The very first time I took a drive in an ambulance, I was a medical student doing my weekly 24 hours stint at the small, general hospital in Los Teques, Venezuela. Los Teques is an hour’s drive from Caracas, high up in the mountains and connected to it by a dangerous road, the two-lane Pan American Highway.
A one year old had arrived late at night and diagnosed with croup. We had no paediatrician on call. We were not sure the child did not have a deadly form of croup, epiglottis, common before the HiB vaccine. The attending surgeon, there to deal with the many motor vehicle accidents, decided to send the baby to Caracas. As the junior medical student, I was chosen to accompany the child.
We moved off into the night mist, lights flickering, siren blaring, patient, mother, granny and me in the back. The driver and ambulance assistant, who at that time I only knew by his alcoholic breath, separated from us, in the front.
About halfway down the mountain, the driver decided that despite the mist, traffic was moving too slowly and proceeded to overtake any and sundry vehicles in front. The road is cut into the side of the mountain. We were descending on the outer lane which had no barrier and which plunged straight down for hundreds of feet. It twists and turns every hundred metres or so and he took the curves at speed. There was nowhere to hold on.
After we had been thrown around a couple of times, I gave the screaming child to the mother and told everyone to sit down on the floor and brace as best we could. That was probably the best decision taken that night, the child stopped crying, calmed, I learned an excellent lesson (never separate a child from its mother) and we all held on to each other and prayed as the ambulance careened down the road.
To my disappointment, the paediatricians in the Children’s Emergency Room said the child had simple croup and could return to Los Teques. My chance at being a hero was gone. When we went outside, a cold January 2 am, the ambulance had vanished. I had to call my father to take us back to Los Teques. He was not amused. The ambulance was nowhere in sight when we arrived and did not turn up until breakfast.
The second incident showed up more of life on a T&T highway. In the early 80’s I was going over to Tobago once a month to make rounds on the children’s ward in the morning and run a clinic in the afternoon. The MoH paid for my passage and I lined up with the other passengers for the early flight. The Scarborough Hospital ambulance picked me up at the Tobago airport and took me back in the evening.
As we drove down Milford Road we noticed a disturbance in the distance, a car accident. A woman was lying down at the side of the road, blood pouring from her head. We stopped and checked. She was conscious. The wound seemed superficial but we had to get her to the hospital quickly in case she deteriorated. Off we went, siren blaring, people making way for us. Until we hit the highway.
To my amazement a gentleman in the car in front of us refused to give way on the passing lane. In fact he alternatively slowed down and speeded up to prevent us from overtaking. We finally turned off. He went his miserable way.
“You’d be surprise, Doc, how often that happen” said the ambulance driver.
The third occasion did not occur in an ambulance. Now a paediatric resident in training, I was on call at the Maryland Regional Neonatal ICU in Baltimore which served the Washington/Maryland area. A storm was moving in from the west. Rivers were flooding and highways closing down. The staff thought we would have a slow night. The phone rang. It was the neonatologist from the Hagerstown General Hospital. He had a two-pounder in respiratory difficulty, needed to be transferred. Hagerstown was in the far west of the state. The Blue Ridge Mountains, a branch of the Appalachian Mountain range, cuts the state in half, from north to south and rises to over five thousand feet. The only way in was by helicopter.
State helicopter service said their helicopters were grounded. Call the Army. They had larger vehicles. A huge double bladed helicopter, something like a Boeing Chinook, arrived. I was escorted on board by a grim looking nurse, like one of those Marine types we used to see at the entrance of the base in Chag in the fifties. She put me to sit down in a tiny pocket at the side of the monster. A helmet with radio was placed on my head, the door was locked and she moved off. There I sat, all alone with my bag. We lifted off. Instantly we began to sway from side to side. All I could see through the little window in the door was a great darkness, occasionally some lights far below. We flew into the rain. The wind rose and buffeted the vehicle. Lighting flashed. We jerked up and down. I began to get nauseous. Suddenly we dropped sideways. I was looking straight down. Padner!
Suddenly my radio came alive. I could faintly hear the voice of the nurse. “Sir!” Who was she talking to? “Sir!” “Doctor!” It was me. “Pilot requests permission to abort the mission!” Abort what? “Mission?”, I heard my voice saying. There was silence. Then, “Sir, the pilot believes the mission is in grave danger and requests permission to abort!” What mission were they talking about. I only going to pick up a sick baby. Mission? Suddenly it clicked. This was the army. They were on a MISSION. Somewhere there was a file named Bratt/Baltimore/Hagerstown/Preemie and I was in charge! I had was to make the call, baby!
So I did. We turned back. And there was an audible sigh of relief from the army nurse. Another opportunity lost to be a hero. Maybe a dead one. Next morning came news that a helicopter had crashed in West Virginia. Also that the baby had expired in the early hours of the morning.
