When the call came through the father managed to get his address out before suddenly announcing that his girlfriend was pregnant and the baby’s head was out.

I have never delivered a baby before either on the phone or in person, and while you can train for it all you want, nothing prepares you for when it actually happens.

I managed to keep myself together and managed to give the opening instructions for the delivery, then the father said the baby had the cord wrapped around its neck and was looking blue.

Again instructions were given and the mother herself managed to loosen the cord and gently pull it over the baby’s head. unfortunately the baby still wasn’t making the noises you want it to.

Again instructions were given and soon followed the sound of a healthy pair of lungs. The sound of relief for the father could be heard across the room.

Mother and baby were duly wrapped up and kept warm and the RRV arrived on scene with out much work to do.. The paramedic found a stunned father a proud grandmother and a tired mother and healthy baby girl on scene.

After a week in which I took a call from a mother whos daughter was found unconcious in her bedroom and sadly didn’t make it, it was nice to get the other side of the job, the happy side.

I had the call most call takers dread, the distressed mother/father who has found their child unconcious. In my case I had the mother on the phone.

Initially she had only managed to blurt out the address and that her daughter was hanging before she put the phone down on me, now I feel guilty for getting irritated because at first I thought it was someone mucking about, but I at least persisted and called back, thankfully she answered and I explained that if she stayed on the line I could do my best to help while the ambulance was on the way.

The mother was boarder line hysterical, the type of call we don’t like because they simply can’t be controlled, but on explaining to her that she had already taken the first step to helping her daughter she started to calm down and within a minute she was an oasis of calm among the pandemonium in the background.

A neighbour had heard the commotion from next door and ran in to assist offering his first aid skills and started the process of CPR.

Wether I subconsciously needed to keep the mother on the phone to keep her away from the scene I don’t know, but I managed to convince her to stay with me to keep me updated as ‘it will help the ambulance crew as I pass all this information to them’ She was in short fantastic and the model of maternal virtue, she managed to keep the family dog under control, her 11 year old son who was there by saying he could watch his Doctor Who DVD as long as he helped keep the dog quite and all while giving me regular updates on the unfolding events.

Me, I was like the swan, graceful above water, but kicking away like a person possessed underwater in order to remain afloat. Even the mothers calmness while on the phone to me has me convinced everything would be ok.

I did make one mistake though, I stayed on the line while she went off to let the crew in. I should have put the phone down then, but I didn’t, she and the crew could be heard running up the stairs and then the sounds of her breaking down at the sight of the daughter is something you can’t forget, you don’t have to even be there to know what she saw. But I still had some belief that everything would turn out for the best, perhaps one of my rare optimstic moments, but then we all need them once in a while.

It wasn’t to be however, a short while later the girl was declared by the crew on the scene.

For me I will move on, I can it doesn’t directly affect me, but that family will never forget the events of that night and they will never truly move on. But they did what parents do from the moment they know they are expecting, they fought for her, they did everything they could, but there will always be the feeling from all of us that we could have perhaps done that little bit more.

So for me this is how my tally ended up.

• 7 Assaults
• 12 falls (9 of which non injury where the carer had a ‘no lift policy’…I hate those!)
• 8 Chest Pains
• 2 Hoax Calls
• 3 RTCs
• 9 Overdose (that number includes those who have OD on excess drink)

Well that was my 10 hours, as for the rest of the room, much of the same really. A busy night was had by all to the point where we didn’t have time to even order the takeaway!

So lets run a bit of a book on the types of calls I will be receiving tonight. So let me start.

With in a 10 hour shift I think it will go something like this.

5 assault, 10 falls (from either elderly people or drunks), 2 RTCs, 3 chest pains and at least 2 hoax calls

So see what you can come up with, I will keep count during the course of my 10 hours, you can guess and I will update you tomorrow!

And while I may have fallen out with the party over many things since that time, education is one thing I still passionately believe in, even if the Government don’t.

But I also think education needs to extend beyond the classroom, it should be part of our everyday lives, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. It doesn’t matter what form it takes, but we should be striving to improve ourselves all the time.

And education needs to extend to those who what are stupid phone calls to the 999 service. People need to be educated in what we are there for.

This kind of education needs to start as a child and continue throughout life, people need to be reminded that we are not a big white taxi service because they feel a little peeky, that you cannot verbally abuse call takers who are just trying to find out what the problem is in order to help the crew, that it is wrong to verbally and physically abuse ambulance crews who are there to help and that hoax calls are just not funny (of which we had 12 last night alone!) and can be dangerous.

More action also needs to be taken by the police when people make hoax and inapprioate calls, and not just when the calls are made to them, but when ourselves and the fire service also put in complaints against people. Publicity needs to follow that we will no tolerate misuse of the service and it all needs to be backed up with education on what justifies a 999 call.

Perhaps then we might start making headway and I might not get emergency calls from a man in a pub wanting a new pair of crutches!

Sunshine for me however isn’t a thing to be celebrated, firstly because I’m fair skinned I burn to a crisp at the merest site of a bit of sunlight, but also because it brings out the idiots who fall over drunk and then phone us up and give us hastle demanding their ambulance and demanding it NOW!

But last night was almost eirely quite, only a few drunks and only one regular caller claiming she had drunk nine bottles of vodka. Everyone else actually needed an ambulance for serious problems.

