How far are you from your nearest A&E and could you get your husband there quickly if you had to?

[verdantverdure]

And what would you do with the children?

One of my neighbours had to get her husband to hospital recently in the absence of an ambulance and it took a borrowed wheelchair and several neighbours.

Am I being unreasonable to think most of us don't have a plan for this?

Could most of us get our partners to hospital fast enough in the event of a stroke or heart attack?

What's your plan?

20-25min from a major teaching hospital - I would drive in bus lanes and deal with the fines later (wouldn’t go through red lights or similar which would put us/others in danger).
Good friends with various neighbours and would leave the kids there (junior school age)

Oh and my dc is old enough now that I could leave her home, though I might not want to in a scary situation. Young children can always be quickly thrown into car seats and make the trip with you and you just figure out what to do after you arrive. My experience showing up at the doors of a&e
with someone who really needed an ambulance is that the staff will help
bring them in when you arrive panicked.

It's a 90 min drive to my nearest ED.

I have wondered about this scenario occasionally and I know where the local defribulators are housed (nearby village 2 miles and also the town 6 miles away).

However, I accept that if I had a heart attack or stroke, I'd likely die because DH doesn't drive so if he couldn't get hold of a friend, that would be curtains for me. (He doesn't have many numbers on his phone either.)

There's always risks in life. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Never thought of it, but I can drive and we're 20 mins from A&E - kids are old enough now that it's a non-issue, but I think if anything had happened when they were younger we know enough neighbours that we could hand them over to someone in an emergency.

20 minute drive to A&E
4 minute drive to nearest defibrillator

In so many ways 😂

We're 7 mins drive to closest A&E. I don't drive though so I have thought of that. I'd have to rely on neighbours (luckily we have good ones) or family who live close by, but you'd hope they'd answer the phone.

taxi or ambulance here.

Though when I actually had a heart attack I was in town and walked ten minutes to a and e - heart attacks are not always clutch the chest, fall to the ground affairs!

Does everyone keep aspirin at home? Afaik it's still recommended to take asap for stroke symptoms?

I live in London and could call a taxi in 2 mins, I think from calling taxi to getting there would be 15 mins but I'd need to bring my son as he is 4 and no-one else could look after him.

I couldn't carry my dh if he was immobile but I could help him a little. I have a car and one dc10 so they would come with me.

10 mins in a car or taxi.

Oh I couldn't lift him he's 6ft 4 but I live in an apartment block and everyone is really nice, they would help me

Around a ten minute drive.
With the ambulance wait times nowadays, if he was having a heart attack or stroke I would be better off calling the undertaker and cutting out the middle man.

Ten mins to 20 mins depending on traffic. I drove Dd there with a suspected heart attack in 8 mins recently.

I can see it out of my window.

I don't have a husband. If anything happened to me I'd have to ring for an ambulance and hope for the best. If I wasn't in a state to ring, then someone would probably find me dead on the floor later. My kids are teens, but not always with me, they might be with their father.

15 mins. Have older teens who could help carry him/supervise younger DC. Also have a large, very close support network of friends so I could get one to be at my house to be a 'proper' adult within 5 minutes.

Organising childcare and then transporting to ED would be quicker than an ambulance for us.

We live between two hospitals, about 20 minutes one way or 25 the other way. Had to take a family member by car recently, it was an emergency but not life threatening.

Hi OP, I recently had to do this with my adult DS, name changed as lots of people know about this IRzL

My mum is 20 mins away from hospital. My dad had tricky but fairly routine surgery and collapsed at home a few days later. Was clearly sepsis or serious infection of some sort. The ambulance never came. Ambulance service fully aware of post surgery status etc and the risk factors. and a nurse from the bigger city hospital where he had the surgery was at one point shouting down the line at the ambulance coordinator to get him in NOW, my mum holding her mobile and the landline together. They waited over 18hrs. At the point that she got him there, ambo service advising another 6hr wait. She's absolutely tiny, and eventually dragged my very muscular dad down the stairs and into the car with my aunty with him screaming in agony. There was.bloody, shit and vomit ALL OVER the bedroom where he was.

He's dead now. Delay in treatment almost certainly contributed (that's being generous). I don't blame the service, but I do blame the government who have drained if cash in the name of greed. I don't mean to pick out individual posters but a post on the first page saying they would await advice from the ambulance service are sadly deluded. The advice my mum got when it was painfully obvious he was dying was 'wait another 8 hrs. We can't get there. There's no ambulance'.

God help us all.

Excuse typos!

It's 5 mins away by car - I don't drive so I'd have to phone a taxi or throw myself on the mercy of a neighbour.

A few miles, could be there in 10 minutes.

My neighbour husband big guy, my husband and his wife got him into the car and to A&E Twenty minutes away. Staff helped then but it was 30 hours in A&E after that it was a stroke. I get the grandchildren in emergency hospital dashes.