I got to our beach house yesterday afternoon, and had just put the bread maker on when I heard an urgent knocking on our door.
\nMy first thought, as always, was that someone was coming to complain about the dogs. I opened the door and found an elderly, distressed and wild eyed man standing there. \u201cAre you a nurse?\u201d he said. He looked so disappointed when I said no that I relented and said I was a doctor – surely a close second in terms of functionality in most respects, I would have thought. \u00a0\u201cI just suddenly started feeling breathless and couldn\u2019t get through to my doctor…\u201d I ushered him into the house, and at that moment by some sort of divine miracle our friend who is staying at our place, and who is a physician, arrived.<\/p>\n
It turns out the old guy is called Ron, and he is our neighbour from across the road. He\u2019s lived there for 25 years but we\u2019ve never met him before because we are terrible people. My friend did a history and exam while I made Ron a cup of tea. His heart rhythm seemed to be irregular, and a sudden onset of shortness of breath can be serious, so we decided to call an ambulance. I have never in my life phoned 111 before – I didn\u2019t even know if I had to put the local area code (04) at the start (No you don\u2019t as it turns out). Of course I was ringing from my cell phone because we don\u2019t even have a landline anymore. I got a brief grilling and then some instructions, and then it was a matter of waiting. We popped back next door briefly, to get Ron\u2019s medications and toothbrush. I didn\u2019t want to intrude so I waited outside, nervous that if he suddenly collapsed I\u2019d get in trouble, so I kept an ear out for sounds of an old man falling to the ground. However, he made it out safely and we went back to our house.
\nIt took half an hour for the paramedics to arrive, and they came in a car, not an ambulance. We are an hour\u2019s drive away from the hospital, and this was Friday afternoon, so it would take even longer. Hence they\u2019d sent us a sort of local scouting force, a triage team to see how serious and urgent things were.
\nBy now, Ron was feeling much better, and was relaxed and chatty. The paramedics were asking him all sorts of personal questions, as of course they must, and at one point asked him whether he minded me being present. I was quite taken aback. Asking about diarrhea and vomiting, bladder symptoms, and medication history is hardly salacious details for any doctor – or any mum for that matter. Luckily Ron felt the same way. They did an ECG and his heart was pretty much back to normal. However, after ringing Ron\u2019s GP – who decided quite sensibly that 4:30 on a Friday was not a good time to assess whether someone had had a heart attack or not – it was decided to get Ron to hospital in an actual ambulance. Now the real waiting began. After I\u2019d offered everyone another cup of tea, conversation got a bit awkward. We started chatting about the view and the weather, over the sounds of the bread machine doing a mixing cycle. In the meantime, the dogs were scratching at the door and howling from the bedroom I\u2019d shut them into at the ambo\u2019s request. So, I said I\u2019d take the dogs for a walk while we waited. It was a lovely early evening, although there was a chilly wind. When I got back to the house, Ron and his two attendants had gone. Had the ambulance finally arrived? Apparently not, according to my physician friend. They\u2019d decided to go back to Ron\u2019s house to wait.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, I\u2019d missed my work staff meeting I\u2019d intended to join by Zoom. I\u2019ll make sure to let my boss know I had a super valid excuse.<\/p>\n
We had dinner (curry, too spicy), and watched some TV whilst intermittently looking out the window to see how things were getting on. It wasn\u2019t until dark that Ron finally got taken away. Of course, that would only be the start of waiting for the poor chap. I\u2019m sure he had many more hours of sitting around in ED ahead of him. I hope they got him a place to sleep. This morning\u2019s newspaper is sitting on his lawn so I\u2019m guessing he\u2019s still there.
\nI\u2019m going to make a donation to St John\u2019s ambulance today.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got to our beach house yesterday afternoon, and had just put the bread maker on when I heard an urgent knocking on our door.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Ukf-1Gv","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13212,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/23\/doctor-nurse-romance\/","url_meta":{"origin":6479,"position":0},"title":"Doctor nurse romance","author":"Interloper11","date":"August 23, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Just finished my homework, which was the French translation of a couple of English medical romance novels from 1997. 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