The blog of Wayne.

I'm in bed banging out the Zzz's when I hear an excited shout to tell me someone is looking for a medic to join an Everest summit attempt.  I spring out of bed, alarmed, dazed, looking for an intruder, clueless as to where I am, am I dreaming?  I look at my phone: 'Medic required for an all-expenses-paid trip to support an Everest summit attempt, leaving in 3 weeks' BOOM! This is it! The dream job for any mountain-obsessed medic.  This is a job I've been dreaming of for a decade, so to say I'm excited is an understatement. How many paramedics can say they've worked on an Everest attempt? How cool is it going to be to experience Nepalese culture? To meet the Sherpas and porters, learn about their way of life, and do some cool mountaineering with the opportunity to go up to camp 2. Those who know me know I don't get excited often, and I show it even less.  I reply as fast as my blurry eyes and fat fingers allow: Yes! I'm in! I get the OK and am provide...

  One of the first things you learn in the military is how to deal with the dislocation of expectation. This can be expecting to be picked up by some form of transport only to be told you’re now yomping (walking with a heavy pack) back to base or expecting to be going home for Christmas and finding out you are off on a deployment in 2 days time (on Christmas eve). This has been Covid-19 for us so far.  We first started talking about our response to Covid-19 on the 6th of March. From here on in it has been an absolute flurry of activity with various work streams formed. There were heroics and a surge for a solution for something that we didn’t know how hard would hit us. As time went on and with a lot less retrievals than anticipated this turned to over- engineered solutions making things more complicated than needs be and tying ourselves in knots.  Covid-19 tipped us out of a dingy into fast flowing water. After the cold water shock some people were able to front cra...