And more today!

Nothing hard or difficult about today but I did have the pleasure of working with one of the old senior officers from our station who while younger than me has now moved to less busy pastures to be able to spend more time with his lovely wife and their children.

We as our first job, were tasked to attend the Police Remembrance Day Memorial on the Domain.

While we were there to assist if any medical emergency arose it also allowed us to participate in this solemn occasion to remember those officers who had not been able to go home safe one night because they served the public and ultimately gave their lives to that service.

I thank the officers of the NSW Police that every day put themselves in possible danger to protect the same public that I serve.

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

It just continues!

I knocked back an overtime shift because it is too stressful to do two extra night shifts I feel, but I picked up a day shift today and the day was great.

Lovely warm day.

A good partner with whom I shared a common level of patient care.

No lunch break we worked solidly through the day as did just about every other crew and so we got some penalty rates to reward us for that extra work.

Some good work,

A post ictal pt for whom I was able to follow a new initiative that ASNSW are rolling out,
Clinical
Assessment
Referral

Or CARe, that if the patient falls into a preset list of criteria we can safely leave them at home if they so wish.

And I was required to use my new powers under the NSW Mental Health Act 2007 on a patient who was really one of the most disturbed people I have had to deal with while outwardly presenting as a very well educated, smartly presented person who looked very,,,,, normal.

Until you spoke to them, very controlled and clear speech but of a very delusional nature.
Very, very interesting.

Any who, dinners out and I'm back at work tomorrow. Found out that I will only have another three weeks of being single before I get teamed up with another single officer for the balance of the roster.

Wont that be nice.

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

Well I'm going to have to pull my head in now!

I've in fact had a great week with being single and all,

Some very sick patients and some very difficult extrication's, all the things that get the juices flowing when you have to really work.

We had to get Rescue in to get a possibly septic patient out from the second storey rear bedroom of one place. It looked easy enough from the convenient balcony that lead off from the french windows.

Until we were all out there with the patient strapped into the Stokes litter and the balcony shifted underneath us and we beat a haste retreat to think of another exit.

The patient was safely removed and transported but we were on scene for about an hour and a half.

Successfully talking a Methamphetamine patient down to calm to transport him.

Amputated finger from a very large, store safe door, the manager didn't take his hand away as he closed it and took off the first phalanges.

And I've just finished an overtime in the city that had plenty of good work as well.

So I now look forward to the coming week to see what else I can get work wise that will push the boundaries of my training and knowledge.

Yeah, I know, I'm a sick puppy for loving my job so much.
Tough!
I'm not going to change to suit someone else.

Off to bed now in case there is another call tonight to help out in the understaffed city.

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

What a loverly Saturday.

Tracy has been asking me to keep an eye out for a backyard table for a month or so now.
We have plastic chairs from an old set from the other marriage but that's all.

Lovely sunny, day do I want to come for a walk up to the local hardware store?
Off we trot and find a very nice, well made stained table for $169.00.

Pick it up in the car and assemble it and off she goes to the shops while I wash down the BBQ ready for the first use this season.

Lots of salad, steak, chicken skewers, hamburgers and a mild night. Very nice way to break in the new table.

She has been putting in long hours with her digital scrapping on a site that is having a four week challenge to discovery new talent.

And now the start of a new roster at work and I'm single for the whole thing at this stage. Very tedious, that means that I may have a new partner every day and likely someone who might not know their way around my patch so I'll have to drive.

The only up side is that we are short an officer making me single rather than being over staffed in which case I would be sent anywhere they needed an extra, likely a different station each day, again very tedious.

Such is life.

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

Industrial Action!

Well, well, well!
(Three holes in the ground) - sorry,

It seems that some sense has come to the table.

The Health Minister has stopped all proposed changes to penalties and changes to the roster, for now anyway. Another review committee (eighth in three years or something like that) will look at these issues and report back to him.

We await with baited breath?


Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

Right then, I'm back

Thank you to those who have made their condolences known to me for the loss of my Grandfather. As you will have noted in the last posting I did have some Medico-Ethical issues to deal with and I think with the family and friends rejoicing in Pops life and what he had meant to us I have had closure.

To have the two Grandsons stand and remember him was great and I think Marshall and I honoured our Pop.

I did however start it off with this joke/story that Pop told me.

Did you hear the one about the old fiddle player?

