Normally yours truly keeps himself to himself. Today was different.
This morning I set off up the road to get the paper and top up with ciggies from the local shop. However just up the road, I noticed across the road was an elderly man hanging on to a fence. This man is usually seen briskly taking his dog for a walk most days, so this was unusual to say the least.
On crossing the road and approaching him almost immediately I could see that he was not at all well. Now FE has had the advantage of doing an advanced first aid course, and it was immediately obvious that he had the symptoms of a stroke. Slurred speech, once side of the face dropped, lack of feeling on one side of his body.
I needed help. So I told the man to hang on, and nipped down to his house to inform his family and then hurried back. By this time the gentleman was having great difficulty to communicate and was nearly collapsing. With the help of his family we managed to ease him into a sitting position. The biggest problem next was that the family members really didn't seem to realise that their relation was in a potentially fatal condition. They were just going to carry him home. I quite forcibly had to persuade them to call for an ambulance.
Within a few minutes a first responder paramedic turned up and definitely said the elderly gent needed to get to a hospital. Interestingly the old gent started to become completely lucid again and started to chat quite happily to the paramedic and myself.
That's when I made my excuses and beat a hasty getaway.
Apparently I'm informed, he had a further incident in the ambulance, but is now stable in hospital.
It's nice to help people.
