Many times, but most recently was last week. One of my neighbors frantically banged on my door and asked if I could come up the street and check on another neighbor and possibly drive her to the hospital. By the time I got up there, about 10 houses away, the sick neighbor was in a bad way, so I opted to call 911 instead of driving her to the ER, where I knew we would have to wait in line and get checked in before they would even assess her. The paramedics were there on the scene in less than 3 minutes, then they started treating her with an IV on the scene and then loaded her into the ambulance and took her to the ER. My other neighbor and I followed in the ambulance. It’s a good thing we called 911, because there was probably 75 other people in the ER waiting room, either who had checked in already and were waiting for triage, or still waiting in line just to get checked in. I’ve been in that spot before and you can be there for 15 minutes, to an hour or more in that circumstance.
The other neighbor, who is also elderly can’t drive at night, that’s why she came and got me, plus she was a little bit panicky, because the sick lady is her friend. She trusted that I would know what to do.
Turns out that my elderly neighbor had a severe kidney infection with extreme dehydration. If the other neighbor hadn’t gone to check on her, she probably would have died.
I just visited the neighbor who had been in the hospital and she was all thank you’s and smiles today. She still has a catheter, and will for about another 3 weeks, but she looked really good and was very happy that I came up there and called 911.