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NARRATOR: Yorkshire sprawls across three million acres...
..the biggest county in Britain.
MAN 1: Go ahead.MAN 2: One-eight, 18 minutes ETA.
All of it covered by the crews of its two dedicated air ambulances.
WOMAN 1: This job has two sides to it.
You fly around in a helicopter and you have the time of your life.
(TELEPHONE RINGS)
(SIREN WAILING)
And then there's the flip side to it, where it's awfully stressful.
MAN 3: Let's go up, and then visor's down, and pilot's briefed. MAN 4: Roger, lifting.
We get sent to some pretty horrific things.
WOMAN 2: She's probably gonna need blood, to be fair.
(WOMAN 3 SCREAMS)OK. There we go. MAN 5: That's it, we're done.
From the remote Dales... (MAN 6 SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)
..to the rocky coast...Pull!
..six million people depend on them.
Aargh!
No job is ever the same. No people are ever the same.
WOMAN 4: Lift.
We see a lot of carnage on the scene, we see a lot of destruction,
and people's lives turned upside down.
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
From hardy locals hurt at work... (GROANS)
..to tourists trapped in the beautiful but hostile landscape...
(COUGHING AND WHEEZING)
It does make you appreciate that life's for living.
..this is life on the cutting-edge of emergency medicine.
Couldn't imagine anything's gonna top being a part of this team.
Covering an area of four and a half thousand square miles,
the Yorkshire Air Ambulance flies out of two bases,
RAF Topcliffe in the north of the county
and Nostell in the south...
..making sure every corner of Yorkshire has access
to rapid critical care.
Becky?Yeah? The vent's all checked, I'll go
and put it on the aircraft, OK?
Yep. That sounds good. Thank you.
I remember when I first started, my very first day,
they took us out for the helicopter just taking off.
Me and the guys who started with me just couldn't stop smiling.
We were trying to, but, you know, we were trying to hide
the amazement, but it was really exciting.
And I think that that doesn't die.
It's not, you know, you've not got that first day any more,
erm, but we do love it.
You know, the siren goes off, it still has that impact of when everyone
sort of springs into action, and they're ready for the job.
Erm, for some people, it's a bit of a reminder that
they need the toilet. (LAUGHS)
(TELEPHONE RINGS)
Hello, it's Max on Air Desk.
Brill, thanks a lot, Oliver, I'll have a look now. Cheers.
It is a 60-year-old that's fallen ten metres down a crag.
It's a big, big drop.Get Mountain Rescue and try and get some details.
Are you secure in the back?Yeah. I'm secure on the left.Roger.
OK, same departure as we did already today.
MAN: Now we can go ahead.
One-eight, 18 minutes ETA.
Roger. Thank you.
Mountain Rescue have been requested, patient's with head injury
and back injuries. Over.
BECKY: So 30 feet's obviously a very long way
to fall, especially off a crag.
What they fall on, that can make a massive difference.
Obviously, crags have got lots of rocks at the bottom, which makes it a big concern.
The team are heading to Twistleton Scar,
a dramatic rock formation a thousand feet up
on the flank of Whernside,
one of Yorkshire's iconic three peaks.
Looks like it's into a valley, so it's depending on how far they've fallen.
I suppose if they've fallen, erm... They'll be at the bottom.
Yeah, which will be easier for us. Yeah. (CHUCKLES)
I can't see anything or anyone.
No, I can't either.Over here, look, on the cliff edge, maybe. See that orange,
er -Oh, at the bottom there?
Oh, yeah.Ah, yeah, he's in view, yeah.
That's too, er, it's too slopey down there...Too slopey. ..so we'll land on the top.
We'll go for that sort of grassy area on the top there.Yeah.
Crikey.
Happy?Yeah.OK.
Nine-nine landing.
Little path here for us.
(MAN SPEAKING)Hello!
The local mountain rescue team have reached the patient,
and will show them the way.
(MAN SPEAKING)Male? OK.
(MAN SPEAKING)Yep.
Erm, was he, was he climbing? (BECKY SPEAKING)
(MAN SPEAKING)Yeah.Ah.
