999--My Life on the Frontline of the Ambulance Service

by Dan Farnworth

  We wheel her out to the ambulance, lay her on the stretcher, get the oxygen on and eventually manage to get a canular into her. But I still think there’s a very good chance she’ll die on the way to the hospital, because the address is probably as far from the hospital as it’s possible to be. We don’t even have time to wash ourselves down, so while Paul remains in the back of the ambulance with the patient, I drive to the hospital covered in blood.

  Typically, it’s one of those days when my fellow road-users decide to be a royal pain in the arse. Cars keep pulling out in front of me and choosing not to stop. And all the time I can feel the pressure rising. On arrival at the hospital, I slam the handbrake on, snap on some fresh gloves and open the back door. The woman looks even worse than when we first turned up at the house. But she’s still alive and still saveable, which is the most important thing. We race her into the resuscitation room and hand over to the nurses and consultant. And with that, me and Paul think our part of the job is done. But while we’re washing ourselves in the sink, making idle chat and thinking about doing the paperwork, cleaning up the ambulance and getting ourselves home, the consultant walks over and says, ‘Paul, Dan – where’s the baby?’

  During his examination, the consultant has discovered a severed umbilical cord and delivered a nearly full-term placenta. But we tell him we don’t know about any baby. We asked the man in the house, and he said there wasn’t one. But I get this feeling in my gut that we should have probed a bit more.

  I radio the police and my control room and tell them they need to get over to the address as soon as possible, because there’s potentially a baby in there somewhere. Later, I learn that the police did indeed find a baby, in a plastic bag in the hallway. Sadly, it was already dead.

  If we had known there was a baby in the house, we’d have got another ambulance round there straightaway. But all we could do in the circumstances was ask the question. As it was, I wrote a statement for the police, went back to work and did a pretty good job of forgetting about it. The case didn’t go to criminal court and I didn’t ask why. Given what had happened before, I think colleagues were concerned what effect the job might have on me. But I didn’t feel anything beyond the concern which was to be expected. Maybe it would have been different had I seen the dead baby, but it was probably more likely that I was that much more resilient.

  19

  WHY?

  Around the same time as I was writing my blogs, the charity Mind was setting up something called the Blue Light Programme, which was also focused on raising awareness of mental health issues and improving support in the emergency services. I got involved with those guys, and there seemed to be a growing realisation that things needed to change. Meanwhile, me and my colleague Rich, who admitted to being gobsmacked when I told him about my PTSD diagnosis, launched our own campaign, Our Blue Light, which was all about encouraging people to talk about mental health and reduce the stigma.

  Me and Rich organised several events to raise awareness for Our Blue Light and Mind’s Blue Light Programme. They included a five-month mental health relay, during which a torch was carried by emergency service volunteers across the region, a dance competition, taking part in an LGBT pride parade and a six-day, 150-mile walk, during which we visited police, fire, ambulance and RNLI stations across the country and discussed the importance of opening up about mental health.

  Four of us did the walk from start to finish, and it was the toughest thing I’d ever done, walking 25–30 miles a day, before waking up the next morning and doing it all again. But we got an amazing reception at the stations. People seemed genuinely chuffed that we were doing something to raise awareness, and some of them shared their stories of mental turmoil with us. On the final day, about 100 people walked the last 20 miles with us, which attracted journalists, who relayed our message to the public through TV, radio and newspapers.

  About a year after I’d attended the lady bleeding in the bath, I received a letter from family court. The authorities wanted to take the toddler we’d seen in the house away from its mum and for me and Paul to give evidence.

  I’d never given evidence in family court before and didn’t know what to expect. I turned up in my uniform and wiled away the hours in the waiting room making small talk with Paul and a police officer involved in the case. But while I looked calm, I was churning up inside.

  An usher came in, said it was my turn and asked if I was okay. I told her I was fine. She led me into the courtroom and said, ‘See that chair over there in that box? Go and sit yourself down.’ So I wandered over and plonked myself down behind this big pile of files. Suddenly, someone shouted from the back of the courtroom in this big, booming voice, ‘Stand until the judge tells you to sit!’ That certainly told me. And it got worse from there.

  I am not at liberty to say exactly what went on in the courtroom that day, except that nobody seemed to care that I was a nice young man who saved people’s lives for a living and most of my answers were ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t recall’. I felt really guilty for not being able to remember, because it felt like I wasn’t helping anyone, prosecution or defence. But I’d had no guidance, no one had told me what I might be asked. What else could I do but tell them the truth, which was that – over a year later – the job was little more than a smudge on the memory?

  On my way out of the courtroom, me and Paul passed like ships in the night. About ten minutes later, Paul was back in the waiting room, looking as cool as a cucumber. Meanwhile, I looked like I’d just been given a going over by the Spanish Inquisition.

  Paul said, ‘All right, pal? That wasn’t much of a problem. Was it?’

  I’ve no idea why I was given a sustained grilling and they went easy on Paul, other than to say that it was typical: Paul had a habit of making life look easy, however different the reality.

