Showing posts with label wait. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wait. Show all posts

Tuesday, 31 July 2012

“A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old." - Abraham J Heschel

It has been a very difficult few days. On Sunday lunchtime I had a frantic phone call from my step father, my mum had blacked out and fallen on the kitchen floor badly cutting head open - I have never seen so much blood! He had already called an ambulance and I dashed to their house (in a village about 6 miles away) to be with my mum. As I ran down the lane to their house I realised that there was no ambulance there and I assumed that my mum must be already on her way to hospital. When I opened the front door I realised that I was wrong, my mum was sitting on the floor propped against the kitchen units holding a blood soaked towel against her head. The kitchen floor was covered in blood and my step father (who is terminally ill) was standing there ashen faced looking totally helpless.

I did my best to make my mum comfortable and then I rushed around getting everything ready for a trip to the hospital. The ambulance control had told them to leave mum on the floor and to leave the blood as it was. We waited and waited but no ambulance came. After an hour I spoke to the ambulance control they still insisted that I should not move her and they said they would make mum a high priority and an ambulance would be there soon. I told them that I needed to clean up the blood as it was making it impossible to move around the kitchen to look after mum, and when I got off the phone I cleaned the floor. Still no ambulance came and I was very worried about my mum's condition, so I called my brother (who lives in a different county) he came with his car and between us we got mum up (she was very wobbly) put her into the car and took her to the hospital. By the time we left her house we had waited two and a half hours for an ambulance!

At the hospital her condition was taken very seriously, they said her pulse was dangerously low and she was kept on close observation in the resuscitation area. She is still in hospital, they think she may need a pacemaker, but they are still doing tests. I am disgusted that a woman who is over 80 can be left to wait so long for emergency medical care. We will be making a formal complaint, but our first priority is to look after mum.

Saturday, 21 January 2012

The Wrong Trousers

Believe it or not there was yet another chapter to the trouser saga! Just in case anyone reading this has not read my recent posts I will recap briefly. Some time before Christmas we agreed that Robbie needed a new suit so he did his research, which included several trips to Marks and Spencer - his favourite shop. He chose the suit that he wanted but our local M&S had no stock in the size he needed so it was necessary to order the items online. They sell the jackets and trousers separately and much to Robbie's annoyance they had the jacket that he wanted in stock, but the trousers were not available in his size. So we decided to order the jacket and wait for them to get more stock of the trousers. Christmas came and went and Robbie (who had been checking the website twice a day) had almost given up on ever getting the trousers. Then finally the great day came, they were in stock and Robbie placed his order, he knew what size he needed and he ordered exactly the same size as the trousers he already has. He collected his trousers on a Friday from M&S in Birmingham, but he got distracted when leaving work and he managed to leave his trousers on his desk. The trousers had to be 'rescued' the following day but when he tried them on he found that they didn't fit, they were a bit on the tight side. It didn't make sense, they were exactly the same size as the ones he already has that fit him perfectly. He ordered the next size and when they arrived he said they were much more comfortable so he wore them to work. 


Sadly that was not the end of the matter, he claimed they were too loose even with a belt and they kept slipping down. I don't want him to be arrested, so we will need to take the waist in a bit, next he said that they are too long and he is afraid of treading on them as he walks so we need to do something about the leg length too!  I am sick of the whole trouser issue and Robbie seemed deeply affronted that he may be a non standard fitting. Anyway after weeks of constant complaint about trousers I have come up with the perfect solution - a kilt! It would certainly turn a few heads!!