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Woman waits six hours for ambulance after fall on her 100th birthday


A woman has described how she spent more than six hours of her 100th birthday waiting in agony for an ambulance after slipping and fracturing her pelvis while getting ready for a family lunch.

Irene Silsby was due to be picked up by her niece, Lynne Taylor, for a celebration to mark her centenary on 9 April. But she fell in the windowless bathroom of her care home in Greetham, Rutland, and staff called an ambulance at 9am after she managed to summon help.

“All I remember is I was in terrible pain,” said Silsby from her hospital bed on Saturday. When asked of the ambulance delay, she said: “It’s disgusting. I don’t know how I stood it so long, the pain was so severe.”

Taylor expected to meet the ambulance as she arrived 45 minutes later. But when she reached the care home, the manager said it would be a 10-hour wait, she said.

What was to be her aunt’s first trip outside the care home in more than five months turned into her lying on a cold floor surrounded by pillows and blankets to keep her warm and quell some of the discomfort.

Taylor, 60, recalled her aunt saying: “They’re not coming to me because they know I’m 100 and I’m not really worth it any more.”

Taylor said she had never felt so scared, frustrated and worried. After calling 999 and expressing her outrage, she was told that life-threatening conditions were being prioritised.

“I thought she was going to die,” she said. “I didn’t think that any frail, tiny, 100-year-old body could put up with that level of pain on the floor.”

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Source: The Guardian, 20 April 2022

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