I mentioned in a previous post that for my military service I was working in the Red Cross as a strecher-bearer on ambulance. I recently stumbled upon a blog all about ambulance work by Tom Reinolds, and reading his posts (in particular this one) made me think of my time in the Red Cross.

In the post Tom tells how he managed to carry a girl with a broken leg in an unfriendly building. I also have a little story about carrying people from their home to our ambulance.

One time we were called in for a lady who had problems to breath. We get there and when we get inside we find a huge lady, and by huge I mean obese (no offense). She must have been at least 120 kg. And she couldn’t get up and walk, I doubt she could easily walk even in normal conditions.

After a few minutes of thinking, my boss decided that we needed backup. There are only 3 people in one ambulance, so we called in another one. We put her on a plastic sheet with handles and carried her down. Obviously there was no elevator (or she couldn’t fit inside), so we had to take the stairs. Being rocked right and left, she instictively tried to hang on to the rails, which did not help us at all. I don’t remeber how many floors, but it felt like forever! It was during the summer, so the weather was very hot, plus I was wearing a full uniform, long sleeves and long pants.

After a lot of sweating, we managed to carry her to the strecher. Before leaving her at the hospital, her family gave us tips, for our hard work. That poor lady basically could not get out of her apartment, and we were her only (cheap) way out.