By CASEY NEILL
PAKENHAM paramedic Peter Simpson found himself on the other side of a medical emergency less than a year ago.
The 56-year-old was on his way to work after a surf when he suffered chest pain. He thought it was indigestion.
Peter’s father had suffered a heart attack at age 53. Now it had happened to him.
“You can get caught out,” he said.
“We’re getting more people like that. Take note. Any chest pain … ”
Doctors put in a stent to clear a blocked artery.
“Two days later, ready to come home, I reacted to that stent and went into cardiac arrest,” he said.
“I was unconscious and they’re doing CPR, using the electric paddles.”
Peter’s wife of 17 years, Jo, said it took them half an hour to bring him back.
“It was touch and go whether they were going to take him elsewhere and do open heart surgery,” she said.
“For a few months it was scary.”
But Peter returned to work – and surfing – after two months.
“I thought ‘life can’t stop, you’ve got to move on’,” he said.
“I haven’t had any other issues since. There’s still life in me yet.”
And he’s since shared his experience with cardiac arrest patients, as an example of a positive outcome.
“I’m not telling every one of my patients,” he said.
“But it is helpful, you can relate to people a bit more.”
Peter had wondered how he’d deal with responding to a cardiac arrest for the first time after his own.
“But that old mode just kicked back in,” he said.
Peter was among 59 paramedics and ambulance employees presented with Ambulance Victoria staff service awards late last month.
He accepted 30-year awards for long service and safe driving at a ceremony at SkyHigh Mt Dandenong.
“I’m getting up to 33 years to be precise, in August,” he said.
“It’s best to grab on to those things. Before you know it you’re retired and you’ve got nothing to look at or show your grandkids.”
Peter applied for the police force, following in his father’s footsteps, but he was turned down.
“They were a bit stricter back in those days,” he said.
“I had a very mild colour vision deficit, which wouldn’t stop you getting in today.”
He came across an advertisement for paramedics while looking through a newspaper.
“I thought ‘who’d want to do that? Blood and guts and gory’,” he said.
But Peter thought back to a drive home at age 19.
“This car sped past and I thought ‘ooh, that’s too fast’,” he said.
Five kilometres up the road he discovered the car had rolled.
“I just had a natural instinct to pull up and to help,” he said.
“There were adults there older than me, panicking.
“Two guys were squashed. One appeared to be dead already and his mate was on top of him.
“It was just a natural instinct to reach in and talk to the guy that was alive and calm him down and say ‘help’s on the way’.
“On that particular night I thought ‘I might be suited to this’.
“That fuelled the ambition to go for it. Rather than be scared, I wanted to know what to do.”
He applied for the job – along with 1000 other hopefuls.
“I had no credentials at all. I thought ‘I need something medical, I haven’t seen a sick person in my life’,” he said.
Peter worked at Dandenong Hospital as an orderly for 12 months.
“I did first aid courses to break the ice and reapplied,” he said.
“I showed enthusiasm by doing it.”
That was in 1981, and he hasn’t looked back. He worked in the city then did a stint in Gippsland before completing Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance (MICA) training in 1986.
“It was a natural progression,” he said.
“Then I went up to the helicopter.”
He worked as a flight paramedic with the air ambulance at Essendon Airport for 12 years.
“You cover basically most of the state, and you get to work on the fixed-wing aircraft as well,” he said.
“You do a lot of hospital retrievals.”
Peter was winched down into bushland, the ocean and container ships.
“It had elements of danger in it, hovering over a tanker out in the seas. If you had an engine failure … ” he said.
“But it was all well-controlled. You never went out thinking you wouldn’t get back.”
The role often took him interstate, and he’s even played a role in international rescues.
“I took a victim back from the Bali bombings. They took me to Darwin,” he said.
“The RAAF went in, picked up the patients and took them to Darwin.”
His air skills also landed him a job escorting the royal family in Qatar during his long service leave.
“I can’t say much about it. There’s a lot of top secret stuff,” he said.
“We went with royal family around the world.”
He came to the Dandenong MICA station four years ago for a change of pace, but remains a clinical instructor and has completed the special casualty access team (SCAT) course in Sydney.
“You do high-angle training on buildings, caves, off cliffs,” he said.
“I’m the only Melburnian to go up there.”
His regular callouts range from patients with shortness of breath to car crashes to farm accidents involving tractors and chainsaws.
“You’re there to help, do the best you can,” he said.
“Often luck plays a part, why some survive and others don’t. You don’t take it personally.
“But you’ve got to remain human, and you’re not bulletproof.
“You still have feelings. You don’t become a hard person. You just say ‘that’s life’.”
Peter said it was a privilege to treat people.
“It could be someone with a stubbed toe, or delivering babies, or someone with their head blown off,” he said.
“The trust that people have for you. You walk into their homes a complete stranger.
“You might take their little baby away and revive the baby, and they have complete trust in you.
“I don’t think you get that in many other jobs, to be honest.”
