You can’t blame the elderly for being elderly

This post was originally published on golifelog.com.

As promised yesterday, here is a small story from yesterday’s paramedic shift. It started out pretty slow, and we managed to eat breakfast together. Together, meaning the three car teams (including me and my co-driver) and the one paramedic driving the emergency doctor car. I think I should write about how that system works over here so you can better understand how everything works and why things work the way they do.

We did a short transport not far after and were on a long drive by lunchtime, retrieving dialysis patients from the dialysis provider back to their homes. After that, I managed to put in a small afternoon nap before we had several short-distance missions to nearby care homes. In one of those care homes, the story takes place.

We were there the second time that day. The first time, we had a patient who hadn’t peed in more than 24 hours, although she had drank enough. The local nurses didn’t manage to get a catheter to work, so we took the patient to the nearest hospital. Around 15 minutes later, a catheter was successfully placed, and we drove the patient back to the care home.

On the way back, we received notice that there would be another patient waiting for us there. Not really a large problem; we dropped the first patient off, disinfected our stuff and went to pick up the second one on a different floor. As I was pushing down our chair with wheels down the aisle, I heard some shouting, and I couldn’t quite understand what was going on. We arrived and saw an elderly guy sitting in a wheelchair and a nurse nearby. I asked the nurse if he was our patient and what had happened. As soon as she began talking, I knew it was her shouting before. She gave us a quick rundown of what happened. Basically, basically the elderly man was found on the floor, head near a wall, and since he was on blood-thinning medication, it was obvious that he was in need of being brought to a hospital for a quick checkup if something broke or was damaged. I quickly checked the guy but couldn’t find any obvious wounds, so we changed him onto our chairs and loaded him into our ambulance vehicle. 

I was entering his data into your tablet, which also works as a navigation source and mission dispatch platform, when I heard someone whine. Since it couldn’t be my co-driver, who was in the back of the car, I had a glance at the rear-facing mirror. My co-driver tried to comfort the man, but he was severely crying. I asked what was going on and if we needed additional assistance if the man was in pain now. Well, he wasn’t. But he was crying about nobody caring for him and that the nurses kept shouting at him because he tried to go to the bathroom when he felt, and they just told him he should’ve stayed in bed. He wasn’t incontinent, so, to be honest, who would pee himself if the toilet was only steps away? Of course, being almost 90, your body might not work as expected anymore, and accidents can happen. But can you blame someone for falling? I know working in healthcare is a hard job, but you can’t blame the elderly for being elderly.

Now, a day later, I’m sitting here, feeling sorry for that man. He wasn't wrong, but he was blamed for it. And I can’t do anything about it, as there is no easy way I could think of to report that incident. Heck, I can’t even 100% know if it really happened, as the guy was telling me. I wasn’t there when he fell or when they found him.

Still, it will be in my memory for some time. Another invisible scar (I wanted to link my previous article about invisible scars, but I just noticed I didn’t republish it yet, so I might rewrite it soon), I guess.