15 long hours. That’s how long David had to wait for an ambulance to come to his house. Victim of a fall outside his home, the 87-year-old man could no longer get up. During this endless wait and while it was raining, his family had to build him a makeshift shelter from a football goal.
Suffering from prostate cancer, the octogenarian is now fighting for his life. Shocked, his family complained about the situation and evoked a “broken system”: “As a family, we know that the staff of the NHS are wonderful and do their best, but you have to wonder how things like this continue to occur ? It just seems like no one cares and no one is willing to fix it,” says his son-in-law Trevor.
During his fall, David suffered seven fractured ribs, a fractured pelvis in two places, abrasions to his head and a large cut on his arm. Phil, the victim’s son, also spoke about his dad’s accident.
He says: “We kept ringing the bell trying to find out when the ambulance was coming and we kept getting put off. It looked like even though the weather was okay the rain was coming so we had to adapt as best we could to get the neighbour’s football goal posts, I found a tarp in the garage and we shot her on target and made a bit of a tent. But it wasn’t enough for the rain, so we had to find three umbrellas just to make sure it was dry. At one point he was in so much pain that I had to massage his back because it was hurting him so much, the whole time just trying to reassure him and make him as comfortable as possible.”
The family now spends as much time as possible at David’s bedside. They are praying for his recovery and in no way wishing that other people have to go through this sad scenario.
