I was taking care of deliveries today when a man ran into the pharmacy and said quickly “Somebody get some help! An elderly lady fell down the stairs and her head’s bleeding!” Me and and one of the pharm techs were the only ones in the front room and we stood there, kind of taken aback, when the other pharm tech immediately came out of the compounding area to see what was going on. Then another man came into the pharmacy and delivered pretty much the same message as the first man and also asked for a towel or rag for the woman. The head pharmacist told me to call 911 and one of the techs went to get a towel.

Now in elementary school I was always told that sometimes it would take 20-30 minutes to get ahold of someone on 911 and that the operator would speak in a very calm tone to calm the caller down. When I called, the operator picked up after the first ring, which threw me off guard so I sounded kind of rushed when I informed him that an elderly woman had fallen and was bleeding at the head. The operator asked me to give him the information again but he sounded really rushed, which kind of made me nervous, which is exactly why operators aren’t supposed to sound rushed as I learned in elementary school! Maybe he was a newbie at his job, sort of like me. But still…really?!

I was also told it might take a while for an ambulance to get to the hurt person, but the ambulance came in less than 10 minutes, which impressed me. So basically everything I learned in elementary school went down the drain today haha. I hope the woman was okay though because according to the tech who gave her the towel she was bleeding really badly…