24 Hours in A&E

47-year-old Gary was on his motorcycle when he had a head on collision with a car. The single father of two is a code red trauma and is being flown fifty miles to King’s by air ambulance. He’s on life support with serious head, chest and limb injuries and has been put in a medically-induced coma to reduce the risk of brain damage. A&E consultant Chris is leading a trauma team of twenty and her immediate concern is keeping Gary alive: “You’re thinking what will kill him first…you’re always thinking of the chances of survival,” she says. “You’re wondering what the impact speed was, whether the patient was thrown a distance, whether they hit the windscreen, what other objects they could have hit when they were thrown off.” In minors, 69-year-old charmer Steve has a fishbone stuck in his finger. It happened while he was preparing supper for a female friend. “I was showing off my skills in cooking fish,” he says. “I got somewhat distracted by her beauty, I just got complacent and that’s when it happened.” His fear of pain and needles make it a challenge for the nurse to anaesthetize his finger and remove the bone. A year ago, 58-year-old Terry was diagnosed with lung cancer and given two weeks to live. But Terry’s a fighter and will not give up easily. He’s in A&E with his friend and carer Sandy who looked after Terry’s identical twin brother, Tom, during his last months and promised she would do the same for Terry. “Terry’s not the sort of person you can say ‘Oh, I do feel sorry for you’,“ says Sandy. “You say ‘You know you’ve got it, you know how far it’s progressed, you know how to deal with it now and if you can’t deal with it on your own, I’m here to deal with it with you. But I’m not going to sit there and wallow in self-pity with you, we are gonna fight whatever comes along’ and this is what we’ve done…I get more angry than I get upset.” Senior sister Leanne epitomizes the ‘seize the day’ approach to life. “When you do this job every day and realise how short your life can be, literally nothing is taken for granted,” she says. “You know it can just end like that - you’re not going to waste a day are you? You’re just gonna do it.”