My first loss

I'm on holiday at the moment so have a little more time to post than usual ;)

I was on duty at a music festival with St John Ambulance about a year after joining, working on a response crew with another member from my division. He was a Paramedics student, so I felt pretty happy working with him, because I knew I could learn from him and have him guide me through any uncertain situations.

As happens at these types of events, we were called to a non-breathing male, no other details. It took us longer than we liked to get through the crowd, and even then longer to clear enough people away from the boy to begin our work. He was unconscious, non-breathing, had a strong and rapid pulse but was unresponsive to sternal rub - most likely a GHB overdose. My partner (praise be to) noticed I was a little slow to respond, I hadn't experienced this before, and quickly put me back in the right frame of mind - get the O2 ready while he did artificial respiration with a BVM, monitor vitals until help arrives. We had an ambulance on the way, but he had no improvement - he had been in RA for around 6-7 minutes before we were on scene and his likelihood of survival was minimal. At the very best, he would have permanent brain damage. As the paramedics arrived I had begun to get the details from the girlfriend as to what had happened and was filling in the OB12 (St John Patient Record Form) for the handover. We got him on a stretcher and into an ambulance.

Afterwards I remember my partner checking if I was alright after my first real big case, and we talked about it. We talked about his probable outcome, what we did and should have done - neither of us had been wearing gloves, a point which I think he was surprised I had picked up on when he first asked if we did anything wrong. I think he was happy with how I had been, and for some reason that made me feel good. I wanted to earn his respect, this made me feel like I was on the right track (although far from the final step). It was a great experience in terms of what emergency care is really about, I can honestly say I haven't been slow to respond since. It originally made me angry that a young male, my age, could do this to himself and everyone around him.

In the end I realised it was just the way life is sometimes, and it's why, once again, I wanted to be better at this.