Only Yesterday
Animals and lots of blood feature large in this episode. It’s dramatic and tear-jerking. Riveting stuff.
Janine talks about her life-long affection for animals. “I have Asperger’s. I find people, social situations very difficult. People are really complicated. Animals, they’re so much easier,” she says. “I’ve been called ‘Little Miss Doolittle’ because I do talk to the animals a lot. I just have an affinity with them. When I was a child I was always taking animals home. I took an elephant home once.”
Janine’s mother suffered a major heart attack that left her with severe brain damage. “My mum’s heart attack was a massive wake up call. I was like ‘I’ve got to make some serious changes’,” says Janine. “Everybody thought I was crazy when I said I wanted to start walking dogs, everybody. It was a crackpot idea, nobody took me seriously. So that was 13 years ago.”
80-year-old retired dairy farmer Val is brought to Resus after suffering an uncontrollable nose bleed that has lasted three hours. His symptoms are complicated by anti-clotting medication he takes for his heart. Medics put special dressings up his nose to attempt to stem the bleeding; they are concerned that such heavy blood loss could be fatal for someone of Val’s age.
“Young adults will actually compensate having lost an awful lot of blood, whereas elderly patients will cope quite poorly losing what is a reasonably small amount of blood,” says Dr Sophie.
Val gave up his farm six years ago after a lifetime on the land. “People would think that I was mad getting up at five o’clock in the morning,” he says. “On a nice spring morning you’d think ‘Oh my, what a wonderful world!’. The real trauma was parting with the dairy herd. It was my reason for being.”
Meanwhile 18-year-old scaffolder George arrives in A&E after his motorbike collided with a car and he was catapulted into the windscreen. He has very obviously broken his leg, but doctors are concerned that George has a lack of movement in his foot which could indicate nerve damage. George is given Ketamine for the severe pain he’s suffering and faces a six hour operation to fix his leg.
“It does seem to be motorcyclists that come in with some of the worst injuries that you could get and some of the most devastating injuries as well,” says Dr Sophie.