Older people are great. They’ve been through a lot, they’ve seen a lot, and some have given a lot, but many don’t expect much in return.
“I don’t want to bother you”, “someone else needs the Ambulance more than me”. Both phrases heard on a regular basis by ambulance crews, often from very ill patients.
One patient was in the middle of a huge heart attack when they said that, as my partner and myself watched it develop on the defibrillator screen. They were put straight and rushed into hospital! A common one was the patient lying on the floor with a broken hip. The ball at the top of the femur can be fragile in some older people, and often broke off. The fracture was known as a #NOF – fractured Neck Of Femur. We’d regularly turn up to such jobs to be told “I’m sorry for wasting your time”, the patient in agony and unable to move!
Many times the patient had just fallen out of bed and, although uninjured, they just couldn’t get up and back into bed. Sometimes this was a more serious event and further action was taken. Often they just required us to help them back into bed. We rarely stopped there. Whenever possible, we’d put the patient’s kettle on and make them a warm drink, settle them before we left (most had catheters, in case you’re thinking the obvious).
I realised quickly that, other than a carer, we may be the only other people that the patient might see in a day. Sometimes we’d sit by the bed as they drank their tea and listen to their fascinating stories. All they wanted was someone to chat to, and we were there to care for them so it was our job to listen.
Sometimes Control would radio to “check we were ok”. Ie. They needed a crew for another job. If it was serious we’d go, if not, we’d stay a bit longer. An executive put out a memo once stating that crews were spending too long at jobs and suggesting a time we should allocate to each job. This executive had clearly no idea what our job actually was, otherwise he’d have not chosen to make a complete fool of himself. That memo was instantly filed in File 13 – 🗑️
Older people deserved respect, and we weren’t going to deny them that so the figures on a computer screen somewhere looked good (the same went for other types of call). We did our job and targets had no place in there.
I once discovered we weren’t the only ones that respected older people: We had been called to a house, somewhere in the middle of nowhere for a patient who had fallen in their living room (?#NOF) , along a narrow country road. As we got closer we discovered a long stretch of roadworks ahead, closing one direction of travel, under the control of stop/go boards at each end. As we approached, Blue light on, the worker with the stop/go board at our end Bbegan frantically talking into his radio. He held his hand up to stop us and we waited until a couple of cars came through, then he waved us on. The satellite navigation showed us the house was somewhere along the stretch of roadworks, but we couldn’t find the access road. We got to the other end and asked the road worker to hold the traffic while we did a u-turn and had a second look. We reached the other end and the first road worker flagged us down. They asked where we were looking for and he looked blank, then he asked who the patient was. My partner and myself were pretty sure we couldn’t give out that information “Is it *****?” they said. “Erm….yes actually”. Ah right. Again he spoke into his radio. “Two of our chaps are with them. They went up to the house for their tea break. It was them that called you”. It turned out that the workers had closed off the original entrance because of its location, and we were swiftly directed to the new one. The road workers had been checking up on the patient daily, looking after them.
Never underestimate what an older person may have done for you. Don’t be disrespectful. What you are able to have and do may, in some part, be because of these people. Simple acts of kindness go a long way.
Life After the Blues (and twos) 