London’s Air Ambulance

Back in the land of the living!

- TracyB 2 Comments

Well almost anyway. After the last few weeks of activity my body definitely isn’t used to and crushing recuperation in between has seen me absent from my blog for a while.

I’m getting back to some level of normality, but only just!

It started with :

 

On set of the short film he’s been doing recently
Him and his ‘on screen’ sister!

This was a gruelling ( for me anyway!) four 12hr days with travelling on top. I really cannot explain how I managed to stay standing ( my lovely new walking stick came in very handy). I don’t think I have pushed my poor M.E body that hard for a very long time. When it was over I went to bed and lost almost 2 days in bed and the rest of the week sleeping while the boys were at school. However, he had 2 more auditions in London the next week and a day on location on Norfolk to finish the film!!

That meant another day spent in bed afterwards for me and very quickly my days were disappearing. I haven’t blogged or been on Twitter, I haven’t knitted for what seems like ages ( although I managed to do some whilst chaperoning my son. Even watching mindless TV would take it’s toll.

However, other things have been happening all be it around me:

YUM!

 

Like this great chocolate swiss roll that my eldest decided to make at the weekend!! It tasted just as good as it looks too, although I might have had to have several slices just to make sure.

Proud mummy moment!

We also found this, a copy of the paper my eldest was put in for his efforts to raise money for the London’s Air Ambulance. That’s him in the middle of the picture with the crew who got a call literally seconds afterwards and we got to watch them head off on an emergency call- fantastic!

Oh and of course the recent sunshine (most of which I have missed by being in bed) brought out the ‘Diva’ side of the cat…………………life is good, feed me more treats!!

However, the down side is I am sooo behind with everything, cleaning, ironing, cooking even to some extent. That’s without mentioning the blog. I have emails I haven’t responded to, posts that I need to write and networking to do.

So be warned, I have some great posts coming- an A-Z of me, a review that might interest those of you who value a restful nights sleep, a few of my knitting projects that I haven’t taken pics of yet!

I’M BACK…………

Charity starts at home!

- TracyB 2 Comments

Charity starts at home, a view held by my eldest son, who last year decided as part of his Community Challenge badge in his scout group decided to collect for a ‘home ‘ charity.

He chose the London’s Air Ambulance service or HEMS as it can be known.

London’s Air Ambulance is a registered charity which runs London’s only helicopter emergency medical service, providing life saving care to victims of serious injury throughout London – serving the 10 million people who live, work and commute within the M25.

Based at the Royal London Hospital and founded in 1989, the service is unique in that it operates 24/7, with the helicopter running in daylight hours and rapid response cars taking over at night.  The Team, which at all times includes a senior trauma doctor and a specially trained paramedic, attends an average of seven missions every 24 hours.

London’s Air Ambulance has an international reputation for clinical excellence and delivers pioneering procedures which have been adopted across the world. 

London’s Air Ambulance was the first air ambulance service in the UK:

  • with a doctor and paramedic team;
  • to deliver high standard pre-hospital anaesthesia;
  • to have a clinical governance programme;
  • to perform a thoracotomy (open heart surgery) at the roadside;
  • to perform thoracostomy (to drain collapsed lungs);
  • to use check lists to improve patient safety;
  • with air & land based response; and to provide 24 hour cover.

He put a letter out to the whole of the scout group asking for Beavers, Cubs and Scouts to bring in all their used postage stamps which he had a remarkable response to. In fact he collected over 19,000!! Yes we counted them all.

Proof of the stamps and the counting!!

 

Just one of the boxes!

But today we had arranged for him to visit them at the Royal London Hospital at their new offices to deliver the stamps in person. We met a fantastic lady called Christine Margetts who did a brilliant job showing us all around. We met the paramedics and doctor on duty today, the firemen who also work there, we were told how a call is generated and processed and what information they receive and how they determine which hospital the patient will need to go to.

But to top it all we had the rare opportunity to go up to the helipad to get a picture taken with the actual Air Ambulance in the background. My son was able to go on board before very excitingly watching the helicopter and it’s crew take off on a real life call!

Cold and windy 300ft up on the helipad!
Sitting inside before the Air Ambulance was called out!

Off on a real life call!

It was brilliant to see them in action, how quickly they reacted and how professional they all were. This truly is a worthwhile service that relies heavily on donation and every little helps.

I was very proud of my eldest doing what was necessary, helping a worthwhile charity close to home, and counting (with me) all 19,000 stamps!!

What charity is close to your heart?