LIZ’S EMERGENCY
Pound, pound, pound — the police, firemen and parametics were at the door. A medical alert device signaled to them that someone was in trouble. They arrived with lights and sirens awakening everyone in the village.
There was no answer to their shouting and knocking at the door. Having obtained the emergency key, they entered the home.
What would they find? Was there foul play? Was there blood? Was someone on the floor? Was the person on the other side of the bed where they couldn’t be seen?
No, all seemed normal and quiet.
They heard the shower running so maybe someone had fallen. That was their next place to look.
Liz, my 98 year old friend heard them pounding. She couldn’t move fast enough to see what the problem was so was stuck behind the shower curtain, not being able to move fast enough to get out, get dressed and answer the door.
With all of the commotion, she moved too quickly, slipping down to the soapy floor of the shower.
Knowing that someone was IN her apartment and that they were headed her way, she grabbed the shower curtain, pulling it down and around her.
As the men entered the bathroom, they could see that Liz needed help. Their strength helped pull her to her feet, still wrapped in the shower curtain.
After questioning my friend, they realized that she had NOT called for help.
How did the alert go off? How was the alert sent to the ‘helpers’?
Liz explained that a few months previously, her doctor advised her to get a medic alert device which would get her immediate help if she needed it. All she had to do was to push a button on her ‘necklace’.
Liz followed her doctor’s instructions and ordered the device, the fancy one with a GPS. When it arrived, she put the batteries in and faithfully charged it as instructed. This should work, thought Liz.
Over the next month, Liz realized that she HATED that device. It was too big, hanging around her neck on the outside of her clothing, advertising to everyone that she needed that device now.
Additional charging was needed every day and that, she found, was a huge inconvenience. She didn’t have time for THAT.
Liz sent the device back to the company, glad to be rid of it!!!
When the police, firemen and paramedics almost had to break down her door to get to her, they were all questioning what had happened.
The mystery was solved when Liz explained that she’d taken that pesky thing and mailed it back to its maker that day. Apparently she had not removed the battery so from her home to New York, that alert was going off.
I wonder, all along the route, if emergency workers were called out to save someone…somewhere…in a box.
