As was the practice, for probationary ambulance officers, we were moved around to different training officers approximately every 10 – 12 weeks. This was designed to expose us to different types of treating, questioning and interpersonal skills employed by other qualified officers. By doing so, we could hope to develop an all-encompassing, and holistic approach to treating our patients more efficiently.

I’d spent ten weeks with Ollie, and I must say that I had a wonderful introduction to the job. He had the patience of a saint, good personal skills, and an insight into people that I revere and covet to this day. Now it was time for a change.

Ollie had decided that I was suitable to be trained by Shelly.

Shelly

Now let me give you a run down on Shelly.

I absolutely adored Shelly. Much of what I am today (the good parts), I owe to Shelly. She was a straight shooter, had ultimate respect for the people she was caring for, and taught me the most important thing, that stays with me even today, 25 years later and that is “everyone deserves a blanket”.

Let me explain this a bit more.

Shelly taught me that no matter what the person or persons we are dealing with are like, if you are polite, courteous and show some respect to them, you can’t go wrong in the job. Even the smallest kind action can change what could be a difficult situation into a less difficult situation. Kindness cost nothing, but can buy you a lot. Even the simple action of giving a blanket to comfort a person, whether they are the filthiest, grotty individual you could imagine, to a person suffering from life threatening injuries, you are letting them know that someone cares.

Not meaning in any way to detract from what I have just written, I always remembered this, whether I thought they deserved it or not, as I’ve met some very, not nice people in the job. Anyway, back to Shelly.

Shelly was married to Jeff (name changed for this story), a really cool guy who was in law enforcement. My wife and I had been to a couple of BBQ’s and dinners with them over the years, and had a riotously funny time. Part of that fun was singing karaoke to Meatloaf songs like Paradise by the dashboard light. Shelly also liked to sing along to the radio when we were driving around, and we’d laugh as I’d just hum. Life was good on the job. Her eye for detail was astounding, and it matched her own treatment of casualties. When Shelly was looking after them, they were in good hands.

One night, around 1 in the morning, we decided to ring up the local radio station and make a song request, not really expecting them to play our request, but you wouldn’t believe what happened.

Around 2 o’clock, we were driving under lights to a possibly serious job, when over the FM radio came the announcer saying: “and here’s a request from Shelly and Paul from the ambulance service …. Hang on, help is on the way” by Little River Band. We burst out laughing, arriving on scene, trying to wipe the tears from our eyes. To our relief, the job was not as stated, and turned out not to be so serious in nature after all.

I need to explain about the radio we used for our entertainment, not the work radio for communications.

Now, the old Ford F250s we used for ambulances, didn’t come with an FM radio, so what we used to do is bring in a portable radio from home, plug it into the power supply, and listen to that for entertainment between jobs. As the Fords didn’t have a centre console, the radios used to slide around on the floor a bit. Being creative as many of us Ambos are, we used to take pride in building or creating means to keep the radios centred and safe. It was almost a competitive kind of pride amongst us to have the most efficient and creative means of securing our radios, everything from old oxygen tubing, through to custom home built wooden consoles.

They all did the job for us, no matter how simple they were. The real creativity came to connecting them up to the power supply, as the cigarette lighter sockets didn’t work.

Now, back to the job.