We do, however, want people to have a flavor our activities to increase the understanding of what we do, so all the stories here have had crucial details, such as names, locations, dates etc have been changed so the people concerned cannot be recognised.

These stories are from different responders, they didn't all happen to the same person

This is a story with no end, or to be specific it obviously has an end, but one that I am not aware of ... which is difficult, I often go out walking and pass the house concerned, part of me really wants to knock on the door to find out how it all turned out, but that would be an invasion of old gentlemans privacy and is not very professional.

The incident concerned came in as a "Chest Pain" report, the ambulance was running from Ipswich station, I live the opposite side of town, but my colleague Dan lives that side of town. I radioed and so knew Dan was running to the job, and knew he would beat me there by about 2 minutes (we aren't allowed blue lights or to break the speed limits ... but that’s another story).

I nearly turned round and went home typically chest pains are a simple enough job to deal with, and certainly Dan was more than capable of dealing with it on his own, maybe I was bored I can't recall but for some reason I thought I'd just look in to make sure all was well.

When I arrived I found Dan standing over an old gentleman on the floor, he had attached his defib (the machine that we use to deliver electrical shocks to a patient who is in cardiac arrest in the hope that it will re-start their heart) ..... apparently this Gentleman had called 999 complaining of chest pain and then promptly suffered a cardiac arrest.

We must have been on scene within 2 to 3 minutes, this is exactly the sort of incident first repsonders are there to deal with, if an AED is attached within the first few minutes there is good chance of restarting the heart. As a scheme we have been to many arrests and seen some happily come back, personally all of the arrests I have been to have saldy resulted in the death of the patient.

Anyway we lost no time and started our protocol on the gentleman, the AED indicated that the patient was not shockable, so we started CPR, secured a good airway and did all we could till the ambulance arrived.

I called control to tell them it was now a cardiac arrest ..... normally 2 crews are dispatched to an arrest .... whilst I was on the phone the ambulance arrived and we were greeted by the paramedic, an old friend Ted, we've worked with him many times, he is really friendly.

He saw what was going on and hit action stations, he attached his heart monitor to the patient, it showed no significant activity in the heart, this is obviously a really ominous sign. As no second crew had been dispatched and there is a lot to do to a patient this ill Ted asked if one of us would accompany them in the back of the ambulance, Dan, rather generously offered me the opportunity as he had done it before.

Bill managed to intubate the gentleman and put some drugs directly into his lungs as there were no veins that could be secured to inject them in the normal fashion.

Once we were on the ambulance I breathed for the man using a bag-valve mask and did chest compressions whilst Ted did paramedic type things including call the hospital to tell them we were on our way in and what had happened.

Whilst Ted was on the phone I was watching the heart monitor as I did CPR, I thought I saw a change in the rhythm it was displaying ..... I paused and checked for a pulse, I could not feel one, so I carried on. I kept watching the monitor, and mentioned to Ted that I thought I’d seen a change, and then as if by magic I saw it, the old gentlemans stomach moved, faintly at first then it was un- mistakable, I checked for a pulse at his neck, and found one !.

I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, I was temporarily elated, Ted’s colleague, Ann was driving and commented "I have never seen that happen before".

I continued to breathe for the gentleman on the way into hospital where we were met by a full resuscitation team who took over once we arrived.

Some how the message had been conveyed to the gentleman’s son, who met us at the hospital, as Ted and I were being quizzed by the doctors about what had happened I saw the son, holding his fathers hand, crying a little, whispering into his ear, saying he loved him at it would all be alright.

I then left it to the professionals and sneaked out of the resuscitation room.

I did try to follow up to find out what happened to that man, I heard that 2 days later he was still alive but critical..... I so want to know if he made it, one of the senior ambulance staff warned me that the fact that he did not start breathing again for himself within a few minutes is a fairly ominous sign.

I would love to think that that old gentleman returned home after a spell in hospital, however I suspect the outcome was far less rosy.

I comfort myself in knowing we did all we could, gave the gentleman the best chance we could. Even if the gent died, his son had a chance to say goodbye and that is at least something

One of the most moving things about responding is you get to see the kindness of complete strangers - in a society where the press would have you believe that every stranger is a potential mugger/rapist/pedophile in short not to be trusted. It is therefore always a heart warming surprise to turn up to an incident to see that some complete stranger has gone out of their way to help some poor unfortunate, I have seem people laying their expensive looking coat in the dirt over some poor soul unconscious on the floor, holding the hand and re-assuring some poor old fella who has had a stroke in the street .... every time i see it it makes me smile.

The same goes really for the level of support you can typically count on from by-standers when you are dealing with someone in a public place, they really are, generally, most helpful, which is why, i think the following incident sticks in my mind so clearly :

I had just deal with a call to one of our regular callers - shortness of breath. I had dealt with the incident in the mans house, the crew turned up, I handed over and as there was nothing else I could do to help I left. On the way back to my car I jumped onto the ambulance to pick up some replacements for the kit I had just used.

As I got out of the ambulance a man came rushing up to me, he was bright red with rage, and barely containing his fury. "Move your bloody ambulance" he seethed. I looked at the ambulance; it was indeed blocking the narrow road, having said that this is entirely normal procedure. I pointed out (extremely politely) that I was not the driver and this was not my ambulance, and that as the ambulance was responding to a 999 call.

At this point it might be worth pointing out that although the ambulance was blocking the road there was a parallel road and so the gentleman had already wasted more time getting out of his car and berating me than it would have taken him to drive round the alternate route.

At this point I fully expected the man to realize he had made a mistake, was frankly making an idiot of himself and to backtrack rapidly .... but no, he came out with a line so mind knumbling ignorant i was temporarily dumbfounded, "There aint nothing special about a 999 call" he snarled.

Now leaving aside the legal inaccuracy of that statement I could not believe that someone would consider their own personal convenience more important that someone else’s life.

All sorts of counter arguments rushed through my head, I noticed another driver who had witnessed the entire incedent and we exchanged smiles. Then the thought struck me :

"Is there anything I can say to a man who yells at ambulance crews on emergency calls that will suddenly make him see the error of his ways and say "Yeah now you put it that way I am a completely selfish idiot who would expect you to do exactly this if it were me or a member of my own family who had dialed 999""

So instead I simply smiled my sweetest, most patronizing smile and walked away. To this seemed to annoy him even more …… which to be honest suited me just fine