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A scary afternoon, with a happy ending
Feb. 24th, 2009 05:31 pmI got a panicked call from my Mom in the middle of the afternoon -- her longtime boyfriend (a very cool guy whom I adore) had collapsed and was on the way to the emergency room. Fortunately where I work is fairly close to her house, so I rushed over and took her to the hospital. Long and the short of it, the very early indicators are that he had a mild stroke, but he seems perfectly fine now with no impairment. I took Mom back home to pick up some stuff for him, and we joked that it was actually a pretty good dry run in case of a worse emergency.
This is funny because back when I was a teenager, my Mom accidentally set the back yard on fire, and had first tried to scream to me to phone for help. But I was in the front of the house and couldn't hear her so she ran inside to make the call herself. She took one look at the prominent "IN CASE OF EMERGENCY DIAL 911" sticker on the phone where she noticed the fine print for the telephone numbers for fire, police, and ambulance so she direct-dialed the fire department. The bewildered receptionist was astonished that she'd telephoned the fire department's business office while her back yard was going up in flames and got her to hang up and dial 911. (Oh, and meanwhile the guy tending the neighbor's pool leapt over the fence with a fire extinguisher and put it out.)
So this time around, Mom briefly tries to revive him, then opens the front door to see if the police officer who lives in the house across the street was home. He wasn't, so she dialed 911, got a brief message out to his kids, then called me. I'm very, very proud of her. Here's hoping we never have to go through it again.
This is funny because back when I was a teenager, my Mom accidentally set the back yard on fire, and had first tried to scream to me to phone for help. But I was in the front of the house and couldn't hear her so she ran inside to make the call herself. She took one look at the prominent "IN CASE OF EMERGENCY DIAL 911" sticker on the phone where she noticed the fine print for the telephone numbers for fire, police, and ambulance so she direct-dialed the fire department. The bewildered receptionist was astonished that she'd telephoned the fire department's business office while her back yard was going up in flames and got her to hang up and dial 911. (Oh, and meanwhile the guy tending the neighbor's pool leapt over the fence with a fire extinguisher and put it out.)
So this time around, Mom briefly tries to revive him, then opens the front door to see if the police officer who lives in the house across the street was home. He wasn't, so she dialed 911, got a brief message out to his kids, then called me. I'm very, very proud of her. Here's hoping we never have to go through it again.
