THERE WILL BE BLOOD (WARNING: 18 certificate)
Why are people afraid of blood? It's the
stuff of life, and we are lost without it. Presumably it's because of the
association with harm, injury and death, or major operations, for we only see
it in any quantity in those scenarios. Perhaps quantity is the key: generally
people are not too bothered by the sight of a paper-cut, a nosebleed or a blood
test – except that many look away when it is being done. Needlephobia may be
something different, though. I’ve had a lot of blood-tests in the last few years so they are very routine for me, but I always look at other patients in the
room and it is clear that some of them are highly anxious. The truth of the
matter is that blood tests are seldom painful; but there is a truth within that
truth, which is that they are much more likely to be painful in your GP surgery
than the blood test department of a hospital. No offence to GP Practice nurses
who may be very experienced, but the fact is that they will do a few a day at
the very most. The blood test department does hundreds every day and they simply
have a higher level of skill. At the two extremes, I had a blood test at the
Royal Free where I was genuinely unsure whether the needle had actually gone in
or not – all I had felt was something like an itch. On my next visit to the GP a practice nurse
just couldn’t find a blood vessel in my arm to hit, with the result that what
should take 3 minutes took 15 and left an arm that looked like a junkie’s.
Blood in quantity, blood flowing, blood
from serious and clearly painful injury are a different matter, I think. This
is much more likely to be traumatic and the reaction of recoil and disgust tap into some really primeval emotions and instinctive patterns of
behaviour which are very persuasive and hard to resist. Flight, that is,
leaving the scene, is one of them. There is a whole field of Social Psychology
known as ‘bystander intervention’ or 'bystander apathy' which looks at the factors which influence
whether people help or ‘look the other way’ in emergency situations. Broadly this
suggests that there are more factors which inhibit helping behaviour than
encourage it – though of course many people will overcome these constraints and
offer help.
Sometimes you can’t, because you are
prevented from doing so. When I was 9 we went to North Wales on holiday.
On the A5 beyond Shrewsbury we encountered a slow-moving tailback which after a
couple of miles passed a serious accident: a truck had hit a minibus head-on.
It was absolute carnage with several badly injured or dead people lying on the ground. My father told us not to look, but I did. He was right: it was an indelible image. It was raw because the
paramedics had not yet arrived, though the police had and were waving traffic
past as quickly as possible. Theoretically my father could have helped, having
some medical knowledge, but he wasn’t allowed to do so by the police, just waved on. Looking
back on it, in his shoes I would have been inclined to offer help, and been
privately relieved not to have to. It was an absolute horror show and you
wouldn’t have a clue where to start (not having the necessary knowledge or
skills is one of the biggest inhibitors of helping behaviour).
Three years later, one afternoon in
the summer holidays, I went to Grovelands Park, Southgate, with some mates from
school. We wanted to have a couple of rounds of pitch and putt. Two guys, in
their 20s, got to the office just before us and so they went off first. It was
about 2 in the afternoon, and it looked like they may have spent some time in
the pub first. One of them set up his ball on the tee, had done a few practice
swings. The other was standing diagonally behind him at what he thought was a
safe distance. The first one brought his club back, brought it down and smacked
the ball very hard, and on the follow through with the club over his shoulder,
hit his friend full in the mouth with the club head. The guy grabbed his face,
screamed with pain and instantly poured blood and spat out teeth, then fell
over backwards. There was actually very little we could do – so we just looked
after him and tried to comfort him while his mate went to call for an
ambulance. It occurs to me now, although this was not a fatal injury, how many
lives have been saved by the advent of the mobile phone?
I was involved in a further emergency situation much more recently, one that involved a scenario which would be everybody’s
nightmare. I had finished lecturing for the day and made my
way to the Bakerloo Line northbound platform at Oxford Circus tube station. I
was reading the Standard, minding my own business, as they say, when the train
came in. If you are of a squeamish disposition it would be better to stop reading this point. I was trying to finish what I was reading as the
train was slowing to a halt, but I became aware of a disturbance of the crowd
on the platform, the sound of gasps, whimpers, low-level screams and of people
drawing back from the platform edge, the crowd parting to reveal that the train
was a dragging a man along the platform, with one leg caught underneath
it. That was bad enough, but as the train stopped the man was able to pull
himself away, further
onto the platform, and revealed the really horrendous sight of a bloody leg
which had been severed a few inches below the knee. It looked just like a
leg of lamb in a butcher’s window, only with shattered bones not neatly cut
ones.
I was involved in a further emergency situation much more recently, one that involved a scenario which would be everybody’s
nightmare. I had finished lecturing for the day and made my
way to the Bakerloo Line northbound platform at Oxford Circus tube station. I
was reading the Standard, minding my own business, as they say, when the train
came in. If you are of a squeamish disposition it would be better to stop reading this point. I was trying to finish what I was reading as the
train was slowing to a halt, but I became aware of a disturbance of the crowd
on the platform, the sound of gasps, whimpers, low-level screams and of people
drawing back from the platform edge, the crowd parting to reveal that the train
was a dragging a man along the platform, with one leg caught underneath
it. That was bad enough, but as the train stopped the man was able to pull
himself away, further
onto the platform, and revealed the really horrendous sight of a bloody leg
which had been severed a few inches below the knee. It looked just like a
leg of lamb in a butcher’s window, only with shattered bones not neatly cut
ones.
At this point there was some hysteria. A lot of people left the scene as quickly as they could, in fact most people did that. I couldn’t, for two reasons (or I probably would have, the situation was so overwhelmingly difficult and horrible). Firstly, with supreme irony, I had just been lecturing to my second year students on Bystander Intervention in emergencies – or lack of it. Secondly. The train had not just dumped him on the platform, it had dumped him literally at my feet; I was by far the nearest person to him. It was
almost as though God, to punish me for my years of atheism, had said “Right
mate, you tell your students what they should do in emergencies,
let’s see what you do, so sort it out! Yes you”
What
to do? Haven’t a f*cking clue. Panic and freeze. Get the idea of using the
station intercom to get help. Damn. Someone’s doing it already. Stare,
transfixed, at the man’s leg, see he’s still losing a lot of blood, can’t see what
I could use as a tourniquet, nor how to get one on him, given his overcoat,
trousers etc. Suddenly remember A-level Zoology (so have only waited 40 years
for it to come in useful in any way at all) – isn’t there a big ‘femoral
artery’ which is fairly near the surface near the groin? Get toe of boot in
there fairly hard. Almost as soon as I
had, the cavalry arrived, and the paramedics unceremoniously bundled me off the
victim and upstairs. They have closed off Oxford St and Regent St to bring down
the Virgin Air Ambulance which has paralysed the whole of the West End in the
rush hour, so it promptly takes off again without him. Priorities. Ambulance takes him to St. George's (Middlesex Hospital 300m away no longer has A&E...). He survived but lost the
rest of that leg. All my subsequent lectures on bystander intervention were
rather more vivid and heartfelt than before.
THE SUNDAY MASH
(with acknowledgements to our sister publication The Daily Mash)
Recent research has shown that some
advertisements may not be true
Others may be a slight exaggeration
Why does this picture remind us of lemmings prepared to throw themselves off a cliff? Nothing to do with that fine little car which has given so many District Nurses sterling service, obviously.
HIGNFY
On Have I Got News for You on Friday night it was reported that, as claimed, David Cameron's Mum had indeed given him a gift of £200,000, but it was important to stress that this was for both Birthday AND Christmas...
FIRST CLASS POSTS
BERNIE IN.....?
IF GATES HAD SPELLCHECK.....
No comments:
Post a Comment