Back when they still had local country dances, there was an old fella who played a cracking good fiddle who traveled around the districts playing at them all.

One night he turned up to the little country hall in his usual thread bare and much repaired old suit and took up position on stage sitting on an old broken wicker chair.

The dance was toe tapping away to the Jigs and Reels, Two-steps and Waltz's that the old man played, when a young buck strolled up to the stage and said,

'Do you know your balls are hangin' thru the chair?'

Lookin' up without missing a beat the fiddler replies,

'No, but if you hum me a few bars I'll pick it up!'

Pop told me my very first Ribald joke, as he had also told Marshall and many other males who put their hands up when I asked at the funeral.


The last set of four shifts have continued to be largely uneventful but not quiet just normal jobs.

For any in Australia and particularly NSW the last week has been a political storm.

Cabinet Ministers get dumped by State Premier.
The State Premier gets dumped by his own political party.
New State Premier picks a new Cabinet, losses one within two days over something he did months ago when he was a backbench nobody.
Industrial Relations Commission comes back with a ruling on the Major Wage Case for Ambulance Officers in NSW, we have been doubled over and SCREWED HARD!

The New Premier and New Minister for Health really need some good press right at the moment and the Health Department is trying to do what?

Taking penalty rates for extra productivity (not being able to have a lunch break) in the busy city area because of chronic staff shortages.
Increasing daily work hours to cope with work not covered by chronic staff shortages.
Removing specialised medical rescue units to try and band aid over chronic staff shortages.
Offer a pay increase that doesn't even get close to what we would lose from the profession voted for the eighth year in succession as the

MOST TRUSTED PROFESSION IN AUSTRALIA

Not saying what they do is not important, I was one for twenty three years, but do you know that the base wage of a clerk in similar or better than an Ambo's!!!!!

The pay rise in fixed but Industrial action is threatened if they try to strip us of our current entitlements, so very interesting times ahead.




Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

Saying goodbye,

Pop's funeral is on Saturday but travel will have to be made on Friday as no flight gets in early enough.

Tracy and I had blood tests on Wednesday as we entered the second year of IVF with our current clinic and her's were 'inconclusive' and as we are very committed to this course they want her to have another on Friday so I will travel home by myself.

There are two grandson's, myself as first grandchild and my cousin and fourth born Marshall. Uncle Peter has asked if we may be able to talk at the service. I'm not unknown as a public speaker but this is not one I look forward to.

I know that my exposure to death and more so when it is in the home and with the family, you as the ambo are often all the support that family and friends have as is first sinks in. But this is my Pop and I'm not sure what I feel.

I know that emotion is never a fixed thing, it changes and alters as your exposure and environment changes, ask any military man who has returned from a war zone. I know that it is normal to outlive your parents and grandparents and while I know and understand Pops underlying illnesses and their associated pathways and complications I am left some what hollow.

Coming so recently after Nan's death I guess that it is just a combination.

The image at the start of the post is something that Tracy put together. All the artwork has been created by her own hand, none of it is a fancy computer program, she now creates this stuff, script, texture and colour even the flowers from scratch. If your interested in this scrapbook stuff zip over to her blog Ambowife Designs up in the links

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

My Pop

His passing was not unexpected but that makes it no less sad.

He came from a time different to mine but taught me much to make me a man.

A farm's a long way from the suburbs and values have more meaning.

I learnt the value of life from death in that rural setting.
I learnt about a full days work.
I learnt to shoot, trap and hunt.
I learnt to drive.
I learnt that English comedy was the best, Dad's Army, the two Ronnies.
I learnt to bowl and defend my wickets, to kick a footy and take a fall without crying.

I remember time spent in a sun warmed barn, dust floating in the air, with my/Peter's hunting dog sleeping on my arm.

I remember running around paddocks herding cattle by whistle and command because there was no dog with us, and loving it.

I remember loss as wine, women and other interests kept me away.

They sold the farm when it got to much, well before I left Tasmania to become an Ambo and I've never been near the place since.

I'll carry the farm at Sandfly as I knew it with my Nan and Pop for the rest of my life.


Mum gave me this photo, it was taken before she was even born.
When Tracy got it out so I could scan it for this post she glanced at it as she has before and said 'so that's where you get it from' and pointed to the pen in Pops pocket.
I don't know, but even as I sit here on my days off I do have a pen in my pocket?

