Description
Meet Tom, an Emergency Medical Technician for the London Ambulance service. It is Tom who shows up to pick up the drunk tramp, the heart attack victim and the pregnant woman who wants to go to hospital in an ambulance because she doesn't want to call a taxi. Tom is also a man who rails against the unfairness of it all, who bemoans the state of the NHS and who ridicules the targets that state that if the ambulance arrives within eight minutes and the patient dies it is a success and if the ambulance arrives in nine minutes and the patient's life is saved it is a fail.Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of the emergency services. From the tragic to the hilarious, from the heart-warming to the terrifying, Blood, Sweat and Tea 2 is packed with fascinating anecdotes that veer from tragic to hilarious; heart-warming to terrifying and Tom deftly leads the reader through a rollercoaster of emotion.In the brilliant and bestselling Blood Sweat and Tea Tom gives a fascinating - and at times alarming - picture of life in inner-city Britain and the people who are paid to mop up after it.Captures the thrills, heartbreak and frustrations of medicine in a way that resonates with readers around the world.
Reviews
Thumbnail sketches of life.
Tom Reynolds has given each of us the opportunity to see what life is like for people who drive the ambulances to medical emergencies. Granted, once he gets to the location, the "emergency" might be an upset stomach or a runny nose, but it might also be a tiny baby who has died in it's crib.
This book has no plot, no named characters, no chronology, but what it does have is a realism that can only be achieved by someone who is living these events each and every day of his career. The incidents related here are from the blog Tom Reynolds writes concerning his job with the ambulance service in a section of east London. On my Kindle this book is divided into 211 chapters with each "chapter" being devoted to a single entry of his blog. Each one is very short. They range all the way from the truly frivolous calls to those where he and his mates are unable to save the patient's life. Along the way he sometimes indulges in a little fanciful, playful writing about his job and he also vents his spleen about how the government is running the National Health Service. Also included is a lexicon of terms and abbreviations which will help the reader keep track of the various organizations and functions of the London Ambulance Service and a short note about the author, including his real name.
This is the second book utilizing information from Reynolds' blog. The first was Blood, Sweat, and Tea: Real-Life Adventures in an Inner-City Ambulance which is also available in book or Kindle form. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to see real life situations on a daily basis through the eyes of someone who is there and keeps going back.
It just goes to show you...
Prehospital care must be the same the world over. I loved this. I was a paramedic in Los Angeles for a number of years and I can tell you that the author's depiction of events on the streets of London is not much different from the silliness and drama experienced on the streets of LA.
A kind mixture of cynicsm, drama, caring and reality make this book a wonderfully accurate reflection of the trials and tribulations faced by emergency providers every day.
The chapters are bite sized chunks that make it easy to set the book down and then pick up right where you left off.
If you're worried about blood and gore, don't let that stop you from getting this one. There's not much of that kind of thing. Plenty of human observation and Tom's observations are spot-on.
Okay, quit reading my silly review and go download the book, you'll be glad you did!
Pretty Darn Interesting
This is excerpted from the blog of a London EMS. I was up with insomnia last night, and looking for a fun, light read. This was perfect! Because this is a journal, there isn't a storyline. Just an interesting perspective on life.
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