My jinx

Yesterday, I was covering a football match at a local stadium with St John Ambulance. Having being picked up by my mate in the St John Ambulance, after picking up another first aider, we headed for the stadium. Arriving, we found there were plenty of St John Ambulance volunteers on duty. This was including another Nurse who is a St John Ambulance member, and a Doctor who is in St John Ambulance. There were a number of county ambulance paramedics and EMT staff in the ground. I met one of the EMT who I worked with while on the ambulance service. It was nice to catch up with him. While we were preparing for the briefing, a person came into the first aid room who needed attention. Following their dispatch (I had nothing to do with them) the briefing sent me to a first aid post. Having being joined by a First aider who has just started their Nurse training and the St John Ambulance crew, we waited for the match to start and prepared the first aid post. After the corner teams had left to take up position, it was a matter of minutes before the biscuits had been found and I was about to have one. Then, just as I had literally taken on bite, a first aider burst into the room and announced "I have a casualty here with eye injury". Quickly hiding the offending biccie into my pocket, I donned a pair of gloves and set about seeing to the patient. There was a few moments spent writing my report out and all was well. After two of the members went to get something to eat, my mate came back in with some free pies (one of the division first aiders happens to work on one of the catering stands and gives SJA volunteers free pies). I had just taken one bite when there was a knock on the door. Normally this is just kids messing about. When my mate went and opened the door, we found that it was actually a person wanting treatment. Strewth!

While he was dealing with that, and I filled in the PRF, I heard another person come in and heard conversations about an accident. I looked around the screen, and saw a person who was injured. Thankfully, they were in the competent hands of the Paramedic crew who were in the stadium.

After both patients left, and the room was tidied up, I set back to having my lunch. I was reluctant to actually eat anything else as it seemed that every time I was having something, a patient was turning up. I hate to think what would have happened if I had gone for something larger, such as a burger. Stadium exploding was high on our reckoning.

As we had lost time, the first half was over. Having some of the corner teams come in for a refreshment break gave a few new faces. At the start of the second half, they deployed back to their positions. We settled down for what was to be an uneventful second half. We ended up getting bored and playing hangman. The game ended with nothing more then a snow shower. After being stood down, I went and changed my top over in the ambulance and then went and met my girlfriend and had a meal then went back to hers. As I left home at 12:40 yesterday and got back near 2pm today, it would seem that I cannot claim 26 hours on duty. Shame as it is supposed to be "door to door" times that we record.