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

[pauldormer.livejournal.com]

I remember an incident maybe 30 years ago when I was living in London. I was walking back from the train station to my flat late at night and there was someone walking the same direction in front of me. He was much slower and seemed to be staggering. As I passed him (and no, I didn't run into him) he just keeled over. I asked him if he was OK but he didn't seem to be able to speak coherently or get up. Don't know if he was very drunk or had had some sort of stroke.

A couple walked past while I was wondering what to do and I knew that if they kept going down the road they'd pass an ambulance station so I asked them to tell someone there. Don't know if they did but an ambulance did pass eventually and I was able to flag it down.

Of course, these days I'd be able to call 999 on my mobile.