A Tilbury mother whose daughter waited 45 minutes to be taken to the hospital after breaking her arm is calling on the municipality to address ambulance wait times.
Tammy Jones says her 10-year-old daughter Madisyn Brosseau broke her arm during recess at a Tilbury elementary school Monday afternoon while doing a gymnastic move called a "round off."
"I didn't even know they called the ambulance until I got to the school... I think it was more in fear that she was going into shock. When I walked in, she was shaking so bad she almost fell off the bench they had her sitting on. She was almost convulsing," explains Jones.
Jones says she waited with her daughter for 20 minutes before the first attendant arrived and placed a splint on Brosseau's broken arm. She says in total, her daughter waited 45 minutes to be taken to the hospital.
"I was very angry because I could have drove her there faster than that. If she had gone into shock, what would we have done?" says Jones. "I get it that what happened with her wasn't a huge emergency, but it should have only taken about ten to 15 minutes, not 45," she says.
Jones adds that the ambulance that arrived was actually from Essex and she had to request for her daughter to be taken to a Chatham hospital instead.
She says she fears an ambulance will arrive too late if her family has another medical emergency.
"We're all fighting allergies in my family that we're not quite aware of yet. If our throats close up and it takes the [ambulance] eight minutes to get here, we're dead," she says.
To address these long wait times, the municipality approved a motion at Monday night's council meeting to look into ways to alleviate stress on EMS and improve delivery.
