The Leader Newspaper

News

APPALLING LACK OF RESPONSE

Print | Send to a friend

Sally Bengtsson / 2010-03-18 15:36:31

Imagine the scene, you're just setting down to lunch and your wife tells you she's not feeling too well and decides to lay on the bed. 

Seconds later she's writhing in agony clutching her upper stomach,complaining of violent pain. Seconds later she's crying in agony and her husband, Tony Mayes rushes to the community president, John Taylor and his wife Dawn, to get help.

John quickly realised something is seriously wrong and asked his wife to telephone 112 for an emergency ambulance. There followed the most terrible experience in their lives.
Tony´s wife, Elaine, after writhing in agony, went into spasms and the situation seemed to worsen by the second.

They all thought the worst and believed she was having a heart attack.

Another call to 112 and the president's wife told Tony the woman on the other end simply wanted to know my Elaine's European Health Insurance Card number rather than dispatch an ambulance and deal with the paperwork later.  He could find his own card but not his wife's - have you ever tried to explore the contents of a woman's handbag and purse?

Luckily they are members of Barclays Premier Banking - which gives them emergency health cover and insurance and when Tony telephoned them he was connected to a British doctor within seconds.  By then Elaine had stopped her violent spasms and slowly slipped into unconsciousness. Both the president's wife and he believed she had died. She appeared not to be breathing and they kept slapping her face and screaming at her to stay awake - all to no avail.

Luckily the community president has basic first aid knowledge and with the calming influence of the English doctor on the phone, and with Tony passing on his advice to the president, they established that Elaine had a pulse and was breathing, albeit very shallowly.

They explained to the doctor that they had telephoned for an ambulance but none was forthcoming. The doctor then arranged for telephone calls to be made to emergency services in Alicante and as far as Madrid to find out what the ambulance services in Spain were playing at.

After almost an hour an ambulance did arrive - but there was no paramedic on board, it was just a driver, who had been asked to take Elaine to the local medical centre.  By then she was regaining consciousness and the pain had become bearable. After a few minutes she was able to assist in efforts to get her into a chair and out of their apartment.

When he had managed to calm himself down Tony was able to find his wife's Health Insurance Card - lucky he did because he was unable to be with the doctor to explain what had happened - the desk clerk wanted her insurance details - again putting paperwork and money before anything else.

The English insurers called Tony back three times to ask how his wife was and to tell him they had taken up the matter of the appalling lack of help by the Spanish emergency services in getting an ambulance to them fast.  It will be interesting to hear the outcome.

Had his wife been suffering a heart attack or stroke she would have died. We know how important it is for a rapid response ambulance to get to a patient quickly. Spain let them down big time and they hope that people in Spain read this and act so that it doesn't happen again with disastrous consequences.

The doctor at the medical centre gave Elaine all manner of tests and established all was well. It seems she had an allergic reaction to something, goodness knows what, and her stomach went into a spasm. She suffered a severe panic attack which in turn eventually forced her body to shut down to save it from further harm.

But for a time they really thought she had died - it was the most frightening experience, made far worse through the total lack of support from a useless Spanish ambulance service.
They hope the Orihuela ambulance service read this and respond to the Leader in a subsequent article - at least to reassure readers that they really do exist or are actually on call on a Sunday afternoon and which  number to call when there's an emergency.  This kind of situation should not be allowed to happen again, as we are talking about the difference between life and death.

Elaine is now well and both she and Tony are recovering from the shock of the whole experience.  They are going back to Bognor Regis for some months, during which time Elaine, who works as a nurse, will have a thorough check up.  The matter is being looked into apparently, and let us hope that the ambulance service does improve, as this is not the first time we have heard of such a slow response to an emergency.  It is clear that an explanation is needed.