A Roxboro man who recently underwent hip replacement surgery says there's something wrong with the health care system, after he waited 9 hours for an ambulance to arrive at his home when his new hip acted up.
66-year-old Trevor Garland went in for surgery on Oct. 5. In the early morning hours of Oct. 17, he dislocated his new hip, spending an uncomfortable night before he finally called 9-1-1 at around 7:30 a.m.
And then he waited. And waited.
He placed several more calls to 9-1-1 — still in intense pain — wondering why an ambulance wasn't coming.
"I'm screaming, I'm in agony. Help me," Garland told CJAD 800. "Urgences Santé said we have a lot of cardiac arrests going on right now, so maybe a few hours to wait."
Finally, the surgeon who performed the procedure two weeks before interceded with the 9-1-1 dispatcher on his behalf, and an ambulance finally came, nine hours after the initial call.
Even after that, however, he had to wait nearly another hour for another ambulance to come with a vertical stretcher that could immobilize his hip while he was carried down a flight of stairs.
He finally arrived at St. Mary's hospital 11 hours after that first phone call.
Stories about long waits for ambulances are becoming all too common, particularly on the West Island. Earlier this year, a 94-year-old woman waited eight hours for an ambulance to arrive in similar circumstances. And in November 2017, a 77-year-old woman waited two hours for one after falling down a flight of ten cement steps and hitting her head. In each case, they blamed an unusually high volume of calls, and a chronic lack of resources.
Garland, meanwhile, can't understand why there wouldn't be even one ambulance available to deal with his issue.
"Clearly, there's a critical lack of resources in terms of health care in Montreal," Garland says.