A Life on the Line: A MICA Flight Paramedic's Story

By Darren Hodge

When the author was a kid, a big white sleek ambulance squatted like a lion in the driveway next door, always ready to go, and sometimes it did, roaring down the street. Today he is a MICA Flight Paramedic with decades of varied experience in 'a life of extremes' in an Australian ambulance service. He does shifts at base on-call, and teaches another generation of paramedics now. Loves his job.

A list of well-known events that includes Victoria's Black Saturday Fires and the 2005 Bali Bombing - he was trying to get married when that call came in - mark two dark extremes. Technical matters - trauma treatment decisions, and the limits of aviation, for example - are explained. And this book includes the little things like the time the supermarket aisle was alive with the sound of music from an ex-patient's kid's lips: 'Thanks for looking after Daddy.' Darren couldn't have put it better himself, and it made his heart sing.

This book tells what is like to be Darren Hodge on the end of a line, what it is like to be a paramedic. Open, honest reports, warts and all, this memoir is an unflinching account of how it feels, say, to pluck people from imminent death. And there are some laughs on the way...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kerr Publishing
• Release date: May 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9780958128360

Book preview

A_Life_on_the_Line_Cover_eBook.jpg

First published 2019

Kerr Publishing Pty Ltd

Melbourne, Victoria

ABN 64 124 219 638

Copyright ©2019 Darren Hodge. All rights reserved

This eBook is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, or under the Copyright Agency Ltd rules of recording, no part may be reproduced by any means.

ISBN 978-0-9581283-6-0 (eBook)

ISBN 978-0-9581283-5-3 (Print-on-Demand edition)

BIC Category: AUTOBIOGRAPHY

BISAC Category 1: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY/medicine

BISAC Category 2: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY/fire & emergency services

BISAC Category 3: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY/aviation & nautical

Cover photograph: Meredith O’Shea, [e-mail]

Cover design: Kerry Hodge of Pepper Creative

Book design: Paul Taylder of Xigrafix Media & Design

Print-on-Demand and eBook distribution: ebookalchemy.com.au

To every man or woman who has donned a shirt adorned with badges representing an ambulance service, with the title of paramedic or ambulance officer

Foreword

Being a paramedic is an extraordinary job.

Every day you enter someone’s world, often on the best day or worst day of their life. You have the privilege of seeing emotion, love and humanity close up. It is a front row seat on the greatest show on earth.

As a young paramedic, Darren and I worked together in Melbourne’s western suburbs. In those days, paramedic practice was still evolving and the drugs and procedures were limited. In the years that have followed, paramedicine has been transformed in leaps and bounds.

We both became intensive-care paramedics, learning our craft alongside doctors in busy hospitals and some amazing paramedic instructors. From there, our careers diverged: mine into management and academia, Darren’s along the path of high-end clinical excellence on our fleet of helicopters.

Darren’s skills today are a far cry from the early days we shared. As an intensive-care helicopter paramedic he is at the cutting-edge of the care we deliver, and much of his work is delivered alone in the tight confines of a moving aircraft.

Darren’s training and skill enable him to put a patient, including the smallest of children, into an induced coma. He can give blood transfusions, perform in-field surgery such as a finger thoracostomy, provide clot-busting drugs to patients experiencing a heart attack, use a drill to directly infuse fluids into the bone, and use an ultrasound to diagnose a patient’s internal injuries. And that’s just part of it.

In 2017 Darren became the face of Ambulance Victoria’s television campaign encouraging people to save Triple Zero (000) calls for emergencies. The other star of the television advertisement was a young boy called Will, who suffered critical injuries in a farm accident. Darren’s care that day was instrumental in saving Will’s life.

Darren has touched the lives of countless people and saved numerous lives in his own humble way, which exemplifies and highlights the outstanding care of our 4500 Victorian paramedics.

This book charts many of Darren’s adventures as a paramedic – some are funny, some are truly tragic, but they are all told with a keen and intelligent eye. Read and enjoy.

Associate Professor Tony Walker

Chief Executive Officer, Ambulance Victoria

Contents

My Beginning

Ol’ Salty

‘Santa, Please Stop Here’

Mummy’s Friend, Darren

Black Saturday

Amputation

The Chain is strained

Winching

Winching on Snow and Ice

Spinning on a Winch

Chuck Winches in for a Dip

Water Winch

Winch Training

Winching Around Lakes Entrance

Why We Winch

Disaster on a Winch

A Crazy 48 hours with a Winch

Extremes

Bali Break

Paramedics’ Deaths

Cape Woolamai Rescue

Part 1: Helping a Helper

Part 2: A Patient’s Perspective

No Culpability

In the Blink of an Eye

Why I love my Job

Acknowledgments

Introduction

My original goals for this book were simple, something that my kids could read and pass on to their kids about grandpa, as Albert Facey, who penned my favourite book, A Fortunate Life , originally intended with his.