  Afterwards, the copper told us that the guy who was in the house had taken his own life. I can only guess that he cut the umbilical cord, placed the baby in the plastic bag and admitted it before killing himself, which is why the case was never processed through criminal court. Why he decided to do what he did I’ll never know. Meanwhile, the toddler had been placed in social care. The court hearing was to decide whether the woman would lose her child for ever. I never found out what happened, and I decided it was probably best to reserve my opinion. The mind naturally craves answers, but I was quite happy not to have them, especially while I was still going through my recovery process. Maybe that was something I’d learned to do, on an unconscious level. It wasn’t my job to play judge and jury.

  That job was strange but also quite typical. One minute we’re on our way to a run-of-the-mill PV bleed, the next we find a woman covered in blood in a bath, the next we find out there was a dead baby on the scene, the next I was in court giving evidence about something I didn’t even see.

  What I haven’t mentioned is how overwhelming it was to see that woman alive and well. I played a part in saving her life, and that’s all that mattered. I took great comfort from the fact I’d done my job well. I could only hope that the right decisions were made for her surviving child and he or she goes on to live a happy and healthy life.

  As with the case that had triggered my PTSD, I didn’t really discuss the job or the subsequent court case with Paul. He was a guy who seemed happy just plodding along and I took that to mean he was a stronger person than me. We’d actually stopped working with each other nearly as much as we had done. We remained great mates but had both decided that we’d become too comfortable in each other’s company and that there was a danger of us becoming complacent on the job. We also thought that spending so much time together in work might adversely affect our friendship out of it.

  Not long after the court case, I found myself running around a nightclub, helping set up a reception to raise even more awareness. I was still working full-time for the ambulance service, and I’m not sure how I found the hours to organise it. But I desperately wanted it to be a great night for everyone.
It was while I was scurrying around, tying up various loose ends, that I received a phone call from my manager. Paul, that immovable rock who had been by my side during some of my toughest moments, had taken his own life.

  At first, I thought it was one of Paul’s sick wind-ups. I wouldn’t have put it past him, given some of the stories he’d told me. Then I thought my manager must have got it wrong and that another Paul had ended it all. When it finally sunk in that it was true, I was stunned. I also felt incredibly guilty and hypocritical. Paul knew what I was going through, because I decided to talk about it. But nobody knew what Paul was experiencing. When I asked him how he was coping, he said he was fine. When I told him I’d started a campaign to raise awareness of mental illness, he wished me well and said he didn’t want to get involved. I didn’t argue and I didn’t probe any deeper. I told myself that he’d processed what he had seen and was simply a tougher man than me. But the whole time I’d been pouring my heart and soul into raising awareness of mental illness in the ambulance service, encouraging people to talk, my old mate had been sinking into an abyss which would eventually engulf him.

  Why wasn’t I a better friend to him? Was there more I could have done or more I could have said? I knew he had domestic problems and had been through some turbulent times, but he always appeared so unflustered and I just assumed he’d settle down eventually. I certainly didn’t notice any warning signs. Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough. It’s so easy to get stuck in your own little bubble and forget to look out for those around you. That’s what I told myself, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the last time I’d seen him, in the corridor at the station. He said to me, ‘Mate, we need to get breakfast club back up and running.’ And I replied, ‘Definitely, I’ll drop you a text next week.’ I never did. How often does that happen? So often, something else is going on that seems to be more important. I wondered what he would have told me over that fry-up. Maybe if I’d given him the chance to offload his problems, he wouldn’t have gone through with it. I had a million and one questions to ask, but now Paul wasn’t around to answer them.

  Paul’s death hammered it home that the necessary help wasn’t there. As I understand it, his mental illness wasn’t entirely down to what he saw on that job and he had a great family around him. But if a medical professional had reached out to him and asked if he was okay, they might have got him to talk. Instead, he felt so isolated that taking his own life seemed like his only option.

  I spent a few moments scrolling through the many pictures of me and Paul on my phone. Paul smoking where he shouldn’t have been smoking. Paul posing in front of his ambulance, marooned on someone’s front lawn. And then I had no choice but to put my grief to one side, put on a smile and get on with organising the ball.

  When I spoke that night, I wasn’t just speaking about me and my experiences of mental illness, I was speaking about Paul and all the other emergency service workers who had been let down by a complacent culture.

  20

  SOMETHING POSITIVE

  After I wrote a piece about my experiences of mental illness for Mind’s website, they invited me to speak at the launch of a new initiative called Heads Together on World Mental Health Day 2016. Heads Together is spearheaded by Prince Harry and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (or William and Kate), and the event involved lots of people sharing their stories on stage.

  They were keen for me to explore the idea that one conversation can change everything. And it was that first conversation with Rich, when he dropped everything to answer his mate’s SOS call, that they wanted me to talk about. The message they wanted me to convey was that however isolated you feel, and however short of friends you might be, there is always someone who can help, whether it be a colleague, a doctor or a Samaritan on the end of the phone. If only Paul had known that there were people out there who wanted to listen. People he’d never even met.

