quousque:madqueensarah:Reasons I have taken/asked for an ambulance:- Diabetic friend kept throwing u

quousque:madqueensarah:Reasons I have taken/asked for an ambulance:- Diabetic friend kept throwing up and we couldn’t measure her blood sugar levels so had no idea how close she was to collapsing- Friend having allergic reaction (we had stabbed her with the epipen but also not taking any chances)- Passed out in a supermarket and woke up in an ambulance. Main feeling was embarrassment which entertained the paramedics.- Friend’s mum had a 6″ nail through her foot- Friend passed out and smacked her head on the floor- Next door neighbour (elderly) had fallen down the stairs- Guy at party had been passed out in freezing temperatures, for over two hours and looked a little blueNow I’m listing them there’s actually a lot of times (there’s more than those), but when asking for an ambulance I’ve only dialled the emergency line twice - elderly next door neighbour and allergic reaction. The other times I called the non-emergency line and they’d basically go:“Do you need an ambulance?”“I’m not sure. There’s a lot of blood/he’s blue/she’s very pale and I don’t know how bad it is.”“We are going to send someone to you but as a non-emergency call it may take up to an hour. Call us back and reference this number if things get worse and the paramedics will rush to you. In the meantime do XYZ for the person. Would you like me to stay on the line?”You know the siren thing? They only do that for time sensitive emergencies. When I called the emergency line, took maybe 10 minutes for an ambulance, all the others were 30 to 50 minutes.But to quote my 1st Aid Trainer - No one ever really regrets calling paramedics which weren’t needed. Everyone always regrets not calling them when they were.TL:DR - No, an ambulance is not your taxi to the hospital. But they are there to take you to a hospital if you need it.tangent: if someone needs to use their epipen, they ALSO need to get to the hospital ASAP. Call 911. An epipen does not stop the allergic reaction, it slows it down. It essentially buys the person about 5 more minutes of being alive, so the ambulance had better be there by the time it wears off. -- source link

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