Hi. Are you the troublemaker?
This is John.John, hi, I'm Becky. This is David. Hi.
They were climbing a route just here.
Fell from approximately where the white blotching is
and then tumbled to here. We've left him as we found him,
once we saw you on the way.
I've sort of felt the back here is OK, but I can't get to the bottom,
that's where he says the pain is.OK.
Hurts at the bottom of your back, anywhere else?
I had a totally numbed leg, I've, in effect,
dead-legged it on the way down.
OK, So you think you've bashed it? Yeah.Yeah.
So when you get to a scene like that, you've seen the mechanism, you've seen how far they've fallen.
It can be a relief to see that they're awake and they're talking to you.
But that doesn't mean that they're not highly injured.
We're from a climbing club and he went up,
he said to me, "Take in," because he just wanted
to have a suss around to find a decent hand hold and route,
and as he lay back on his gear, he just came out.
So obviously, totally unexpected. He just tumbled,
and that was it, basically. So he just bounced
over all the rocks to crack, crack, crack.
The length of John's fall and the loss of feeling in his leg
could be the first signs of a serious spinal injury.
DAVID: Nasty scratch, one, two, three.
If it hurts a lot, we'll give you gas and air.
Yeah.For moving. Have you heard of that before? Yeah. Yeah.Yeah? Lovely.
Patients that have fallen from a height can have a magnitude of injuries,
it depends on how they've fallen.
Head injuries, chest injuries, open fractures, limb injuries,
but quite traditionally, the spinal injuries.
If you land on your feet, the spine will take the impact of that.
If you land on your back, the spine will take the impact of that. They do need some further assessment.
I imagine, you know, straighten legs and almost just...
This gentleman was almost in a semi-foetal position, laying on a rock,
so trying to get a board behind him to keep the spine straight
was very, very difficult.
What about this gent that's trying to move himself?
Cos at least he can stop if he's in a lot of pain. If we all lift him.
Get into position.Can you try and shuffle your legs around?
I just feel like we would move you more than you would move yourself.
If it becomes too much, just let us know.All right.
Sometimes, in those scenarios, you have to make a dynamic risk assessment.
It seemed much better and less likely to cause further injury
if he moved himself rather than us picking and moving him,
especially with the significant pain that he was in.
That's it. Can you just put your left hand just under there? And that's it.
Right. Get your feet flat. That's it.
All right? Do you want a hand from me? You can grab onto my arm, if you like.
Do you want to just grab this side here?
They're moving John on to Mountain Rescue's vacuum stretcher.
It will mould to his body and immobilise his back and hips.
Do you want some gas and air that helps relax your muscles as well? Want to try and do it?
Yeah.That's it, keep going. Keep breathing on it. Lovely. Yeah.
Been in the same position for a while.
Is it hurting your lower back when you try and put your legs down?
No, it's the top of my thighs.
The top of your thighs? OK.
Is there any chance you can just keep them as they are, like that?
Yeah? Then that looks fine.
Even with Mountain Rescue's help, transporting John
up the steep, rocky scree to the helicopter will be difficult.
(PILOT SPEAKING)The Mountain Rescue team are saying that it's easier
for them to go down than it would be to come up.
Is there any, erm, opportunity at all to look at relocation or not?
(PILOT SPEAKING)
Pilot Phil is moving the helicopter
down the hill and closer to the team.
DAVID: One, two, three.
It's going to take a roping system and a lot of muscle to get John
to the safety of the helicopter.
The team must decide whether John can travel to the hospital by road
or if they should fly him.
There's a DCA that's 15 minutes away.
We could relocate to the bottom of the road and load them onto there.
If you think there's somewhere to relocate.
There's no clinical need for the only helicopter in the whole of Yorkshire...Yeah.
..to be with this patient for hours. Yeah.That's my only concern.
15 minutes.Right.
These hills are inaccessible to the land ambulance,
so John will be flown to meet it.
We've transferred from... We've got the football pitch in the middle of the village.
Is there nowhere at the bottom here?
Difficult to get to this road.
If we just have a look, see if there's somewhere...
I'll come for a wander. Come for a wander.