  I actually had a whole network I could plug into, including my old mate Neil, my wife, my parents and even my children. So I felt slightly uncomfortable about playing down their support. But each person in a support network can’t be looking out for you 24/7. They go to work, look after children, go on holiday and have their own problems to deal with. And in this case, it was Rich who best understood how great a toll an ambulance person’s work can take on them and how difficult it is for them to admit vulnerability. Rich made me realise that asking for help is okay.

  Heads Together had also invited people like the former England cricketer Andrew Flintoff and musician Professor Green, so I guess I was there as the ‘normal’ person. It was a surreal experience for an everyday working-class lad, but it was great that they wanted to use my story to get people talking and I felt good that I’d managed to turn such a scary period in my life into something positive.

  While the Duchess of Cambridge was giving her spiel, it was just me and Prince Harry on the side of the stage. He knew I was on next and could tell I was nervous, so tried his best to put me at ease. It was just small talk really. A bit of stuff about the weather and about how nervous Kate looked. But he also told me how great my story was and how important it was that I told it to as many people as possible.

  I did my talk and when Harry did his, he said lots of nice things about me and that he hoped more people would talk about their problems as a result of me opening up. When he left the stage, he shook my hand, told me how important it was that I keep telling my story and asked if I fancied running the London Marathon for Heads Together. Crafty sod, he’d buttered me up and hit me at my most vulnerable. You can’t say no, can you?

  Harry disappeared, probably while laughing his head off that he’d pulled off the old royal mind trick, and the next thing I knew someone was taking pictures of me with a London Marathon magazine in my hands. There was no going back from there. The only problem being I was in no fit state to run anywhere. I was still partial to the odd cigarette, the only place I ran was to the bar and the marathon was in five months’ time. But I left the event with a spring in my step and a sense of purpose. Just a few well-chosen words from Prince Harry had acted as fuel to get myself fit and fanned my campaigning zeal, just as a few well-chosen words from Rich had helped me back to my feet.

  When I ran past Prince Harry at a Heads Together day in Newcastle, he collared me and asked me how the training was going. I couldn’t believe he remembered who I was. And I made sure to thank him for inspiring me to pound the road, shift the beer belly and put a bit of lead into my pencil. We met up again on the morning of the marathon and arranged to meet again after I was done. Sadly, he went home before I finished, later than planned.

  There were times that day when I thought I’d have to quit. The first five miles were fine. London was a riot of colour and noise – cheering, steel bands, people calling my name (it was written on my bib, to be fair) – and it felt like I was riding the crest of a gigantic wave. After 10 miles, I felt a bit leggy. After 12 miles, I was coming apart at the seams. All I could think was, ‘There’s no way I can do another 14 miles of this.’ After 18 miles, I had to stop because I was completely and utterly broken. But after twenty minutes of walking/hobbling, the support of the crowd got me jogging again. Though I didn’t exactly ride on their shoulders, it was more like they were dragging me along by my armpits.

  At mile 20, I spotted my wife and burst into tears. She said to me, ‘You’ve nearly done it!’ I replied, ‘I haven’t nearly done it, I’ve got another six miles to go . . .’ I was running on fumes, but off I popped again, walking, limping, occasionally even running. And when I saw the 25-mile marker, a wave of energy came over me and I started running my socks off. In my head, I imagine I resembled Usain Bolt over those last couple of hundred metres. In reality, I probably resembled a man pulling a fridge. But who cares really?

  I completed it in about five hours, but my time was irrelevant. I ran the same number of miles as the winner. And the faster you go, the less time you’re out the
re suffering. That’s what I told myself anyway. Finishing that marathon was one of my biggest achievements. And while it might be trite to compare the suffering endured in a marathon to everyday mental strife, I was struck by the surface similarities: had people not reached out to help me along the route, there is absolutely no way I would have made it to the finish line.

  In 2017, I was invited to a Queen’s garden party at Buckingham Palace. But the night before it was due to take place, a bomb exploded as people were leaving a concert at the Manchester Arena. There was some talk of cancelling the garden party, but the organisers decided to go ahead with it. I think that was the correct decision. It’s become a cliché, but the cancellation of events would have meant the terrorists had won. We marked the attack with a two-minute silence and the atmosphere was suitably sombre. But I felt very uncomfortable making pleasant small talk and nibbling on cucumber sandwiches while my colleagues in the emergency services and NHS were dealing with the aftermath.

  Ambulance crews raced to the arena, some of them on their days off, and when they arrived on the scene they were expecting minor injuries. What actually awaited them was a vision of hell. I felt guilty that I wasn’t able to help, just as a soldier feels guilty when his mates get caught up in a firefight and he’s elsewhere. I just couldn’t help thinking, Why them and not me?

  There was some criticism directed at the emergency services in the aftermath of the bombing. It was claimed that the response was too slow and confused. This isn’t the place to discuss such things. But what I can say, having heard some of my colleagues’ stories, is that it’s impossible to imagine the terrible things they saw that night and I’m incredibly proud to have all who were involved as colleagues.

  The Manchester Arena bombing, along with the Westminster attack a few weeks earlier and the London Bridge attack a few weeks later, suggested that our emergency services were involved in a war of sorts on the UK’s streets. As such, the public suddenly saw what valuable assets we were. And valuable assets need to be looked after properly.