I had to go to the hospital today to get measured up for braces for my knees (not Forrest Gump style braces) which involved a trip of almost an hour to Gobowen near Oswestry which has the best orthopaedic hospital in England.

Anyway, I’m making good time and am about 3 or 4 miles from the hospital when I passed a lay-by and noticed a man lying over the kerb trying to flag down traffic.  Nobody stopped and I saw him too late to pull into the lay-by so I went further down the road, phoned 999 and turned around at the next island.

By the time I got back a truck driver had managed to stop and had got the man sitting up.  He was complaining of chest pains and said his eyes were funny.  His family started to turn up after a few minutes, he had presumably phoned them when he’d pulled over.  He was sitting up with help, a bit out of it and then he just keeled over and died minutes before the ambulance arrived.

The ambulance crew tried to revive him at the side of the road but they hadn’t managed by the time they’d loaded him onto the ambulance.  I did my best to comfort his relatives but it’s a bit of a blur, I think I may have just talked shit.

It was really disappointing that so many people passed by without stopping, I don’t know how long he was there on his own.  It also exposes the folly of closing A&E wards in hospitals – they did this a few years ago at Gobowen and as a result the ambulance had a 20 minute drive to Shrewsbury to the nearest hospital.  The bean counters probably thought it was a good idea to close the A&E ward, I wonder what this man’s family think.

As for what happened to the man who had the heart attack – I don’t know.  It didn’t look hopeful.