Blood, Sweat & Tea
by Tom Reynolds
Friday Books
HK$104
Television hospital dramas such as ER and House may make exciting viewing but they also create false impressions. One is that a person who has had a heart attack can be resuscitated easily. 'It rarely works,' says Tom Reynolds in his book of blogs, Blood, Sweat & Tea. An emergency medical technician with the London Ambulance Service, he has taken entries from his online diary, Random Acts of Reality, and published them. If you're prepared to wade through verbiage, snippets are interesting, such as the time limit set for high-priority ambulance calls. 'All that matters is the eight-minute deadline,' he vents. 'If we get to a heart attack in 9 minutes, provide life-saving treatment ... it counts as a failure.' Reynolds also recalls an 'Oh s***' moment when an Aids patient vomited on the way to hospital. Some of the muck flew into his mouth. But he writes, with amazing calmness, 'If I were to stab myself with a needle after drawing HIV-positive blood I would have a 0.004 per cent chance of catching the virus. Swallowing a bit of blood/vomitus is less risky.' It's not for the squeamish. Readers should also have a healthy sense of humour.