Corpse In The Bushes - Part 2

For part one, click here

I was sitting in the car on standby trying to decide what to have for breakfast when the MDT (computer in the car) rang with a job.

The location was given as “West Common Road, near the church”.  I knew where it was without checking the map.   It was literally just down the road.   I read further, “Male lying on the floor in the bushes, possibly deceased.”

These calls usually turn out to be one of two things.  Either it’s someone who’s been out drinking, got completely trolleyed and decided to sleep it off in the bushes, or it really is a dead body.

I set off and, as is common, the MDT rang with an update.  A quick glance showed me that there wasn’t a lot of extra text on the screen which might indicate safety concerns, but the word “deceased” had changed to “dead”.

I’ve got to know Mark Myers quite well, and was joking with him only the other week about how he keeps putting “dead” on the screen instead of the more usual “suspended”, “purple” (LAS slang for dead) or “deceased”, so I knew it must have been him that was taking the call and had noticed that it was me that was running on it.  It was his way of saying “Hello Steve!”

I arrived at the location given and was met by the police. “We’ve had a look up and down the road, but we can’t see anyone lying in the bushes.  We’re going to get the informant to come and show us where this body is.”  They shot off, and squealed round the corner into a side-road.  

I updated control, and they told me that an ambulance, callsign Z302 was on the way.  I knew the crew had just got back to station and there was a crew already there, so the other crew should have come out first.  Then I remembered that there was a new trainee technician on Z302 on her “training supervisor” period – this is when trainees first come out after completing their course, and start working as a third person so that they can be guided through their first few calls.  They must have said they’d do it because it was possibly a dead body – and it’s nice to get the first one over and done with when your still with a friendly supervisor!

The crew arrived while I was waiting for the police to return. I asked them if they’d been given the update, but they hadn’t.  I filled them in, and then the police returned.  “It’s in the bushes opposite Friend Street.” The crew piled back into the ambulance and I got in my car, and the convoy shot off down the street with blue lights  flashing and sirens blaring (great at 8.30 on a Sunday morning eh?  Still, I’ve had to get out of bed early…..)

We trampled through the bushes, and eventually spotted what looked like a leg.  As we made our way over, I saw a hand move.  

The patient was lying under what used to be a large tree branch.  We lifted the branch out of the way, and Liz, the trainee, started to assess the patient.  The smell of alcohol was almost palpable.
“Hello, we’re from the London Ambulance Service, can you hear me?”  This was a fair enough start – always start politely.  He was having none of it.  He’d decided to be “unconscious”.

Liz tried again, this time also pinching his ear to assess for painful stimulus, but it’s surprising how many people can stand the ear pinch.  She was beginning to get a little flustered, so I decided to help.  

As a new trainee – and we’ve all been there – you’re never really quite sure how far to go with pain stimulus, but once you’ve been to a few drunks and been verbally abused, spat at, had vomit spat at you, had to duck a fist or two, you soon get any sympathy for them knocked out of you, so you’re happy to take it a bit further than the ear pinch.

I pressed hard onto his chest with my knuckles, rubbed them up and down the breast bone (this bloody hurts, but doesn’t harm the patient) and shouted “Come on matey, wakey wakey.”  
That did the trick.  He opened his eyes and swore at me.  We dragged him up into a sitting position and Liz tried again, but all he would say was, “I Polish”.

After making sure he wasn’t hurt, we got him to his feet and, after he’d initially refused to come with us and was threatened with being arrested by the police, walked him to the ambulance.

Considering he’d been laying in the bushes all night, he was surprisingly warm, and all his obs – pulse, blood pressure etc – were good.  The police asked him a few questions then left, and I left the crew to it and returned to my car.

I was doing the paperwork, and glanced up to see our patient walking surprisingly well down the street.  After the police had gone, he’d refused to go to hospital and walked off the ambulance.  We’ve got no powers of detention, so all we could do was let him go and hope we didn’t get a call back to him.

I finished the paperwork, and then sent a text message to Mark, asking if he was working today.  We thought it might be a good idea to let you see how a call works from beginning with the 999 call to the end when we finish with the patient.  We know it’s a bit of an anti-climax with the possibility of a corpse in the bushes ending up with a drunken man staggering off down the street, but it shows that sometimes calls just don’t turn out to be as they originally seem.          

Update:  We decided to try doing this when we realised we’d been involved with the same call – is this something you’d like us to try and do again in the future?  Did you think it worked well? Let us know what you think