I Didn’t Want To Wake You
Originally posted @allaboutestates.ca
A story I heard…..
Last week Zoey had the pleasure of visiting her aunt and uncle (in celebration of a 90th bday) who live in the States. Zoey and her husband accompanied her mother who took the train in (by herself) from Montreal so that we could fly together. Zoey’s mom used a wheelchair transport for the airport, which greatly accelerated their wait in security, customs and boarding the plane (tip # 1: book a wheelchair and only take carry on luggage). Fortunately the travel and trip went well.
Their return flight home was delayed; they arrived home in the very early hours in the morning (tip # 2: pre book transportation). Zoey walked her mother to the guest room and said goodnight. The next morning Zoey went into her mother’s room to find her sitting in bed holding a bloody tissue to her forehead, with blood on her, her bedding and clothing. When asked what happened, she replied that when getting into bed, she tripped, fell and hit her head on the wall. She had spent the entire night sleeping fitfully, with a gash on her forehead that was still bleeding. When asked why she did not call out for assistance, she simply said: ‘ I did not want to wake you’.
Now as you can appreciate Zoey was not thrilled with her response and told her so, and professionally I will share that her response is more common than one would think (tip # 3: make sure the night lights are ON).
Upon assessment, Zoey and her mom agreed that the situation did not require a trip to the emergency room but Zoey did want to have her checked out by a physician. The steps taken included:
- Checking internet for closest urgent care centre: she was not able to enter her postal code to determine proximity,
- Calling the closest family health team office: office closed, message connected to telehealth Ontario, left message with the return cell phone number,
- Looking up walk in medical clinics and eureka, she was able to enter her postal code, she called the closest clinic, they were open and had parking available,
- They attended the clinic, had a short wait to meet the doctor who assessed her mom and applied sterri strips to the forehead wound and cleared her to continue her return trip home scheduled for later in the day,
- Zoey received a return call from telehealth (abount 1.5 hours after leaving a message).
Zoey’s mom was lucky. Tip # 4: Consider yourselves fortunate. Zoey had a complete list of her mom’s medications and medical history as she had a Wellness Binder™ (although it needed to be updated) and was grateful that the fall was not more serious than it was. For her mom the fall was not a big deal but for Zoey, it was……
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