Miraculous Survival: Mother’s Life Hangs in Balance During Three-Hour Ambulance Wait

Emergency Care: A Disturbing Wait

Carolyn Vickery’s story is one of those life-or-death situations that no one hopes to find themselves in, yet her experience certainly highlights a somewhat ironic twist of fate in the world of emergency care. Imagine experiencing a brain aneurysm and then having to wait an excruciating three hours for an ambulance to arrive—this is the unfortunate reality for this Victorian woman from Orbost. Picture the scene: your head feels like it’s hosting a thunderstorm, your consciousness dances in and out like a flickering light bulb, and all the while, the clock is ticking. It sounds like an absurd plot twist from a dark comedy, yet for Carolyn, it was all too real.

In an age when a smartphone can summon a ride at the tap of a button, one has to wonder why an ambulance can’t arrive as promptly. With her brother, Kelvin Adams—yes, a general practitioner—calling the emergency services repeatedly like a waiter hoping to catch the eye of an elusive restaurant manager, time stretched on. It’s as if the universe collectively decided to fail at being timely or efficient, which, let’s be honest, is a shameful branding of 21st-century health care.

The statistics don’t lie. From July to September of this year, ambulances in Victoria reached their urgent patients on time only 65.4% of the time. That’s a staggering figure when you consider the life-threatening situations that often demand immediate care. Ideally, 85% of urgent ambulances should reach the patient within 15 minutes—well, the reality for East Gippsland, where Orbost is located, was a dismal 48.8%. It’s almost like a bad sitcom, with emergency vehicles stuck in traffic while people’s lives hang in the balance.

As Kelvin recalls, “She was… basically dying in front of me.” Those words hit hard, a painful reminder of how quickly things can spiral out of control. And so, when the call was finally made at 12:12 AM and the minutes morphed into hours, the family's hopes diminished like the fading light of a sunset. It took a good 17 minutes before an ambulance was even allocated. By this point, you might think someone would have the common sense to send a vehicle with lights and sirens, hastily maneuvering through the night. But alas, common sense often takes a backseat in emergencies.

Kelvin, in a moment most brothers would dread, witnessed the fragility of life firsthand while his sister lingered in precarious balance between life and death. Describing his harrowing journey, he noted how he went from a reassuring brother to a desperate medical evaluator, making frantic calls to triple-0 as the seconds ticked by, all the while praying that the fateful call would summon faster help.

If you think this is where the story reaches its climax, think again. The delay eventually led Dr. Adams to make the gut-wrenching decision to rush his sister to their local hospital, a place typically manned by nurses and devoid of rapid emergency responses. While they were navigating the back roads at 3 AM, praying and hoping for the best, the ambulance finally showed up—three hours later!

After a whirlwind journey through this bureaucratic maze, Carolyn arrived at Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital where she was whisked away for emergency surgery. But let’s pause and reflect. Seven hours for what could have been a preventable tragedy? Whatever happened to the notion of time being of the essence, especially when it involves life-threatening conditions? It's a sad commentary on our healthcare system, which often resembles an overbooked flight rather than a reliable lifeline.

But the outcome, while distressingly absurd, could have easily turned catastrophic had it not been for Dr. Adams’s insistence and Carolyn’s fierce will to survive. “She was lucky,” Alex Vickery, her son and a paramedic in New South Wales, lamented, reflecting the duality of relief and anxiety that comes when you realize how narrow the escape was. “Ideally, an ambulance would have arrived in a timely manner and transported her to the hospital…”—words tinged with a haunting reality of what could have occurred.

As Carolyn continues her journey of recovery back in Orbost, her family’s experience serves not just as a personal narrative but as a clarion call for change. They echo a hopeful plea that perhaps, just perhaps, governments will listen to their stories and enhance resources for rural health services.

In the end, it’s a lesson that perhaps all healthcare systems need: the clock can’t be the enemy in the race against time. With a little more efficiency, many families in Carolyn’s situation—who may not possess a medical background—could receive timely and life-saving care instead of waiting for an ambulance that plays hide and seek with their lives.