How I spent my morning

[james_davis_nicoll]

I walked by Charles and Queen to discover Queen, already impassible, is now even more impassible due to added construction. This turned out to matter more than I thought.

I was walking by Platform C (? The second island with the iXpress buses) when an 87-year-old man in front of me got dizzy, tried to catch himself on a sign standard and missed; he hit his head pretty hard when he got to the pavement.

I was the first one to him, which might have been useful if I had any first aid. As it was all I did was convince him to stay still - he wanted to get up and keep going* - and alerted the nearest GRT bus driver, who used her vehicle's radio to call a guard. The guard showed up less than a minute later, called 911 as soon as he saw what was going on and the two of us waited with the gentleman until the ambulance showed up.

As it turns out, I've had cause to time responses for 911 in the core and it is usually three minutes or less. This was about ten minutes and I blame all the road work; I think they've had to cut over to Victoria to get there from St Mary's.

Anyway, huge goose egg and his neck was sore but he was lucid as they took him away. And he didn't lose his book; the paramedics took particular care to make sure of that.

(I was told to wait in case the paramedics needed details from me, which they didn't)

* To St. Mary's hospital for an unrelated matter, as it turns out.

Comments

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

The Canadian Red Cross lists a lot of courses but they're very coy about prices; I couldn't see any without slugging in a fake registration, which I am somewhat loathe to do. Plenty of courses cited by several providers in K-W, though.

St. John Ambulance is similarly coy.

From my recollection, a basic "Heart Saver" two-session CPR instruction/certification cost me $10 a quarter century ago.

-- Steve, thankfully, never had to put that into use.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

The last few courses I've taken/helped organize ran about $125/$150 per student, but you'd probably get them cheaper in other places where they are offering them more regularly. This was for Standard First Aid/CPR + AED, which is pretty much the baseline people should have these days.