Ninety-four-year-old Kenneth Shadbolt rang the emergency services after falling at home in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, in March and said he couldn’t move.
BBC listeners heard the harrowing 999 call of a dying patient waiting for an ambulance.
Kenneth Shadbolt, 94, rang the emergency services after falling at home in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, in March.
The retired carpenter told the call handler that he was getting worse by the minute.
He said that he was laying on the kitchen floor, the bathroom floor because he’d had a nasty fall. Then he said that he felt terribly sick and that he was in terrible pain, and that if he had to wait another half an hour, he’d likely be dead, and that he had a headache, and then told the call handler to send the undertaker because that would be the best bet.
Then he said that he couldn’t move at all and that it was getting worse and to send somebody fast.
The call handler told Ken to take care and said they would send an ambulance as quickly as they could.
Tragically Ken was unconscious by the time an ambulance arrived five hours later and he passed away in the hospital.
Ken’s family said the failure of paramedics to turn up quicker disgraced our health services.
The call aired on BBC Radio 4’s ‘File on 4’ as it went on the frontline of the ambulance crisis.
Kenneth’s son Grahame said earlier this year that his father would never kick up a fuss, but even though he wasn’t complaining, he was obviously saying he needed assistance.
Grahame said he was alone, increasingly distressed, and vulnerable, and he had every reason to expect an ambulance in good time, but that it didn’t come and it was a disgrace on our health service.
His younger son Russell, 64, said that it was bad enough to lose a loved one but to think of his dad lying on the floor injured and terrified was so very hard.
He said they were brought up that you went to work, paid your taxes, and had faith in the NHS to be there when you needed it, but it simply wasn’t.
There were also several years ago, the harrowing calls of a pensioner who died waiting for an ambulance that never came, it was revealed.
Michael Green made two emergency calls for help before he passed away at his Stocking Farm home.
Nine months later, the family of the 74-year-old were still demanding explanations from the East Midlands Ambulance Service, Leicestershire Live reported.
In two distressed and distressing calls recorded by East Midlands Ambulance Service, given over to his family, he could be heard painfully begging for help.
Michael Green, who suffered from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and pancreatitis could be heard telling operators that he’d been stuck in his chair for five hours with a table pressing against his neck and that he was passing out.
His family were unsure how the table came to be pressing against him other than to believe it may have occurred while he was attempting to reach for his phone.
This should never be happening in this day and age, and this probably wouldn’t have happened if the Tories hadn’t had this crazed idea for austerity and cutting our services to the bone.
This is so sad, but the problem is there are far too many people on this small island of ours, along with the illegals and refugees who are all using the system that we pay into.
When was the last time a doctor, dentist, hospital, school, or council housing estate was opened or built near you? Yet we have thousands of people coming to this tiny island of ours, but Boris Johnson told the refugees they could have access to all benefits and they could stay with a British host for six months, but now it appears to be longer. So, where are all these people supposed to live? And why are we, the taxpayers footing the bill while trying to keep our own families afloat?
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 