 I really do tend to wander a lot.
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Jun. 18th, 2009 @ 01:58 pm 
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Due at some point: A post on Barack Obama and the thing I can't forgive.
Meanwhile: "Some neighbourhood watch, Forde." Includes the audio of the 911 call made by the survivor of a "Minutemen" attack, whose husband and daughter were killed. She was wounded.
It seems like a lesser thing, but at the same time... I really hope the woman who took the 911 call is getting counselling, because she's being all professional through this, getting information to get help to the victim while also getting as much information as she can, being as reassuring as she can and telling her not to touch the gun they left, assuring her that help is coming... As the call progresses her voice starts to shake a little but she keeps the victim on the line, keeps asking her questions, tries to keep her focussed.
"Can you do me a favour? Can you call my Mum and Dad?"
"Yeah."
She stays on the line until she's confirmed that the paramedic is with her, and then cuts the line, having promised to call the victim's family.
Thing is?
On a much, much lesser scale, I've been there.
I was working directory assistance, not Emergency, but occasionally, we got people calling us when they should have called 000. Sometimes they don't realise they need 000... seriously. Things like:
"Well, I need a doctor that'll be open, because my mother's having chest pains and she's not breathing that well."
"Ma'am, you need to call triple zero emergency, not a doctor. I can transfer you directly, would you like me to do that?"
"Oh, okay..."
Sometimes they panic and they're used to calling DA. There's a reason why the one number we could transfer people to, even when they called on the number where you're not supposed to be transferred, was 000.
The worst call I ever took, of a handful that were upsetting, didn't get to 000. The phone was cut off too soon.
A woman was assaulted while she was on the line with me. I heard the impacts as she was struck, I heard her scream. I went to transfer her and the phone was cut off.
My next call came in immediately. I dealt with that, I think with my voice shaking a little, and took myself out of the queue and broke down in hysterics.
There's this mode that a lot of people get into when dealing with a crisis. It's a false calm. I've been there myself dealing with a few different things, from parents in critical medical states to injured children. You deal with things, and deal with things, until the crisis is over, and then you break the fuck down, because panic and hysteria are a luxury.
My mother has a story of one of her first years of teaching, when a student fell and broke her ankle badly - bone poking out badly - and Mum, being the responsible adult with duty of care and all, Handled It. She sent the fastest available student to run to the appropriate place to call an ambulance, another to the nurse's office to call the available medically-trained person, all that kind of thing, and was being supportive and calm to the girl who'd hurt herself.
One of the other students asked, "Should I go and get a glass of water, Miss?"
"No," Mum said, "She might have to have surgery. She shouldn't have anything until the doctors have seen her."
"No, Miss, for you. You're white as a sheet."
Mum thought she'd been doing so well, but apparently all the blood had drained from her face as soon as she saw how badly the kid was hurt.
I've seen my mother handle a crisis too, of course - such as the time she heard me scream in sudden agony, came running, and saw that I'd just burned quite a lot of my upper body with boiling water. (I was making a cup of tea, and, well, it didn't entirely go as planned.) A split second as she appraised the situation, and then she grabbed the jug of water out of the fridge, threw it over me to counteract the boiling water (probably didn't help my shock, but you know, mild shock is much faster to recover from than extensive second degree burns), helped me peel my sodden shirt off, and then sat me on the couch with a blanket over my shoulders while my mother called our doctor's office to let them know she was bringing me in. (It was closer than the hospital, etc.)
While she was doing this, my sister walked in, looked at me, with large blisters rising on my bare upper body, and said: "Ew." Ah, siblings. (A few years later, the two of us were home alone when I burned myself less severely, and I will say that she handled herself with much more aplomb.)
Then Mum took me to the doctor, where I was jumped ahead of all waiting patients. Oddly enough, no-one complained that the screaming, sobbing nine-year-old with burns all over her chest queue-jumped.
That practice was very well-run - the only times they were ever running late were when they'd had to deal with emergencies. Because of that, regular patients tended to be very calm and accepting of emergency-based delays. Old school Family Doctors sort of practice - people tended to take their kids there instead of Emergency if it was something that was in the scope of the doctors to handle, because it's easier for kids who are in pain and upset and semi-panicky to be kept calm while dealing with getting treatment if they're being treated by doctors they're used to.
And kids tend to see doctors a lot (especially if, as we did when I was a child, their family goes to a practice that bulk-bills, so the appointments don't cost the family money), because kids get sick more than adults (yay for developing immune systems I guess), and have to get more checkups and more shots and so on. I hate needles - I remember the relief of finding out a given vaccination had shifted to the "get boosters every ten years now" schedule.
(Which I've been terrible about anyway, but when I see my GP tomorrow I'm going to be all, "So, about my immunisation non-record..." and get my immune system updated. Because I am a geek, I choose to think of this as downloading updates to my antivirus system.)
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