Can you see the dead old tractor? Very flat there, but it's quite boggy.
To the right, the stone wall, going away from it?
That triangle area there. Yeah.Yeah.
That site might be all right, might it?Yeah.
There's only two helicopters at best to cover Yorkshire,
and on this particular day, there was only one.
Er, and that resource had a doctor and blood,
and was to cover the whole of Yorkshire.
If there's a chance to relocate the helicopter and send them by land,
sometimes that journey can be much more comfortable and smoother.
DAVID: Roger. I think the threat's gone now, so clear left.
PILOT: I can see he's got his flare lit down there.
Mountain rescuer guiding pilot Phil onto the only flat surface
available in this hilly terrain.
Roger. DCA's just coming down the road.OK.
All the best, John. Take care, buddy. Yeah.
SAM: How many teabags do I put in the teapot? Three. If you want nice, strong tea.
Is that a set rule, three? No, no, it's just
slice-to-teabag ratio, isn't it?Mm-hm.
Cream before jam or jam before cream?
It's always cream before jam. Unless you're weird.
Perfect colour tea, now this is all very civilised.
Can remember sat in the window of year six primary school, looking out the window
and seeing a yellow helicopter fly over, and said,
"I want to do that when I'm older." And here I am.
It's an honour, really, to be able to fly around in the sky,
looking down at Yorkshire, and think if anybody needs
that critical care intervention, then we're it.
It's a real privilege. (TELEPHONE RINGS)
A call comes in from Harrogate in North Yorkshire.
PILOT: I'll just go up and left.
MATTY: Visor's down and pilot's briefed.
Air Desk, 99 lifting.
Our ETA is nine minutes, that's nine minutes.
WOMAN: Roger. You've got an ambulance on route,
ETA seven minutes. Over.
99 acknowledged.
SAM: I think this chap's trapped his hand in a lawnmower, I believe.OK.
It said on the job that his fingers are hanging off.Ooh-ooh.
Yeah, so we'll have to see.Yep.
It's something we do on the way, something we call mental modelling,
where we go through in our heads what we're likely to find on the scene,
what interventions we might have to make,
drugs we might need to use, skills we might need to do.
Hanging off and dangling by a bit of skin
is what we understood it to be.
When you hear that someone's injured the fingers, it's quite a devastating injury, really.
So to be able to get there and make a difference
and try and save his fingers for him, erm, is really important.
So that's what's going through our head.
I'm just thinking, Matty, if this chap's fingers have some band marks
and he hasn't gone across the top, we'll probably do a ring block. All right, sound.
So around about down here somewhere. Air Desk, 99 overhead.
Finding a suitable landing spot near the casualty isn't easy.
(ALL LAUGH)
The aircraft is landing a quarter of a mile from the injured man.
Air Desk, 99 finals.
Camera on.
Air Desk, 99 landed.
(WOMAN SPEAKING OVER RADIO)
Might wanna jump over this side, Matty, seems a bit more solid.
Just up that hill a little bit, I think.
There's already an ambulance crew at the scene.
The Yorkshire Air Ambulance carries a wider range
of critical care medication than a land ambulance.
And so it's still needed.
Hi.AMBULANCE CREW: Hiya. What's happened with him?
PATIENT: Aargh!
What's your name, sir?Chris. Chris, I'm Sam. This is Matty.
Hey-up, lad.OK.Ah!
47-year-old Chris Gill
has sliced his fingers with a lawn mower blade.
We'll inject a little bit of local anaesthetic into your fingers, just to numb them,
so you don't feel anything. I can't feel 'em anyway. OK, no worries.
(GROANING AND YELLING IN PAIN)
Two-twenty-five.
(BLEEP) Argh!
Good lad, good lad, go on. Put that in, go on.
Let me just get these - They're hanging off. All right, mate.
Aargh!All right, buddy, you're doing really well.
You're doing really well, mate.Oh!
There there was no blood supply to the extent of his finger,
so it's really important you get that dealt with quickly.
Because if you don't reattach those blood vessels,
then essentially, that tissue starts to die.
