Friday 8 February 2008, 11:23pm:
This occurred after having dinner at Docklands. I was on-call at the hospital and Ash and I were heading back to the hospital as I needed to see a patient. I was driving along Princes Highway near Monash University Caulfield Campus when I saw, at about 50 metres ahead, a 4WD T-bone a Ford Falcon who ran the red light. As I drew closer to the scene of the accident, I saw a motorcyclist on the ground. He was moving, trying to get up but couldn’t. Ash then said to me that I had to stop to render assistance (probably fearing that I wouldn’t stop because of the medical emergency incident on the plane where I had asked her if I should help).
I then pulled the car over to the side of the road and the two of us ran to the guy who was lying on the ground. He was conscious and talking which was a good start. There were two plump annoying ladies standing around. One was just calling out to the crowd in general, “Someone call the ambulance, someone call the police. No one touch him.” One fat lady then annoyingly started bumping me out of the way; I believe this is called ’shepherding’ in AFL football. I then told her I was a doctor and she began apologising profusely.
I then had a chat to him and he had said that his leg was bent to the side and he had straightened it. I tried to reassure him and so did other people who began to bring bottles of water to him. A Chinese guy even had a can of Cadbury drinking chocolate in his hand! I told them that he shouldn’t eat nor drink anything in case he needed to go for surgery that night. Some people were helpful bringing blankets and a pillow to him.
The patient was lying with his knees bent. As I continued to talk to him, this Indian guy came along and was about to straighten his knees; I quickly stopped him from touching the patient!
The ambulance and police arrived not long afterwards and I had to help lift him onto an ambulance trolley on which they wheeled him into the ambulance. At this stage, one of the plump ladies mentioned to the officer that she didn’t mind if they kept the pillow, on which the patient’s head was lying,as it had only cost $2 at Ikea!
The ambulance officer asked me to have a look at his leg after they cut off his pants. It was certainly deformed and he may have had dislocated his knee which is a medical emergency (it can threaten the blood supply to the lower leg). The ambulance then drove off to The Alfred.
This is the first time that I’ve had to help at an accident. Luckily he only had a single limb injury (with which I deal very frequently at work) and not had a problem with his airway nor conscious state (with which I’m not as familiar).
Top marks to Ash who helped direct traffic around the accident!!!
Hopefully, this is not a trend for the year!
I just saw everyone taking pictures of him (actually I thought it was the girl who was famous initially) and I managed to get a picture with him. And unlike HP’s photos of FPEs, you CAN actually see him very clearly. This was all at the Indian restaurant while we were catching up with Phil.