Someone get this drunk out of here

A few years ago when I was relatively new to first aid, I took part in a training exercise on the Mendip hills with some St John Ambulance colleagues. It had been reported that an aircraft had come down but thankfully the pilot had ejected and was last seen floating gently to the ground just a few miles away.

After searching the area near where he was last seen, we eventually came across him and it was immediately apparent his landing hadn't gone to plan. His parachute landing that is, obviously the aircraft landing hadn’t really gone to plan either (I think that’s what they call a bad day at the office). The parachute had become tangled in some branches and he needed to cut himself free to escape. Gravity being the pesky thing it is meant he promptly continued the rest of his journey to the ground. Bump. Snap!

To make matters worse, he was not alone. An annoying drunk guy had appeared on scene and thought he was helping us by grabbing hold of the pilot’s badly broken leg and shaking it about, just to show us where the injury was.

We managed to get the drunk away and proceeded to establish the severity of the break and what needed to be done to treat the injury, relieve the pain and prepare the pilot for transport to hospital. Incidentally this meant carrying the pilot in a stretcher down an eighty feet high cliff. They don't like to make these exercises easy for us.

Frustratingly the drunk guy kept returning and shouting his incoherent ramblings at us and generally being a nuisance. Fortunately for us, and more so for him, we had a more experienced member of the team with us and it didn’t take her long to realise we were no longer dealing with one patient and a drunk. We were dealing with two patients and the ‘drunk’ was potentially the more serious.

In trying to find out what exactly had been consumed to put him in this state, she soon found out he hadn’t drunk anything. Nor for that matter had he eaten anything.  Perhaps not the best thing to do, or not do, when you’re diabetic. Our ‘drunk’ turned out to be having a hypoglycaemic attack and his situation could get extremely grave without any treatment.

Now knowing the full story, we treated him for hypoglycaemia and managed bring him back round again. While that was ongoing, the pilot was having his leg strapped up so we could transport him down the cliff (to our actor’s great delight) and off to hospital.

Photo courtesy of Matt Gridley

So the moral of this story. Never assume a patient is drunk or under the influence of anything.  They may be suffering from something more severe. Of course, even if they are under the influence of alcohol, that is perhaps no reason to judge them. They should be treated the same as anyone else. Making assumptions however, could quite easily hide a very serious illness that requires urgent medical attention.