And that's the difference between being able
to reattach his fingers in theatre
or, you know, just take them off completely
because the the tissue is not viable any more.
Oh!What I'm gonna do is just inject
a little bit of a local anaesthetic into your finger, OK, each side?
Just nice, deep breaths for me. It'll sting a little bit.Oh!
Sam is going to perform a ring block.
He'll inject the anaesthetic Lidocaine
directly into each of the damaged fingers.
Chris, keep that in your mouth and just breathe nice,
slow deep breaths. Nice and relaxed.
Good lad, well done, you're doing good, mate, all right? Well done.
You've got four nerves that go through your finger,
two at the bottom, two at the top. Our aim with a ring block is essentially
to inject that local anaesthetic really near the nerve,
er, to just kill any signals going back.
Chris, I just need to clean around the top of it, all right?
But I'm not gonna touch where it is itself.I can't feel 'em anyway. All right, mate.
I can feel that. Yeah, that's just me with a cloth.
So your fingers are...(GROANS) ..quite dirty.Just keep your hand nice and still, mate.
Good man.(GROANING)
What I need you to do, Chris, is make sure you don't reach out or lift your hand.
OK? This is a needle in your fingers, all right?Right.
I'll do this one first.
Sharp scratch, might sting a little, all right?
You're being a good lad, well done, mate.This will sting a little bit now, OK?
(YELPS)Chris, nice and still.
That's the first finger, Chris.
There you go, that's one out of three.One out of three, two out of three in't bad?
It's not three, two, one gameshow is it?
Richard, can you just draw up
the other Lidocaine into there, please?
I'm like this all time, me. You don't need to give me any drugs.
Chris, second finger, all right?
Just holding your arm so you can keep your hand still.(PANTING)
Breathe on that as much as you want, as well, all right?Good man.
To go from someone that's in significant pain
in the fingers to no pain at all,
some people get quite tired because they've been using,
you know, so much energy trying to deal with that pain.
And some people can just get really, really happy
and almost change in personality, as he did. (CHUCKLES)
When did you last have anything to eat or drink?
Had my honey nut Crunchy Nut flakes this morning at about half-11.
D'you like Crunchy Nut? Is that... Not really, I were just hungry.
Not quite your go-to cereal, then, eh?
Chris, how's that pain doing at the minute in your fingers? Going down.
It's got better, has it? Fingers it is, yeah.Lovelies.
That all right, Chris? Try not to move.
I'm not gonna lose them, am I?
I need to keep me fingers, I'm a plasterer and damp proofer by trade.
Mm. Just gonna lift this hand up a touch, sweet, all right?
Right, Chris, this is some antibiotics that I'm gonna give you, OK?
Just cos it's quite dirty, so there's probably quite a high chance of infection,
so this will just stop it in its tracks, hopefully,
or help prevent it anyway.
We'll clear off, OK? Thanks very much for your time. You're welcome.
Thank you for your patience. No problem. Glad we could get your pain sorted.Bye!
I think Chris had been cutting the lawn.
I don't know if something got stuck in the blades, but he put his fingers underneath.
It's gone through three of his fingers.
When the crew got here, they were dangling down
and were hanging on just by a bit of skin,
so they were able to put them back, and then we've come along
just to see what we can do for him.
We were able to numb his fingers, which will last for about two hours until they can get him to Leeds.
Hopefully, Chris will be doing well.
(SIREN WAILING)
STEWART: I do like it when it goes well.
It can be the best job in the world.
I get to fly around Yorkshire, which, as a proud Lancastrian,
hurts me to say, but it's a beautiful place to be.
It can also be the worst.
We get sent to some pretty horrific things.
(TELEPHONE RINGS)
999 CALL DISPATCHER: Are you with 'em now? CALLER: I'm with her now, yeah.
On the Air Desk, dispatcher Sam is listening in to a 999 call.
A caller's friend has fallen from her horse.
Is there any serious bleeding? No, no bleeding,
but I think there's broken bones.
Is she responding normally?
She's dazed, confused, and can't move.
OK. And what part of the body's injured?
Her arm, potentially her back. Maybe her leg.
Her pelvis. Her pelvis.
