Thumbs up for our emergency services.
As some of you are aware my wife is an insulin dependant diabetic. On Thursday night she started to feel unwell with what appeared to be only a temperature being the start of a cold.
She stayed in bed on Friday and kept feeling nauseous and thus was unable to eat or drink. Unfortunately this had a disastrous effect on her diabetes control so that early on Saturday morning we decided that she would have to go to hospital for stabilisation.
Whilst getting ready she felt so weak that she collapsed and fell to the floor. Whilst lifting her up she collapsed again so driving her to hospital was not an option.
Thus I rang 000. The operator (Telstra ?) stayed on the line after immediately transferring me to confirm my phone number and address to the Ambo operator.
They immediately despatched a MICA ambulance and stayed on the line whilst I confirmed that my wife was okay, etc. The ambos arrived within 10 minutes and after assessing her took her to hospital.
At the hospital emergency department they immediately hooked her up to drips, oxygen, machines and monitors to treat her diabetes.
The staff at the hospital and the ambos were extremely kind and helpful and very pleasant to deal with, notwithstanding that some of them were near the end of a very long shift.
Whilst there are many things wrong with the public health system, and lots more needs to be done, the human face of the system being the people that actually deal with the patients is fantastic.
So my thanks to all the emergency workers, we don't often enough appreciate the work they do, and thank your God that when the chips are down and you need to use 000 it is available.
Peter.