Everyone in the room found themselves sat there bored, the Chinese takeaway meals were actually eaten hot, conversations could be held and finished with little interruption, dispatchers had enough crews to cover all the jobs and some crews were even complaining of having nothing to do. It was weird.

As call takers and dispatchers we are so geared up to all out insanity on a Friday and Saturday night that anything else is a disappointment.

Surely it can’t last….can it?

Because of the way the shift rotas work within our control room we have the luxury of 8 days off around every six weeks, a welcome relief for everyone on the team especially after a tough and busy summer.

But for me this last eight day break wasn’t really a break with running around like a blue arsed fly trying to catch up with the things I hadn’t got around to over the previous six week block. In another six weeks it’ll all happen again, and just before Christmas too.

Anyway to matters of work. Saturday night was tough, everyone said it, it was hard going, every idiot seemed to take to the sunshine and do stupid things. A double shooting, hoax calls (as is per the norm) the usual smattering of overdoses, people wanting to go to the mental health hospitals and those with coughs and sneezes who suddenly need an ambulance because they ‘feel a little poorly’.

The calls were non stop all night and ambulance crews were haring around the region like their arses were on fire.

But then it’s the simple jobs that can be the ones that really kick you in the guts because they are the ones which affect you personally. Like the one where a child was knocked off his bike by a car, just 200 yards from where I live. Not so bad in itself you may think, but 21 years ago I was the child knocked off a bike at the same location, it felt like history repeating itself and I had to take myself out of the room for a while just to clear my head.

Everything else that night was easy in comparison, nutters, assaults, stabbings whatever, one simple minor road accident was the sucker punch.

The only thing I can say for myself is that I didn’t lose it on the phone with the caller, I could have easily done so, but training in the job and as a first aider kicked in and I went into auto pilot and did what I needed to.

The most important part however, finding out later on if the child was ok. Thankfully he was suffering a broken collar bone and dislocated hip he will recover, but he like me will find once in a while it comes back to just remind you it’s a part of who you have become, and occasionally it will kick you up the butt just to put you back into your place.

Here’s to the next shift!

One received today in ambulance control was an especially unfunny one and if I had have been a little quicker I may have realised what had been said before the caller hung up.

The first job any call taker and dispatcher needs to do is establish the address of the emergency before we even find out what has actually happen. As usual I was concentrating on getting a location so my colleagues could dispatch as quickly and safely as possible.

But what I didn’t hear was the hoax part, or not until I replayed the call after the hoaxer had her fun and hung up.

I asked the usual question of “ambulance emergency, what’s the address of the emergency”, then followed a young persons voice stating “I don’t know, but a man has been murdered”. I didn’t catch onto this because it was so garbled so I asked again “where do we need to come to? because we have you calling from a phone box” then followed a ‘click’ as the caller hung up, well and truly sprung and I had not even realised it. It was only moments later when trying to call the phone box back the penny dropped with a massive clunk, ‘Murder!’.

The call was listened to again on the instant replay just to double check I wasn’t imagining things, I wasn’t.

So after using the relevent details of where the call came from a quick call to the police was made.

“Something you might be interested in” I said “A murder…” silence from my police counterpart “Yes in a phone box, witnessed by a child” the penny dropped with the police controller; “oh you’ve had one as well today then, we’ve had three and the fire service have had four so far, it seems that sleepytown is crime capital of the south today”

We had to send a response just to make sure and thankfully no one who was actually in a life threatening situation needed that ambulance, but they could have done, they could have needed a police car, they could have needed a fire engine, but because some hoaxer was bored and couldn’t find anything else to do they decided to put the lives of others in danger.

I hope they enjoyed their day and feel comfortable with themselves because if a life had have been lost due to an ambulance on a wild goose chance then on her conscious be it.

But then a year ago I didn’t work for ambulance control, I had a nice nine to five job which didn’t involve dealing with football and rugby injuries all afternoon on a Saturday.

Within the space of around 90 minutes today control took at least twelve calls from various football and rugby clubs on the first day of the amature season with injuries ranging from torn hamstrings to neck injuries. It dosen’t even take much to work out which injury goes with which sport.

And this is just the start of the season, by all accounts as the season goes on and as players become more tired and more unfit more and more injuries will be flooding through our switchboards all requesting ambulances and all requiring a response with limited resources.

The police and the fire services like us thought it was some kind of weird prank being played by bored kids in the last throws of the long summer break, so everyone dispatched with a kind of ‘yeah right’ attitude.

But it wasn’t, there really was a naked man up a tree, in drink and drugs playing the harmonica!

The original call cane in just after midnight, the necessary resources were thrown at the case, and while the ambulance service played something of a bit part, those who would scrap him off the floor if he did fall completly out of his tree.

So it was the police and fire who played the largest part while we watched on…and laughed.

The entire incident itself lasted around eight hours and by the accounts of the crews on the ground it involved alot of negioating, alot of chasing around a tree and a fireman and policeman on a fire platform trying to negioate with the man to come down.

The man did eventually come down from the tree, but he decided tthat if he gave himself up it would only mean the warm welcoming arms of the men in white coats and the special jacket with the straps around the back. So instead he decided to try and make a run for it leading a policeman to chase after him.

Then enter the keystone cops…

One officer who took chase caught a divot in the field, fell over and broke his ankle, the second officer who took chase couldn’t keep up and it took a fireman to fell him and restrain him.

So the ambulance crew did play a small role in the end, taking the police officer to hosptial to have his ankle plastered!