MAN: Going to Northallerton? Yeah.All right, mate.Thank you.
(SIREN WAILING)
That little buzz you get when the siren goes off,
I don't think I will ever lose.
You know, I get to get in a state-of-the art helicopter
every day, and fly to help people.
No, I don't think I'll ever get used to that.
PILOT: Air Desk, 99 lifting.
The horse, head to floor's, probably about ten, twelve feet.
The big thing is a horse is at least half a tonne.
It's gonna cause a lot of damage to the soft tissues,
to stomachs, to abdomens, to pelvis, to spines.
So there's loads of injuries that we have to consider when we're on our way to the job.
(PILOT SPEAKING)
PARAMEDIC: Right, not too far away, is it?No.
BECKY: So when we're coming into a job involving horses,
one of the main concerns is that there may still be horses that are free.
Obviously, this horse has been spooked. So one of the things we don't want to do
is cause any more damage to any other people,
any property, or again, to our patient, make anything worse.
Is that the road there? (BECKY SPEAKING)
Ah, who's that down there? There's someone in the field,
directly at nine o'clock, next to this...Seen. Eyes on.
With the horses safely off the field, Colin goes in to land.
Don't know how deep this grass is.
Tail's nice and clear, Col. Okey-dokey.
OK, we all clear to jump? Yeah, mate, absolutely.
Hello! Sorry, it's noisy. Is it Claire?
My name is Becky, and this is Stewart.
Hello.All right. So, Claire, what's happened?
She was worried about, there was horses and she reared up.
I just remember seeing her come down on me.
This lady has been reared up on a horse,
come off the back, so she's fallen from a height,
but also, the horse has then fallen on top of her.
The larger injuries come from the weight of the horse landing on them.
Does she know how long she was out of it for?
About five minutes. All right, Claire. This gent's
your husband, is he?Yeah, Rob.
Lovely. Can I just undo your top, Claire, is that all right?
We're being careful, luvvie, we're just gonna snip up, all right?
Ah!So where's your main pain? Just here.OK.
Across your pelvis?Just here, yeah. On the right.
Lower right side.Where my hand is.
Claire, I'm gonna listen to your chest first of all.OK. Just take some breath in for me.
Lovely. And then I'm just gonna untuck your top, sorry.Argh.OK.
Sorry, love.Argh!OK.(YELPS) I am sorry. I am sorry.
Any tenderness here as I'm pressing? No. Ah! Ah!
It's my back when you move. When you say moving, it's hurting in your back?
Where my fingers are.From here? Yeah, and it's going into your back?
When a horse lands on top of you, you can have broken ribs,
internal bleeding if it's landed on the stomach.
If you've broken your pelvis, there's lots of blood vessels
that run through there that also can be damaged, and limb injuries.
Claire, this pain, which is the worst? Is it your hip,
is it your shoulder or your chest?
It's inside my pelvis.OK.
It's the top of my arm.OK.
And I'm... I can't take deep breaths,
so it hurts in my chest.OK.
What I think we'll do is we'll probably get you some morphine, OK, get this pain sorted,
cos when we move you, it's going to be painful, OK?Right.
What the plan is, we're gonna immobilise you, get you on our stretcher,
and we're probably gonna fly you up to James Cook.
We can stop people getting worse. We can stop them deteriorating.
We can, er, we can try and normalise things, but the injuries
have happened and they need to be fixed.
That's normally done by surgery, by getting them to an A&E.
We talk about the golden hour, getting them there as fast as we can so that
they can receive the treatment as fast as possible
to limit the damage they've suffered.
Right, I think all that's out. Have we got some morphine?
This is the morphine going in now, love. Er...
All right, so you'll let me know if that pain is getting any better.
Eight or nine. About an eight or nine. Okey-dokey.
Are you all right just setting that up? You know where it goes, yeah?
Have you had ketamine before at all?No.
What we're doing is morphine is a little bit of a longer-lasting pain relief,
and then ketamine, what it does is it's much shorter-acting.
So what we'll do is we'll give you a little bit of that just for movement.
And quite often... Are you listening, Claire?Yes.