Discussing the idea of writing it, I was surprised by how people were interested in the stories. I sought advice from a writer friend who felt that, given my unique workplace, that there could be matters of broader appeal to people, in not only their professional life but also their personal life.

The book is a collection of stories over a 30-year career as a paramedic with the lessons learned, for I have learned from some great people.

The stories, to the best of my recollection, are true. If I have made a mistake, I apologise. I have removed or changed several names on occasion, to avoid getting being beaten up in the ambulance bay for starters. The stories are written from the heart.

Darren Hodge

Flight MICA Paramedic

1

My Beginning

When I was four, my parents and I moved in to a brand-new brick veneer house in the burbs. My parents delighted in the house, but I was fixed on the big white truck in our neighbour’s driveway. Gleaming paintwork. Red-and-white stripes. Matt black bonnet. Big red lights. Sirens. The driver’s window was down. The radio crackled with a man’s voice coming from far away.

‘What is it?’ I asked Dad.

‘It’s an ambulance. They take sick people to hospital.’

I spent many hours sitting by the fence alongside the ambulance reversed parked for a quick getaway, listening to the radio dispatch ambulances to car accidents, to people who couldn’t breathe… I imagined the scene, wondered the people were OK… But most of all I waited, hoping for the crash of our neighbour’s flywire door, the thud of the huge man’s boots rushing to his vehicle, the breaking of the silence of the suburb when the Ford 351 thundered into life, pulled into the street, raced off, and, sometimes, sirens wailed into the distance. I was hooked.

Throughout my schoolyears I had my sights set on pursuing my dream job. At 16 I wrote to the Geelong Ambulance Service and sought advice on how to best focus my education to realise my dream. Their advice was to get a trade. The service’s minimum entry age was 21, so this seemed like a reasonable idea. But what trade?

I began an accelerated fitting and turning apprenticeship with General Motors. From the first day, I hated the job. It was dirty, loud and at times frightening, but I was determined to see it through to achieve my ultimate goal. It was a great introduction to adulthood and the workforce, and I learned many skills that have served me well, still do. I have turned out to be reasonably handy and not frightened of practical challenges.

Three years later, I was offered a job as student paramedic with the Geelong Ambulance Service, starting the day after my 21st birthday.

In the 1980s, the service had their own college, in Queens Road Melbourne. A three-year course offered a diploma and training. Students spent blocks of time at college with long periods of infield training under supervision. I packed my desert boots and pastel polos, gelled my blond-tip mullet, and embarked on the adventure.

2

Ol’ Salty

About two years into my career I was working under the guidance of a lovely Irishman, John Miller. His gruff exterior masked a heart of gold. I had entered my ambulance career as an immature and sheltered 21-year-old who thought everyone grew up in a brick veneer house and went to Mornington foreshore for Christmas, Surfer’s Paradise if you were really lucky.

We were dispatched to an unknown problem. When we arrived at the neat well-tendered house in the late evening, an elderly man in his robe greeted us at the door. So far so good. Standing in the doorway armed with a first aid kit, oxygen and cardiac monitor, I introduced myself and John and asked what the matter was.

‘Oh, I’m embarrassed, I can’t say.’

I explained we were quite busy, we needed to treat him there and then, there were other jobs waiting. I assured him that with my 23 years of life experience I had pretty much seen it all. Error No 1.

‘Well, I was making a lamb sandwich.’ Then he paused.

‘Yes. OK.’

‘Did I mention that I was watching a movie, a really great movie. John Wayne, he was on a ship.’

‘Yes. OK.’ John Wayne plus lamb sandwich does not equal an ambulance call. Why were we standing in this man’s lounge?

‘I was about to have a shower, so I was naked…’

‘Naked, John Wayne, lamb sandwich, yes. OK.’ I wanted to exude an air of confidence as I stood before this man, as if this conversation was a common presentation to ambulance, but I was becoming nervous. Where are we going here?

‘So… did I say it was a really great movie?’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘So, as I said, I was making a lamb sandwich…’ Pause. ‘Did I mention that I’d ran out salt?’

We had been in the house for quite some time. I sensed John’s demeanour changing, could hear the post-case debrief words, You need to take control and get to the bottom of the problem, or we’ll be here all night.

‘Sir, you really need to tell me what the problem is, and how we can assist you…’

He barked. ‘I am telling you!’

