The Herald - The Herald Magazine
WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO …
IHAVE worked as an emergency ambulance driver for 14 years. All life is here: good and bad, drunk and sober, old and young. I’ve written a book about the more crazy stories dealing with everything from a machete-wielding drunk to an S&M party gone wrong.
I was a journalist for 10 years but couldn’t get a full-time job. I saw an advert in the paper for trainee paramedics. I have no medical background and never imagined people like me would be allowed anywhere near an ambulance.
It is similar to journalism. You are trying to get people’s story very quickly and often they are confused. You have to read between the lines. It’s a good job if you’re nosy.
There was one man who fainted believing he had an allergic reaction to his cheese-and-onion sandwich. I think he felt some tingling from the onion and got frightened: it wasn’t anaphylaxis. We had a woman who had a knee injury and insisted on it being X-rayed, but realised halfway to hospital she was out of fags and told us to take her back home.
I’ve had a bloke go mad and pull an iron on me. That was odd because he didn’t look like he even washed his clothes never mind ironed them. You get the occasional knife. But there is a difference between someone pulling out a knife and making a serious attempt to hurt you.
Dead bodies don’t look that much different from when someone is alive. They are a bit more yellow or grey. And cold. Hopefully their eyes are closed; they’re not always. It is something you get used to because you see a lot. The body itself hasn’t changed, it is just the life has gone.
You get used to the smells: body odour, urine, excrement, unwashed clothing, decomposing substances. I carry a packet of strong chewing gum.
My first experience of ambulance staff was when I was six. My mother said she had taken an overdose during a row with my father, although it turned out she hadn’t and just wanted to win the argument. I remember thinking the paramedics were very different people to my parents, who were heavy drinkers and out of control a lot of the time.
I’ve only been in the back of an ambulance once as a patient after I came off a motorbike. A car pulled out in front of me, I braked and hit a lamppost. That was painful. I had an open tibia and fibula fracture. At one stage it looked like I might lose my leg. Thankfully surgery saved it.
Driving fast in an ambulance through traffic is exciting and a bit of an ego trip at first. The trick is remembering when you go home at night that you’re in a private car – not an ambulance – and can’t drive straight through a red light. A few of us have accidentally done that.
Emergency Admissions: Memoirs of an Ambulance Driver by Kit Wharton is published by 4th Estate, priced £9.99. The author will be speaking at Aye Write! Glasgow’s Book Festival on March 18. The Herald and Sunday Herald are the festival’s media partners. Visit ayewrite.com
SUSAN SWARBRICK