Hello! I want to know if I'm being unfair as to what I should have expected from paramedics who came out to my house. I'm hoping you can help me by replying as to what should have been done, or what you would have done!
I called our city 9-1-1 requesting an ambulance for my 67 year old husband who was experiencing severe abdominal pains throughout the morning. It was 1:30 p.m. when we decided something serious was happening to him. He could no longer get up and when he even tried to turn over, he was breathing very heavily.
When I called 9-1-1 I gave a basic background of my husband's health the last 7 months. First he had undergone a colon resection in December. In February he started chemo and radiation for mediastinal cancer, finishing in the middle of May. He was just starting to eat well and gain weight and strength when in the middle of July, the day I called, he got the lower right-sided abdominal pain.
My reading says our paramedics on average, take 8-1/2 minutes to arrive. The dispatcher said it would be about 20 minutes and it took 25. We are within city limits, within two blocks of two major intersecting highways. That isn't my complaint though.
The paramedics came into my house and while I showed one the medicines my husband was taking, the other took my husband's blood pressure and asked him if he was throwing up, which he wasn't. We were told they wouldn't be able to bring the stretcher into our bedroom (we live in a one-floor ranch-style house). They told him to move to the other side of the bed and they would help him walk out, down the hall, to the livingroom. I ran to hold the door open so the one paramedic could come in with the stretcher, but he told me he couldn't get it past the 90 degree turn in the sidewalk outside our door.
I went outside, wanting to lift the thing up myself, turned around and saw my 120 pound husband, in his underwear, painfully coming down the two steps from the door, unassisted. (He had lost 45 pounds because of his cancer treatments.) He was tall enough to get his butt up to the edge of the stretcher, but because of the pain, couldn't lay back. The paramedic made no offer to help! I finally reached round the paramedic to put a hand on his back as he flopped back.
The neighbors were running outside to ask if we needed help. They did have some consideration, murmuring something about giving my husband some privacy. By the time I got the neighbors away, my husband was in the ambulance and thank goodness, they were giving him oxygen and had an I.V. in. The I.V. is easy part since he already has a Groshong catheter.
I am thankful for him being taken to a good hospital. It didn't take them long to get his pain under control and diagnose a ruptured appendix. It's now six weeks later and he is finally getting back to where he was before this all happened – trying to gain weight and strength before undergoing another round of chemo. It was a fantastic surgeon who succeeded with a laproscopy and was able to clean him out well.
I tell all my relatives, friends and neighbors what to expect when they make that call to 9-1-1. He's only 120 pounds so why couldn't they lift him out? He was in horrible pain so how could them make him walk? All they did in our house was check his blood pressure. I now wish we had just gone in our own car. There is a very good chance, due to his cancers that this sort of thing could happen again and we do intend to take a car –- I'm sure I can do better than the paramedics did getting him out of here!
One more thing. Our billing lists the service in the house and the transport to the hospital as both being Advanced Life Support
I called our city 9-1-1 requesting an ambulance for my 67 year old husband who was experiencing severe abdominal pains throughout the morning. It was 1:30 p.m. when we decided something serious was happening to him. He could no longer get up and when he even tried to turn over, he was breathing very heavily.
When I called 9-1-1 I gave a basic background of my husband's health the last 7 months. First he had undergone a colon resection in December. In February he started chemo and radiation for mediastinal cancer, finishing in the middle of May. He was just starting to eat well and gain weight and strength when in the middle of July, the day I called, he got the lower right-sided abdominal pain.
My reading says our paramedics on average, take 8-1/2 minutes to arrive. The dispatcher said it would be about 20 minutes and it took 25. We are within city limits, within two blocks of two major intersecting highways. That isn't my complaint though.
The paramedics came into my house and while I showed one the medicines my husband was taking, the other took my husband's blood pressure and asked him if he was throwing up, which he wasn't. We were told they wouldn't be able to bring the stretcher into our bedroom (we live in a one-floor ranch-style house). They told him to move to the other side of the bed and they would help him walk out, down the hall, to the livingroom. I ran to hold the door open so the one paramedic could come in with the stretcher, but he told me he couldn't get it past the 90 degree turn in the sidewalk outside our door.
I went outside, wanting to lift the thing up myself, turned around and saw my 120 pound husband, in his underwear, painfully coming down the two steps from the door, unassisted. (He had lost 45 pounds because of his cancer treatments.) He was tall enough to get his butt up to the edge of the stretcher, but because of the pain, couldn't lay back. The paramedic made no offer to help! I finally reached round the paramedic to put a hand on his back as he flopped back.
The neighbors were running outside to ask if we needed help. They did have some consideration, murmuring something about giving my husband some privacy. By the time I got the neighbors away, my husband was in the ambulance and thank goodness, they were giving him oxygen and had an I.V. in. The I.V. is easy part since he already has a Groshong catheter.
I am thankful for him being taken to a good hospital. It didn't take them long to get his pain under control and diagnose a ruptured appendix. It's now six weeks later and he is finally getting back to where he was before this all happened – trying to gain weight and strength before undergoing another round of chemo. It was a fantastic surgeon who succeeded with a laproscopy and was able to clean him out well.
I tell all my relatives, friends and neighbors what to expect when they make that call to 9-1-1. He's only 120 pounds so why couldn't they lift him out? He was in horrible pain so how could them make him walk? All they did in our house was check his blood pressure. I now wish we had just gone in our own car. There is a very good chance, due to his cancers that this sort of thing could happen again and we do intend to take a car –- I'm sure I can do better than the paramedics did getting him out of here!
One more thing. Our billing lists the service in the house and the transport to the hospital as both being Advanced Life Support