t topple, and the stretcher positioned make sure if a topple happens – it’s onto that, and controlled as best possible…

And now to sleep, and perchance not to have a pager go off…