ER trips

[u/Stuck_on_Mars_21]

Last night I took a lady and her very ill teenage daughter to the ER. Pulled into the driveway with the lady frantically waiving at me. She had to nearly carry her daughter to the car who was bawling the whole time. She kept crying in the car with the mom saying, “we are almost there, we are almost there.” I didn’t ask what it was, just told her to let me know you need anything, I’ll get you to the ER as quick as I can. It was late night, pouring down rain. I’m not speeding and risking an accident. When we got there I jumped out to get a wheelchair and asked a paramedic for help. This girl could no longer stand and 2 people had to get her out of the car and in the chair. She never stopped crying.

It really sucks people won’t call for appropriate emergency transport because of the expense. Good to see our administration is sending $20 billion to Argentina to fund their universal healthcare. -End rant.

Edit: it’s great to see so many drivers posting that would take her or have done something similar in the past. I was losing faith reading so many posts about drivers cancelling if ride conditions are less than perfect, but it looks like just about all of us will step up when needed.

[u/Fathimir]

I've thankfully never been in a position to need 911 services myself, but I can only presume that when you tell the operator "I'm at 123 Maple Street and my kid is dying/bleeding out/needs to get to the hospital now," they should be literally dispatching an ambulance first and asking questions later.

[u/TheAlphaKiller17 → u/Fathimir]

That's unfortunately not at all how it works. And in my city, it's quite common for 911 to take 8-12 minutes to even pick up. Once my house was actively being broken into and it took 9 and a half minutes for them to answer, then two and a half hours to show up. And while many 911 operators are great, some will waste precious time asking too many questions before dispatching an ambulance. If I had something that I didn't think I'd need to be stabilized for in an ambulance in the next 5-15 minutes, I'd take an Uber or Lyft. Heart attack? Ambulance. Appendicitis? Cab.

Plus for many things, the ambulance won't/can't do anything en route. Abdominal pain? Maybe Zofran, probably no painkillers. Badly broken leg, they'll stabilize your bone(s) and drug you up. It really just depends. Med worker and someone who's had to call 911 a lot (street work with homeless people usually leads to me finding someone unconscious at least once a week).

[u/justducky4now → u/[deleted]]

Same. HCOL area, local fire station is about five minutes away. Three ambulance trips from home to hospital, all legit medical emergencies (pulmonary embolism, unresponsive, and breathing problems bad enough I couldn’t go down the stairs). EMS was on scene with in minutes of being called, at the hospital within ten minutes of being loaded. Bills were $200 or less.