While bicycling in East Anchorage on Monday evening, I came across an elderly woman stranded on the sidewalk along Tudor Road near the Muldoon curve. The battery on her mobility scooter had died and she was too disabled to walk. She showed me that she was still wearing the wristbands from the hours she had spent in the emergency room at Alaska Native Medical Center that day. One of them revealed that she had been given a heavy-duty pain medicine.
“I’ve been really, really sick,” she told me.
She had no food, no water, no money for a taxi, no phone, and no one to call for help when I offered her mine. I called the emergency room that had allowed this elderly woman to simply leave on a scooter for a miles-long trip to Muldoon. Their response was that I should call someone else. It wasn’t their problem and they had no solution to offer, other than a taxi voucher if she wanted to stop by and pick one up.
After some more phone calls I reached a fire department dispatcher, who sent firefighters from nearby Station 14 to stop by and figure out what to do. After I’d spent 30-40 minutes with this poor woman, they told me I should feel free to go, and assured me they would find her some form of transportation.
Riding away, I was grateful for the firefighters but troubled by how an ill, elderly woman could be sent out of a hospital emergency room alone, with no one making sure she had a safe, reliable way to travel to her home across town.
I can’t recall ever being released from a medical procedure or an ER visit without medical staff double- or even triple-checking to ensure I had a friend or relative to drive me home safely. Can we not do the same for our Alaska Native elders?
— Tim Woody
Anchorage
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