So, today was a very eventful day.

I was walking back along to Church after a fun afternoon with my mates when we saw someone lying in the road.  It looked as though he had been knocked down.  People were running about, but didn’t seem to have a clue what they were doing.  Nobody had called an ambulance and everyone seemed to be ignoring the guy on the ground with blood pouring out of his head.  Having had some basic first aid training (albeit some years ago now) and no sign of anyone else doing anything I decided to see if the guy was ok.

I had a look and it was pretty clear that he wasn’t.  Blood was coming out of his head and he appeared to be drifting in and out of consciousness.   He reeked of alcohol and had wounds to both the front and back of his head.  My mate called an ambulance while I tried to keep him talking and (in consultation with ambulance control) applied pressure to the wound with a towel that someone from a pub had brought out.  My hands got covered in blood, not nice, but I didn’t worry too much about it as all I wanted to do was keep this guy alert and try and stem the bleeding while the ambulance arrived.  The guy wasn’t breathing all that well and earlier when I’d tried to find a pulse in his wrist I didn’t.

Anyway, the ambulance arrived and this is where the nightmare began.  The guy admitted to them that he had injected heroin and responded to the naloxone that they had given him.  Then I began to feel sick as my hands had quite a few, relatively fresh and still open cuts on them.  So, yeah, that’s fun.  I decided against going to A+E and instead later phoned NHS 24 who advised going and having a chat with my GP about it tomorrow.

That’s not where the drama stops though.  I later discover, while waiting for the train home, a drunken guy being sick in the toilet and sounding as if he is chocking, so that resulted in a very quick dash back out of the toilet asking someone to grab the station staff.  Yet another ambulance is called, but I refrain from touching this guy after my encounter earlier in the day.

I feel very sick!  I know there is almost no chance that I’ve caught anything from him (assuming he is HIV+ to begin with) and that the general risk is very small.  However, that does not stop me from feeling totally and utterly sick!

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