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Friday 10 February 2012

Hats off to the NHS…

Again. Longstanding Spectator Readers may be forgiven for groaning that they have heard all this before. Not for a long time they haven't, and when I last wrote about this it was well before the Online Days. Still, feel free to skip if you are bored with my wasp allergy.

In spite of the bitterly cold winter, wasps have not been seen in such masses for some years – but although cold does kill the hibernating drones, it is late hard frosts that do the vital work of zapping the queens, and last winter’s sub-zero temperatures ended a bit too early to do the job properly, hence the mass invasion, coinciding as it has with a sudden warm spell and the plum season, all to make matters worse.

I have long been seriously allergic to wasp stings and desensitisation treatment failed spectacularly with me – as with any medical procedure, there is a tiny failure rate. I have almost died twice from stings, so I now have life-saving syringes girding me round on all sides.

It is never the wasps you see flying insolently about in the air that get you. If you can see them you’re probably OK. The ones to beware of are those that drop to the floor and into your shoes or crawl up the sleeve of a dressing gown or hide in the folds of a newspaper. They are getting drowsy now so they do all this a lot, and if you are me you are as careful about lurking wasps as people in the tropics are about scorpions. You just don`t expect to be sitting quietly working, all doors and windows shut and have a wasp sneak stealthily among the inner folds of your skirt. Which is what one did two days ago and got me behind the knee.

I had injected myself with an epi-pen adrenaline syringe, swallowed 2 anti-histamine tablets and dialled 999 in a few seconds.

The only bad bit of the story, other than that I have occasion to tell it at all, is the fact that there are too few ambulances and fast response paramedics covering too big a rural area inn my neck of the woods and on Wednesday both were respectively 16 and 27 miles away. It took 24 minutes for one and 36 for the other to reach me, flat out with sirens and blue lights. By then I had done as taught and lain flat on the kitchen floor, feet higher than my head, second syringe primed in case needed. Meanwhile, the man on the other end of the phone at 999 stayed on the line talking to me until someone got there.  When they did, boy, were those paramedics impressive.  The first responder came racing down the drive but was all calm and cheery greeting when he strolled in at the door. Reassurance is vital. ‘You don`t look bad at all,’ he said, ‘and you’ve done exactly the right things.’  Extreme anxiety – called ‘ a sense of impending doom’ by the medics, is a symptom of both anaphylaxis and the administration of adrenaline. The latter is life-saving and I am always grateful for remembering my former, now retired, consultant Professor David Warrell who administered injections of it on anaphylactic patients for years, all over the world and under extreme circumstances and who said to me ‘And it never once let me down.’  That rings in my mind every time.

But adrenaline itself carries a risk. While he was chatting and reassuring me, the paramedic was working fast and in no time I was strapped to an ECG machine, a Sats monitor, a Blood pressure recorder and an oxygen mask, and having my lungs listened to, with salbutamol standing by. If there was anything to record on me, he recorded it.  By now I was improving though I felt sick and woozy, which is normal under the circs. Then the ambulance arrived in case I needed transporting to hospital, with two more cheery paramedics full of bonhomie and reassurance. I did not need hospital, but the crew rang my husband and the first responder stayed with me for an hour, and advised recalling him if I was worried, and letting my GP know. He told me had been doing the job for 23 years and I felt as safe – no, safer – in his hands than I would have done at A and E, given that at this time of year the place is run by newly qualified doctors who are still trying to find a stethoscope.  Moreover, in my own kitchen there was no chance of major road accident victims with their legs half off pouring in to distract my paramedic’s full attention. It was all incredibly impressive and reassuring and yet another example of ‘the NHS at its best.’  

Please raise a glass to my three doughty life-savers. And please raise another to my winning the lottery or selling as many books as J K Rowling has, because if I do I plan to buy and equip two more first response paramedic cars with cloned competent, reassuring and cheerful chaps like the ones I was lucky enough to get,  on board.

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