I read a lot of paramedic blogs. Without fail, once or twice a week, one of the posts I read will have me tearing up a bit… like this one. It’s not particularly sad, in fact the turnout was just fine. Unsurprisingly, the 19 yr old kid was NOT having a heart attack. But as the author said to the kid…
“No mate, I’d rather come out to someone who is thinking they are having a heart attack than to come out to someone lying dead on the floor because they ignored their heart attack”.
My grandmother had a heart attack Christmas day in 2001… but didn’t want anyone to make a fuss over what she thought was indigestion from a big Christmas dinner. After almost a week, she mentioned that she still had that same damn indigestion. What? Damnit, Nana! Her doctor was called who, of course, demanded that we call 911 immediately. Even then, she was of the opinion that it wasn’t worth the fuss, and asked the dispatcher not to bother with the whole lights & sirens thing… don’t want to wake up the whole neighbourhood, after all. Don’t want to make a fuss.
Of course, they told her to shush, and of course they were going to go lights & sirens, you silly old bat. This isn’t something you fuck around with… FOR A WEEK!
She died in hospital three weeks later. We don’t know what would have happened if she’d mentioned the pain earlier — she was pretty old (87), and heart trouble runs in my family (both of her sons have had open heart surgery). She’d had an aortic aneurysm a year prior, requiring a shunt to get put into her aorta to keep it from rupturing — that’s one of those “ten seconds and you’re dead” sort of things if it does — and it was luck of the draw that it was found to begin with. So, we were pretty happy to that she’d stuck around an extra year. Still… would we have had her a bit longer if something had been done sooner? Who knows, but maybe she’d have survived long enough to see her newest granddaughter learn to crawl, instead of dying when she was a month old.
This is a fantastic video. Watch, listen, and remember that your paramedics would rather give you an unnecessary ride to the hospital than a necessary ride to the morgue.
I don’t want to say anything to make you sad, but I miss your Nana. Everytime I see that rocking chair that she gave to you I think of her. I loved her wit and how when she would snap at you to do something, quite often she would wink at me right after. She was the best.