Two friends were visiting from Syracuse two weeks ago and phoned me to say that they were parked in front of the Fire Department looking for an EMT who could evaluate one of them to determine if she should go to an emergency room.
Linda had dialysis the day before and there was bleeding from the port (fistula) where she received her treatment.
They went first to the Health Center and were surprised and disappointed to learn that it was not open on weekends, so their second choice was to go to the Fire Department. I explained that the Fire Department is not staffed, and although there are volunteers who come and go, they may be fire fighters and not EMT’s.
Then I further explained that she would have to call 911 and the call would be dispatched to Old Forge where an EMT and a driver would have to come to the Fire Department to respond to the call.
That process seemed too long for Linda and she decided to drive herself back home to Syracuse. She arrived home safely, but the bleeding became profuse and she bled to death in the middle of the night.
I spoke with Dan Rivet, a Paramedic who responds to numerous calls, and he said that the opinion he expressed at a Town Board meeting when they were considering the terms of the contract with St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, is that they include weekend coverage.
His feeling is that our volunteer ambulance service is overtaxed, and the average age of EMT’s who answer most of the calls is 60 years old. He believes, as do many of us who live here, is that it’s a quality of life issue.
Weekend hours at the Health Center could relieve some of this stress on our volunteer EMT’s and Paramedics. In addition to having an aging year round population, our summer populations rises to 30,000, and some of the non-life threatening calls could be handled by the Health Center or they could at least evaluate a patient without taking valuable EMT’s and Paramedics out of service.
Driving two hours back to Syracuse no doubt caused stress on the fistula, but had Linda been examined by a physician, she may have made a wiser decision.
Sheila Brady, Old Forge