Perplexed, I ask him to go on.

‘Well, as I was explaining, I had run out of salt…’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I was about to fill the salt shaker and this really great part of the movie came on…

Out of nowhere my less-than-impressed partner growled, ‘Why are we here?’

‘… as I was saying, I ran out of salt so I put the salt shaker on the chair because it needed to be filled. I was really enthralled by the movie, and, as I said before you interrupted me, I was naked because I was about to have a shower.’ I was speechless at this point. ‘I went to sit down, forgetting about the salt shaker. It went straight up my bottom.’

I stared at him. I did not know what to say. Nothing recalled from ambo college clicked in.

‘Ah, ah… how big was it?’

Without blinking he went to a cupboard, and presented me with a pepper shaker shaped like a bullet, 20 centimetres long. I stared at in my hand. Lost for an intelligent word, I stood eyes fixed to the ground waiting for my highly experienced supervisor to take over. He did not.

‘I’ve tried to get it out. You better have a look.’

I was certain that I did not need to have a look, but he was insistent, guiding me, my mouth agape, pepper shaker in hand, into the bathroom, where there was blood all over the wall.

‘What have you done?’

‘I tried to get it out with a screwdriver and pointy nose pliers…’

‘OK! OK! OK! We will take you to hospital!’

We ushered him into the ambulance and set off.

Most paramedics have a black sense of humour. I have been told on more than one occasion that my humour is an acquired taste, and on several occasions, humour has got me into trouble. I go to work to be the best paramedic I can be, but I also want to have a good time, and I use humour to establish rapport. It is not a funny job, true, but it is not all doom and gloom either, and, like all jobs it has much that is routine. But cases like this one are part of the real world. Someone has to deal with them.

My sister had been at Spencer Street Train Station. She saw paramedics attempting to resuscitate a patient on the platform, and was disgusted when the paramedics laughed as they worked. I was aghast and in disbelief when she told me, but not long after I attended a cardiac arrest in a public place and was surprised when some of my colleagues made jokes and laughed. ‘No laughing,’ I snapped. This levity, however, was repeated time after time. I raised this with a colleague, who asked ‘Don’t you think it is a coping mechanism?’ A lot more distressing scenes later, I have no doubt light-heartedness is a coping mechanism.

The sad reality of my job is that it has the highest suicide rate of any profession, the number of paramedics with mental health issues is more well known, the divorce rate is alarming, and we have seen instances of misappropriation of ambulance pharmaceuticals for personal use. Several friends who were colleagues have taken their lives. I have worked with too many people who have been ravished by severe mental health problems. A long-term colleague and peer-support officer Shaun Whitmore is of the belief that all long-term paramedics have some degree of post-traumatic stress disorder, and those in the airwing, likely to be exposed to more extreme cases and be expected to manage more stressful situations, will suffer PSTD more. I am acutely mindful of the cumulative effects of my type of work, and often wonder if I will get through unscathed.

Is it natural for a 23-year-old to tell a woman her husband of 46 years, a man around whom her life revolves, she is reliant on for her day-to-day care, is deceased and there is nothing more we can do? By the way, did he have a GP for his normal care, did he have a medical condition that could possibly have killed him? Do you have a funeral director in mind? Do you have any relatives we can call and inform them their loved one is dead? By the way, the police will come and want to talk to you. Do you want us to put the body of man who you loved back into bed? All this takes place in 10 minutes or so, often has to be quick, on, say a busy night. This is far from normal. The death and grief I have experienced is far from normal. I try not to dwell on these events.

I have despaired at the senseless waste caused by drugs and alcohol. I have felt grief and anger at the bloody scenes of road trauma. I have felt pain and hatred at scenes of human violence inflicted on innocent people who had had no culpability in their demise, by people that cared nothing for others. Far from normal. I try not to dwell on them.

Having fun and a laugh as often as possible has kept me somewhat sane. So, if you see a paramedic making what you consider a poorly-timed joke or laughing at a grave scene, forgive us. It may be therapeutic. It may be me.

I think the coping role of humour cannot be understated in any job, but particularly important in a high stress job. My first priority is to be the best paramedic I can be: I love nothing better than working with good people through challenging situations. But if there is a funny side, I want to find it.

Months passed. I got a call from my Nan: she had sold some furniture to an elderly couple, could I help out and deliver them? ‘Sure Nan, no probs.’ I picked up the furniture and delivery address from her and set off. As I neared the destination, I had a sinking feeling. Couldn’t be…

Yes, it could. Head down, I knocked. The door swung open to reveal a large family gathering, and, seated