Quite often, you don't remember what's happened, all right?
Erm, are you happy for us to give you some ketamine to move you?
OK.Ketamine.
Thank you very much. All right.
In my eyes, ketamine's a great drug, it works hand in hand with morphine.
Ketamine works very, very quickly,
and it's normally at full effect within a minute or two,
and that can take the pain away.
It's a dissociative, so it kind of takes them away
from the situation a little bit.
And it is a great drug for stabilising people in a lot of pain.
SAM: Oh-two.
Hiya, mate, listen, mate, patient is GCS 15,
she has got pain to chest, pelvis and shoulders.
We are looking at packaging and flying
this lady to James Cook. Over.
Roger. No problem. Thanks for the update.
Er, let me know if you need anything.
CLAIRE: I'm seeing stars.Are you? Sometimes that drug can do that.
I just popped a little bit of ketamine in already.
What it might do is just make you feel really woozy.
(CLAIRE SPEAKING)
How long do you think you've been here?
We're gonna have a go at straightening and moving her across.
She might make some noises, but I think she probably won't remember much after, OK?
If she is in pain, we'll give a little bit more.
We're just gonna move these legs.
We're gonna straighten them and make them more in an alignment for you, love.
All right?That OK, Claire?
Yeah, if she's, if she's... If she says stop, we'll just stop, OK?Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right, ready, steady.Here we go.
Ah!Well done.I think we're OK there. I think we're OK.
There we go, Claire, well done. (SCREAMS)
Well done.All right. There we go. Well done, Claire, that's it.
Ah!There we go. Well done.All right.
So it's gonna be on roll, guys. Ready, steady and roll.
(SCREAMS)Well done, Claire, just relax, there we go.
Well done, lass.Oh! Oh!
Ready, steady and roll.(SCREAMS)
Just let the bottom in first, guys. Ah!
The team suspects Claire has a broken pelvis.
They're applying a tight pelvic binder.
Rob's here. He's behind me.
You can lose your entire blood volume into your pelvic cavity.
And what a binder does is it keeps it all together.
And keeps it in the right place, so if there is any bleeding,
the idea is that a pelvic binder being pulled tight will hopefully
compress that bleeding and stop it getting any worse.
Yeah, ready.OK. Ready, steady, lift.
Lovely.How are you doing, Claire?
We're just gonna get you in the back of the aircraft and load you in, OK?
OK. Ready just to go up?Yeah.
Ready, steady, lift.Just watch your head, OK?OK? How's that?
PILOT: Roger. Thanks.
(PARAMEDIC SPEAKING)
99 in transit to James Cook.
Stewart will monitor her all the way to hospital.
Are you OK, Claire? Two minutes to run.
CLAIRE: My arm's hurting a bit. OK. OK.But it's OK.
99, finals for James Cook.
99 landed.
SAMMY: Some of these zips are getting a bit tired. There we go.
Zipology is also a skill. (CHUCKLES)
Leaving the zips in the same position,
so you can always find them, including in the dark.
Sorted.(TELEPHONE RINGS)
Air Desk, Andy speaking.
An asthma attack.
On the Air Desk, dispatcher Andy has spotted an emergency
unfolding in the Yorkshire Dales.
It's a 13-year-old having an asthma attack.
Crew are 62 minutes away.
Col, do you want me to give you a grid when you get up in to the air?
Bye, mate, cheers, bye.
Doors, harness and stretcher. Doors are secure right. Everything's secure at the rear.
The 13-year-old patient is 34 miles away and struggling to breathe.
Patients that suffer a mild asthma attack will recognise the symptoms
and be able to deal with it.
Sometimes, though, that asthma attack can just
catch you completely unawares.
You may not have had one for years and years and years,
and it can be quite fatal within minutes, really.
It looks like in the middle of nowhere there, just off a river.
Looking at that location, I don't think you'll get
a DCA very close to it.
Did you say it's on a hill, Harry? It is on quite a steep hill.
Last time I went to a job, we had to land on the top of the hill and walk down.
RICHARD: ETA's about four minutes.
The team are heading to a hillside high above Keld,
one of the smallest and most remote villages in Yorkshire.
Sometimes the terrain can be really, really difficult,
and that was evident on this job.
So, main hazard is gonna be the terrain.
It's sort of halfway down the hillside is the grid.
To look at that and think, "Where can we land a helicopter
that's gonna be safe for the patient, for the crew and for everyone around?"
is a really, really difficult task.
All right. So one o'clock between the two ruined buildings.
On the track, there's some people.
Oh, yeah, I've got visual.
Looks like MRT are on scene already.
Yeah, there's a vehicle just randomly stopped on the grass
down here which might imply MRT.
Are we all clear of that building still?Yeah, I'm still clear at this point.
OK.But you've not got much grace.
The hilly terrain is making landing difficult.
Come back this way.
Lifting, it's not working.
SAMMY: I've got a bit of slope just behind me, Harry, you might
wanna come forward a bit.OK.
(RICHARD SPEAKING)OK. That's looking pretty good there.
Erm, Richard, can you just open your door, please,
just make sure we're not sort of balanced across anything?
Likewise, Sammy, can you just do the same on your side, please?
Yeah. Skid on the right is secure. OK, cool. Right.
In that case, I'm happy. You are clear to unstrap.
The local Mountain Rescue team are with the casualty.
Oh, good. SAM: How are you doing?
WOMAN: We're good. Thank you. How are you?Hand up this way.
Ooh.Mind these rocks. There we go.
Stand a better chance getting over without that.SAM: Yeah.
Hello. Hello. What's your name?
Phoebe.Hi, Phoebe. I'm Sam.
She's been out walking about two hours ago.
Seems like onset with exercise, started wheezing.
So don't talk, Phoebe, it's OK, all right?
That's just gonna make you more short of breath.
(PHOEBE COUGHING AND WHEEZING)
Where's mum? Hi, I'm Sam. Has she been this bad before?No.
She didn't feel great at lunchtime, and then tried to walk back to Keld.
Phoebe, what I'm gonna do is I can hear that wheeze anyway,
OK, so I'm gonna give you a nebuliser, just through a mask with some oxygen on.
And that's gonna help clear that up a little bit, OK?
Have you had Salbutamol before, you'll have an inhaler, won't you?I have.
Yeah. Have you taken your inhaler today?
Erm, well, it was actually left behind. (COUGHING)
I was able to start the treatment and identify the issues
while Sammy was able to calm the family and calm the patient
and just talk to them, which is often
just as important as the treatment.
SAMMY: Try and slow it down a little bit.
I know it's easy for me to say, isn't it?
But this is gonna make you feel so much better.
Look at that, you see that little mist?
Have you had one of these before?
No? Well, that mist is what you're gonna get right into
the bottom of your lungs. So you should breathe as normal.
So asthma attacks, the airways are reducing size.
They become swollen.
So whilst patients are able to get air in,
they're not able to get it out so well.
A nebuliser relaxes the smooth muscle of the airway
and just helps open everything up a little bit,
just to be able to help get that air out
and just make her breathe a little bit better.
Just take a really good deep breath.
Fabulous.
Can you see the mist you're making?
That's great. And that's the medicine getting right down to the bottom.
Your pulse is going a bit fast, but that's expected
cos you're struggling to breathe a little bit there and you're worried,
and we've just landed out of the sky.
All right? But everything's looking good so far, so we're just gonna leave
that medications some time to work,
sort that wheeze out a little bit, and then we'll go from there. Is that OK with you?(COUGHS)Yeah?
For Phoebe to be up in the mountain with her family and no-one around,
it must be absolutely terrifying.
I didn't know what to do. I was running up and down the hills,
trying to get some reception, and I didn't have any.
I saw someone coming up the path, and I kind of charged down the hill.
He must have thought I was mad.
He had this app, like a satellite app
and could contact the emergency services through that
and pinpoint exactly where we were.
We're giving her the second lot of the Salbutamol, which is the same as the nebuliser she's got at home.
And then then we're gonna give her a different medication through it which is like a steroid,
and that'll just last a little bit longer and help with anything that's going on.
The plan is gonna be, we're gonna try to walk her down to the aircraft which is quite far.Yeah.
Erm, so if it's too much for her, then we'll just maybe,
er, assist her along
and just maybe carry her down. There's no other way to get down there.
And then nice and steady. Oh, you're up.
Yeah, it's fine. Fine.
You'll be a bit wobbly cos of that Salbutamol. SAMMY: It makes you juddery.
Don't worry.So, hold on to me and get you up. Other arm there if you need it.
PHOEBE: Thanks. (LAUGHS)All right?
You can walk down to the aircraft with her if you want. Yeah.
SAMMY: Are you all right just to help her jump down?Of course.
So let me just jump down here first of all, Phoebe,
before you go anywhere. Ready?
And down. Down?Yeah.Lovely.
Just off that wobbly rock. Good.
Nice and steady.
She's looking beautiful,
but she was feeling really quite unwell
and her body had really worked hard.
Erm, she was at the point of fainting, according to her mum.
So it's a good call. Erm...
The land ambulance is waiting to take Phoebe to hospital.
The team will transport her to the nearest gravel track to meet it.
It'll be a bit rattly. Shouldn't be too noisy
cos you've got those on, OK, it's perfectly safe, though.
So you can see just beyond the village there, you can see a vehicle in the, er...
You all right, Phoebs? PARAMEDIC: All right?
We're just going down now to land in one of the fields, OK?
You've got a good view out of the window?
Only a very small area of flat ground is suitable
for the helicopter to land on.
Mountain Rescue are guiding pilot Harry in.
Not the severest of slope left and right of us.OK.
That feels a bit better.
Yeah, bloke in front says that looks solid,
we're well within limits there for sloping ground. Yeah.OK. So we'll shut down there.
SAMMY: We're like king of the castle on this little mound.We are.
Right on the hill. All right, Phoebe? Good.
How's that breathing feeling? Feeling better and better?
PHOEBE'S MUM: I'm wondering what's happening next.
So the next stage is, we're gonna walk Phoebs, she says she feels OK,
down to the ambulance, we'll pop her on there, we'll do another check,
we'll then take you to the nearest hospital.OK.
That Salbutamol and steroid that we've given her
has just made her feel so much better. Yeah.
I think Phoebe's stars aligned that day.
I think had there have been one part of that puzzle that didn't work out,
it could have been a very different story.
Had we have landed further away,
Mountain Rescue hadn't have been called,
or that person hadn't have been walking past
who was able to send the location to the emergency services,
that would have been much worse because there was
no other way off that hill.
Air Desk, 99 lifting.
For the Yorkshire Air Ambulance team, it's back to base.
Anyway, it's back to lemon drizzle cake now.
Oh, yeah.Well, it's out of the air fryer and it's ready to be eaten.
John, hi, I'm Becky, this is David.
John Lovett was transported to hospital in Lancaster,
where he stayed for five nights.
They found I'd fractured two vertebrae,
and a multiple fracture in a third.
They think what had happened, each time I bounced,
it caused one of the injuries.
Don't talk, Phoebe, it's OK, it'll make you even more short of breath.
After an asthma attack in one of the most remote parts of the Yorkshire Dales,
Phoebe was discharged from hospital the same night.
(CHRIS YELLING IN PAIN)
Chris Gill underwent four and a half hours of surgery
after severing his fingers with a lawn mower.
They're still fairly swollen.
Yeah. Compared to that one.
In five to ten years' time, they still might have to come off.
Chris faces a long recovery.
Have to go to me physio every week.
Yeah, it's gonna take me a long time.
CLAIRE: I had seven broken ribs.
I had a laceration and bleed on my right lung.
And then my pelvis had separated at the front
and fractured at the back.
We think as she was struggling
to get back up, she rolled a few times
and then stood on me as she was getting up.
It's going to take time. Erm,
this surgeon suggested that it could take anywhere
between eight and twelve months to recover fully from it.
Even if I can't ride, erm, there are always horses that need homes,
that I could, you know, get another one to look after.
So it might be that I have to say goodbye to the riding part of it,
but certainly not looking after them.
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