I often take a neighbour to the hospital for a blood test on a Monday lunchtime.
It doesn’t usually take long.
I double park and listen to the radio outside haematology and today the air ambulance took off from its hidden helicopter pad behind in service training.
In Sheffield’s Lodge Moor Hospital , everyone loved the sea king admissions , which, although rare, were popular with staff and local residents alike. Now the old Lodge Moor Hospital was perched on the Western most tip of the city at an altitude just shy of a thousand feet above sea level.
Originally a fever hospital, the “ South” wards were dominated by the Spinal Injury Unit where I cut my teeth as a junior staff nurse, and it was there, that the sea King’s used to bring their patients.
Our best nursing prank ever concerned the arrival of the sea king and a particularly dim student nurse I shall call Judith. Now Judith was a game student. She would give any nursing experience a gung ho approach and when asked to bring the helicopter in , she jumped at the chance without a delay.
First she was instructed to remove her hat and to don a nurses cape reversed, so that the bright red lining was showing on the outside. Then she was given two table tennis bats from physio and asked to stand on the field in front of helicopter pad to “guide” the helicopter in to land.
And to the astonishment of the nurses on duty, civilians from the local housing development and the two RAF PILOTS in the helicopter she did just that !
It was the funniest thing that I have ever witnessed at work…….as the giant wasp coloured aircraft roared in over the moors ,nearly blowing Judith off her feet, her glasses skewwiff , her red cape blowing valiantly behind her, as she frantically waved her table tennis bats in the air !!!
