I am in a coffee shop and I have just stopped shaking...

It has been quite an unusual hour. So I was walking along the street
when I see an old man up ahead kind of teetering to the side. "Another
old guy drunk on the way home from an afternoon with his mates," I
thought. Seeing old guys falling down drunk on the streets of this
city is a commoner sight than you might imagine.

But just as I walk by, I hear a kind of a groan out of him. I hesitate
like a half a second, and in that time all that emergency response
training goes right out of my head. Nonetheless, I quickly turn back
and once I'd made that decision it's like it all kicked in: his lips
and hands were purple and he had beads of hison his top lip. Not good
signs. Admittedly, there's this whole spiel - about saying you're a
trained emergency responder and asking for permission to help in case
you get sued - that I totally forgot about.

But apart from that slip I knew enough to get him sitting down and
talking. I started asking him simple questions to see if he was
making sense. All the while I was monitoring his breathing and trying
to see his pulse. But i couldn't count right cause he was telling me
that he was 84 and that he had stomach cancer and that he had had most
of his stomach removed and that he lived nearby and that he didn't
want an ambulance and that he just wanted to go home. I don't know how
the tv doctors on er and the like do it.

At this stage I was still on my own on the street and thinking that I
should just call an ambulance whether he liked it or not. Then a few
metres away a lady comes into view and I call over to her and say,
"This man doesn't feel well and lives near here. Do you know him?"

Man, were the gods every smiling down on me. She comes over and says,
"No I don't know him, but I am a nurse!"

You wouldn't credit it - there I was on a quiet street feeling alone
and out of my depth when they very first person I see to ask for help
is a district nurse on her way back from a home visit.

She was fabulous; so calm and firm and efficient, yet completely
kind. She had everything - a blood pressure pump, a thermometer, a
pad a pen to take down his vitals - everything that is except a mobile
phone. And that's where I came in. At least that was one practical
piece of aid I could give to the poor man.

We got through to the man's wife in my phone and got her to come meet
us where we were before sending them both off to the hospital armed
with a written report from my angel nurse.

And just like that, the mini drama was over. I never even got the
nurse's name, nor she mine. But I am forever grateful to her for
walking by when she did. And 84 year old Mr Okamura with no stomach, I
really do hope and pray you are well.

It was funny, I felt grand for the twenty minutes or so that I was
with the old man. But as soon as I walked away I started to shake and
shake and shake. I guess it was an adrenaline come-down or some mild
shock, or something. It could also have been the realization that
throuhout this whole fairly serious event I was wearing the most
ridiculous wooly bobble hat and padded down jacket. I mean I looked
like I'd just hiked down a mountain in Peru - and it wasn't even that
cold today. The poor man probably now thinks he hallucinated me.

Everyone reading this, please go take a first aid course if you
haven't already. You never know when you might need it. If nothing
else, my little bit of emergency response training meant that I
didn't just walk on by and that I wasn't afraid to ask for help. I
mean, like I said, you never know - you might be a jammy dodger like
me and find that the first person you call to in your one and only
emergency is a trained medical professional!

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