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

My Grandfather.

Mum rang this morning.
Pop passed away around 2350 last night.
After a long time suffering badly with Parkinson's and the recent loss of his lover and wife, my Grandmother, he has now found peace.

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

When will they learn.

Go out and get an absolute skin full of booze have some pills and fall over and suffer a closed head injury. Then have to have a hole drilled in the back of their skull to drain off the blood and wait to see if they have suffered any permanent damage and will be pissing and eating through tubes for the rest of their lives.

I'm not a wowser, I use to enjoy drinking and partying, hell I even use to play in pubs with folk bands.

I was a Brass Band musician and we drank like fishes and smoked like chimneys. I was a musician in the Australian Army, there are periods of my life that have just disappeared and there are thing that I would have done differently if I had been in control.

There comes a time when you must accept responsibility for your actions and hopefully modify your actions before they cause life long misery.

Today's young adults don't drink any more than say I did, in fact I sometimes think that they drink less with binge drinking. I don't know what the solution is. I have no idea where you would start and so until something is done with positive outcomes I guess, we ambulance officers of the world will continue to collect the intoxicated hoard and attempt to minimise their damage.

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

The rain has stopped.

We have had two days of quite heavy rain. These have been my day shifts and I have stubbornly been riding my bicycle still to work. I think that I have got past the fair weather rider now so in the pre-dawn dark I have departed in what I had hoped for was only a mild shower and returning home in heavy rain.

Guys at work have variously offered me a lift or even to one who very kindly offered his car as he was on night shift and I would be returning the next morning for my second day shift. But I've been riding now for ten months and I really do notice the physical differences and am sure that even though I do still have a vise or two (too much coffee and smokes) the riding is responsible for my low cholesterol 4.2mmol/L and a 120/68 mmHg blood pressure.

What was pissing me off was the drying of the wet clothes. The extended time over night at home worked Ok but at work they just never made it to even partly dry. I even rode home after the last day shift in uniform with a wet weather coat on.

So I'm ready for a little bit better weather so that the punters can go out and we might get a bit more work. Yes I know that this does sound a bit of a double standard but public education will not in my opinion stop certain elements from binge drinking, risk taking and anti social behaviour and these people provide us with some of the staple jobs we do in the big city.

I think that I would also like to take this opportunity to say hello to a person out in far west New South Wales in Broken Hill who drops by often as shown by the visitor map and who was brought to my attention by a colleague at my station who know them.



Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

The excrement has hit the oscillating device now!

The following is an unpaid political spray about recent events within the Ambulance Service of New South Wales. All information discussed is freely available in the media. These are my personal opinions and are bleedingly obvious not those of the services management.

A day, to a day and a half notice that Ambulance Rescue at eight full time accredited station will cease to operate as at 0800 hrs Thursday morning!

We knew that the service wanted to get rid of rescue, but by the way the circulars and notices read a meeting of the State Rescue Board yesterday agreed and the axe dropped over night with officers getting an SMS.

And what is the go with SMS,,,, the techno-challenged service that provides us with a data terminal that is no better than an early mobile phone screen and sms text.

Who's bright idea was that! obviously not a personnel communications expert?
You don't break-up with someone via sms.
You don't terminate someones job via sms.

This is going to get bloody I think.

The public must be re-assured that they will not be effected.
That goes against the very nature of this job we love.
We do it for the patients not management.

If you are not a member of the union use the link http://hsu.net.au/



Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

Match Fitness!

So I finished holidays and returned to work on a Saturday which is the beginning of our rostered week. My shift was first of two nights so Saturday and Sunday nights.

As I have said in the previous post, what would usually be a big and fun filled shift in the big ol' city was not for me but such is the nature and requirements of fluid deployment of resources within an ambulance service.

Sunday morning about four hours before knockoff I was starting to ache and drag my steps a little and when I got home I slept a very, very deep sleep until awoken by the alarm and dragged from that beautiful place.

Sunday's night shift was as expected slower and there was some down time that I did make some use of. I still slept soundly after that shift so my 'match fitness' has slipped while on holiday. But as I have already posted I did enjoy my break too, so I need to do some exersice on these days off to try and bring the stamina back up to what it was.

Not too much to ask now that spring is here and the days warmer.


Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz