Hello, 911?

(in Garden City, MI) You have MORONS responding to calls for help. Yes, you do.

My grandma is eighty-five years old. She lives in an assisted living facility, though she's pretty independent and unassisted. Or she was. The other night, she fell getting out of bed. Instead of calling someone at the facility or pressing her "help, I've fallen and I can't get up!" alarm button, she called my mom. So my mom told her she was on her way (which involved waking up my Dad-Ray to drive because she is not allowed due to hypoglycemia issues) and to press the button because that's what it's for.

Instead of the alarm company calling the facility to send someone to check on Grandma, they called 911 and sent "paramedics." My mom arrived just as the paramedics were preparing to leave. They had plucked Grandma from the floor and plopped her sitting up on the edge of her bed. I don't know how much of an "exam" actually preceded this plucking and plopping but...they apparently took her at her "I'm fine, don't go to any trouble" word.

So. My mom, the nurse (though being a nurse is not really required here...I just asked my 13 yo, who's really very bright but doesn't typically have a whole lot of common sense and he was quite shocked at the pluck and plop treatment), immediately recognizes how incredibly stupid it is to pluck and plop an eighty-five year old woman with osteoporosis (who is also undergoing minimally aggressive breast cancer treatment) after a fall. She tells the pseudomedics, "OK, let's see her WALK...before your dumbasses ride off into the night" (or something like that). And Grandma not only can't walk--she cannot move from the position in which she was plopped.

The fauxmedics finally decide they ought to actually do the job they were supposedly trained to do. They ease her down, strap her to a backboard, throw in a nice c-collar and cart Grandma off to the hospital. Where xrays reveal her broken hip, pelvis and both bones in her lower right leg.

Uh huh. MORONS. Absolute.

Poor Grandma. I cannot even imagine the pain involved.

Assholes.